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2014 Mac Mini CPU performance specs
- Thread starter hipnetic
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Don't change the goal posts, you were talking about daily use. That could mean web browsing and email, right? If so, pulling down images and messages are non-blocking multi-threaded functions. I could easily argue that daily use lends itself to plenty of tasks that would have no business colliding.
Inline images are handled by webkit which is multi-threaded.
Any kind of bottleneck during asynchronous processing weakens your argument and strengthens mine.
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From being in the "real world" work environment using a 12 core HP Z820 with 64GB of Ram and using Solidworks 2011 those 11 other cores do me absolutely no good as Solidworks 2011 isn't a true multithread application. I would do better off with a 3.5 GHz quad than a 12-core at 2.5 GHz per core. This being working in the aircraft and defense industry. I totally understand reality and real world performance.
Btw just because all the cores are being used doesn't mean it's a true multithread application. The OS is designed to spread the load over multiple cores. It may spread the application at 25% over 4 cores or 50% over two cores. It's the same performance either way with the higher clock speed on the dual and lower on the quad. I would take a higher clock speed dual core any day over a lower clock speed quad core for most task.
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You mean you totally understand the reality and real world performance of that one app.
Sucks for you that it has such lousy optimization for more cores. Not sure why you think that every other app must be the same way.
True, but there actually are apps that are truly multithreaded instead of just switching between the various cores. Here in the real world those apps perform much better with more cores and in many cases can max out all available cores. You really think that nobody is benefiting from more cores, people who buy 4/6/8/12 core machines are just throwing their money away?
That is 0.00001% of what Javascript is used for.
It actually strengthens mine, as it means cpu performance isn't the bottleneck and 2 cores are just as good as 4 since most of them will be waiting on other stuff. It doesn't matter if you have 2 or 4 cores to display images if the actual speed of downloading images is orders of magnitude smaller than what the cpu spends running code.
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Judging by how 2-core iOS devices slaughter 4-core snapdragon devices, I'm inclined to say yes, They're wasting their money unless they do video/photo editing or engineering simulations or similar other "professional" tasks that a mac mini isn't designed for.
Now we're back to "you're holding it wrong." Regardless of what any of us may speculate what it was "designed for", the previous mini actually performed many tasks, "professional" and otherwise, much better than the new one will.
And did you seriously just try to dismiss more cores using mobile devices for an example?
It's actually more like when cell providers started offering capped data plans with access fees. At first it was the end of the world. Now it's more like I never even notice now.
The 2012 Mac Mini had USB3. That is not a new feature.
What are you streaming *TO*? If you're streaming to a capable end point that doesn't need the video transcoded, the Plex Media Server doesn't need to do any work. Even a low-powered NAT can do that. If, OTOH, you're streaming Blu-ray rips encoded with VC-1 (instead of MPEG4) to an Apple TV, the Plex Media Server is going to need a capable CPU.
Well, I'm the guy who started this thread and my primary interest is in the Mac Mini as a Plex Media Server. The Plex website quotes PassMark numbers when advising people what sort of server will be capable of transcoding high-def content.
The 2012 Mac Mini was "designed" with a quad core i7 CPU, on the higher end models. People that purchased those machines, purchased them to do things that are better accomplished with a quad core i7 CPU. Those who have been waiting, nearly two years, for an upgrade to their quad core i7 CPU, are left out in the cold.
Nobody walked into an Apple store 2 years ago, looked at the 2.5ghz dual core option vs. the 2.3ghz quad core option, and said "you know, i'll pay more for the lower ghz one" without understanding the benefit of more cores.
Quad core Mac Minis were obviously "designed" to handle tasks that benefit from having a Quad core CPU, and were purchased by people that understood that. Therefore, your statement makes absolutely no sense.
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And Apple didn't like people buying cheap macs for such tasks, not only they make a computer that's optimized for the %95, they don't want the other 5% to get away with using such a cheap machine, because that other 5% are big spenders if they are in the professional industry and since computing power is very cheap nowadays, they are protecting their margins.
Processing is processing, doesn't matter if it's mobile or not. Virtually everything a non-pro user will do benefits more from 2 fast cores than 4 slower ones.
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Please show me the data on how many people purchased the quad core mac minis and what they used them for. I have an 8-core desktop (2x quad core i5 CPU's) at work, and I know for a fact everything I do would be even faster with 2 faster cores. The minority that are the "savvy shopper" doesn't concern Apple anyway, so no more quad core.
Plex is one of the few software that does benefit from quad-core, you're right. It's a shame they don't support the GPU encoding features on Intel HD graphics that the new mini comes with which would eliminate the need for a quad core.
In any case, if you're looking for a plex server and not a daily use machine, Plex server also runs on Windows, I suggest you look at Lenovo M93p or the new Alienware Alpha (Quad core AND Nvidia GPU) if you want a small desktop that can do it better than a mini.
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I never said it was. I just said it took Apple forever to put it as standard in their products. Even the latest Airport Extreme which came out last year only has USB 2 which is so stupid.
People, please don't listen to all this crap about 2 cores are better than 4. Here's something simple you can do at home. Close all applications other than Safari and then open Activity Monitor. Under the "Window" menu, select "CPU History." Now cruise around your favorite web sites for a while and see what you get, it'll probably look something like this:
4 are better than 2.
4 are better than 2.
Pretty weak. There are cases where two faster cores outperform four slower cores. One example I can think of is older versions of iMovie. Those versions cold not take advantage of more than two cores therefore a higher clocked two core system could outperform a lower clocked four core system.
Older versions of iMovie? Who gives a ****. And welcome to the conversation. We were talking about daily usage, I think web browsing is about as common as it gets, but thanks for playing.
Well yeah 4 same clocked Cores are better than 2. But Single Thread performance is still relevant today even if somehow in every second thread here I read about GCD. Which is nice dont get me wrong but it does not help everything if its not running on the Main thread. Even if some task gets a new thread thats not helping it. Then 1 faster core is better than 2 slower ones.
I know this isnt really about the Mini because the clock speed for one core isnt even crazy but if you look at the 12Core Mac Pro. To buy this machine it makes only sense for a small amount of people to buy it. You have many cores which are added together are much faster CPU (Ghz-wise) but it only makes sense if your applications are really good to parallelize. And Yes Webkit is multi threaded but I wouldnt buy a 12 Core to get a faster Webkit, I would buy the higher clocked 4-6 whatever core.
But just for your screen:
The i5 is hyper threaded as well, which means you can run 4 Threads. You have a quadcore running 8 Threads but if you look at it closely, 4 out of 8 did practically nothing.
Exactly, so all things being close to equal a 2 core i5 will have its 2 cores twice as busy and twice as utilized.
4 are better than 2.