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I picked up a new mac mini and boy is it slow

R

richprice

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 27, 2008
43
0
Well I finally pulled the trigger on a brand new mac mini that came to 602.00 with tax using my company discount. I installed snow leopard, ran all the updates and started putting this thing through its paces. It didn't take long for me to realize this thing is as fast as a stubborn mule hit with a tranquilizer dart.:eek:

Now I purchased the gimp model knowing that i would upgrade in a few months to 4gb of memory as well as a 7200rpm hard drive. I now realize that this is not going to cut it and I am ordering the parts this pay day. Has any one else been fooled/misled by folks claiming how the 1gb model runs great and does everything you need lol. They must run pages and maybe email. Just thought I would share my experience.

On a side note we own a 2006 20" 2.0ghz imac with 4gb of ram and a ati 256mb 2400 video card and it screams. Is it realistic to expect similar performance when I add the new parts?:eek:

One other thing is that I am using a pc keyboard and after using the wireless apple keyboard there is no going back.
 
I have never heard anyone say 1 GB of RAM is enough. Most people here are obsessed about getting 4 and 8 GBs even when they don't really need it. Anyway, 2 GBs is definitely the absolute minimum you need. Since the Mac mini already shares its RAM with the GPU, 1 GB will be eaten up very quickly.

On the comparison with the iMac, the processor in the Mac mini is a little stronger. I'm confused as to which iMac you have though. The ATi 2400 and 2600 in iMacs came out in 2007 not 2006. The 2400 XT is generally weaker than a 9400M but the 2600 Pro is stronger. However, you may notice slower access times, boots etc. as the hard drive won't be as fast as your iMac's Hard Drive.
 
I couldn't remember if I got it in 06 or 07 so it must be the 2007 version. When I bring the mini in to get it "pimped out" I plan to bring in the imac as well to have the new 1TB Samsung spinpoint f3 added. Thanks for the reply and I cant wait to get this done. If you guys have checked out these new drives they are extremely fast (also cheap) for a mechanical drive.
 
Put the better disk and 4GB memory in. I did before I even tried to use the base model and I'm very impressed with it although I am comparing it with a G5 1.6.

M.
 
I picked up a 1.66 GHz Core Duo (not Core 2) for my parents for Christmas a few years back. Between the 512MB of RAM and the 5400 RPM hard drive, it was never a speed demon (though it handily outpaced the Lime iMac DV they had before it). We upgraded them to 2GB of RAM the next year and it made a substantial difference.
 
richprice said:
I couldn't remember if I got it in 06 or 07 so it must be the 2007 version. When I bring the mini in to get it "pimped out" I plan to bring in the imac as well to have the new 1TB Samsung spinpoint f3 added. Thanks for the reply and I cant wait to get this done. If you guys have checked out these new drives they are extremely fast (also cheap) for a mechanical drive.
Click to expand...

Bring it in to get pimped out? Come on, you truly haven't had the full Mini experience until you have cracked her open to do the upgrade yourself. :). Seriously though, don't let any of he horror stories online scare you off from doing it yourself--it's really not very difficult and you'll save yourself about $150.
 
richprice said:
Well I finally pulled the trigger on a brand new mac mini that came to 602.00 with tax using my company discount. I installed snow leopard, ran all the updates and started putting this thing through its paces. It didn't take long for me to realize this thing is as fast as a stubborn mule hit with a tranquilizer dart.:eek:

Now I purchased the gimp model knowing that i would upgrade in a few months to 4gb of memory as well as a 7200rpm hard drive. I now realize that this is not going to cut it and I am ordering the parts this pay day. Has any one else been fooled/misled by folks claiming how the 1gb model runs great and does everything you need lol. They must run pages and maybe email. Just thought I would share my experience.

On a side note we own a 2006 20" 2.0ghz imac with 4gb of ram and a ati 256mb 2400 video card and it screams. Is it realistic to expect similar performance when I add the new parts?:eek:

One other thing is that I am using a pc keyboard and after using the wireless apple keyboard there is no going back.
Click to expand...
Trust me, one you add the ram and faster HD it's a totally different machine. Very fast indeed :)
 
richprice said:
Well I finally pulled the trigger on a brand new mac mini that came to 602.00 with tax using my company discount. I installed snow leopard, ran all the updates and started putting this thing through its paces. It didn't take long for me to realize this thing is as fast as a stubborn mule hit with a tranquilizer dart.:eek:

Now I purchased the gimp model knowing that i would upgrade in a few months to 4gb of memory as well as a 7200rpm hard drive. I now realize that this is not going to cut it and I am ordering the parts this pay day. Has any one else been fooled/misled by folks claiming how the 1gb model runs great and does everything you need lol. They must run pages and maybe email. Just thought I would share my experience.

On a side note we own a 2006 20" 2.0ghz imac with 4gb of ram and a ati 256mb 2400 video card and it screams. Is it realistic to expect similar performance when I add the new parts?:eek:

One other thing is that I am using a pc keyboard and after using the wireless apple keyboard there is no going back.
Click to expand...

Yeah if i were you i would get at LEAST 2gb but 4gb sounds better and a ssd drive. ;) Also which model did you get 2.00 ghz or 2.26ghz?
 
Really ? I just picked up the base model myself and was thinking to myself I might have waited before ordering the extra parts because it's fine as-is. Are you trying to run crysis or something ? :p
BTW I'd expect performance to be better than the 2006 iMac since the bus speed and memory speed have improved. A faster HD should help if you're I/O bound.
 
I just got the base model refurb and 1 gig of ram is fine for me! It's tons faster than my G5 dual with 4 gigs of ram.

I would in fact argue against upgrading it -- keep it stock so that you have sunk less money into it and can realize the least amount of losses when you flip it on Ebay (once the 2010 Mini's come out.)
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone : Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7C144 Safari/528.16)

I keep my mac's until they die lol and just running safari iTunes and mail slows it down. Plus I pla this little game called wow ;)
 
My Mac Mini is ok with 1GB of RAM since I really only go on the internet and use Pages, but I can tell I need more RAM because of the page outs I am getting. I guess it just depends on ones needs.
 
my first and so far only mac is a mini. I found it very fast out of the with 1 gig. I could have itunes and firefox and thunderbid opened. only playing videos did I really see the beachball. it sure blew away my faster hardware dell. but it did need more memory for smooth itunes videos and parallels. but it was not a huge speed difference.
 
richprice said:
I couldn't remember if I got it in 06 or 07 so it must be the 2007 version. When I bring the mini in to get it "pimped out" I plan to bring in the imac as well to have the new 1TB Samsung spinpoint f3 added. Thanks for the reply and I cant wait to get this done. If you guys have checked out these new drives they are extremely fast (also cheap) for a mechanical drive.
Click to expand...

I call shenanigans! In order for said machine to be successfully "pimped" it must contain 4 (yes 4) separate quad core Xeons in it!

*drools just thinking about the heatsink
 
Well I have never used a Mac Mini before, but I'm sure it would be pretty fast, what are you trying to run on it anyway?

They're not the fastest machines around, I have a late 2007 intel iMac (maxed specs) and its great! The mini should be as powerful, if not more than my iMac since the mini is late 2009 and my iMac is late 2007...

Correct me if I'm wrong ;)
 
Just finished my upgrade, 1 to 4gb RAM and added Momentus 7200 HD : here's the before and after benchmarks in case anyone's interested.
 

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MacMini2009 said:
My Mac Mini is ok with 1GB of RAM since I really only go on the internet and use Pages, but I can tell I need more RAM because of the page outs I am getting. I guess it just depends on ones needs.
Click to expand...

Well, if you want my one gig of ram out of my new 2.26ghz Mac Mini to match your 1 gig, pm me. You really should upgrade. You are losing most of your ram to run your video card and unless you have 2 gigs of ram in it, your video card is downclocking by half anyway.
 
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