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If Apple pays 60% of retail for processors, I would be amazed. Price will end up being almost a secondary concern after performance and thermal threshold.

If one processor retails for $200 and another for $375, knocking 40% off doesn't somehow separate them by a few dollars. There's still a $105 gap you have to account for, which is not a secondary concern when multiplied by a million or so units.
 
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What comes after haswell ?
I can't go crazy and update just to have latest & greatest , the 2012 mini is working just fine

Unless the mini gets the Mac Pro makeover hmmm

Dual or quad? I have a 2011 base mini, though I feel while it is somewhat sufficient, it is getting a bit old. I figure if I don't get one now, I'll be waiting until 2015 for a Broadwell mini.
 
If one processor retails for $200 and another for $375, knocking 40% off doesn't somehow separate them by a few dollars. There's still a $105 gap you have to account for, which is not a secondary concern when multiplied by a million or so units.

Intel's cost on processors is fractionally low (like 5-15% of retail). Furthermore, they don't produce hundreds of structurally unique processors. They produce several different processors and clock them at different frequencies.

The i5-4350u and the i5-4200u are the same processor with different frequencies thus different thermal profiles. They are the same physical chip. Neither costs a cent more for Intel to produce. However, Intel charges nearly $50 more for the i5-4350. There is only a single base design for all of Intel's i5 mobile offerings. Their are 3 base designs for all of Intel's mobile i7 offerings. Even within these reference designs, the production cost differences between models are nearly non-existent.

Apple is paying a fraction of retail pricing. With the quantity they are purchasing, they can pretty much grab whatever model in a series they would like with nearly non existent price hikes. I have seen what HP pays for processors for their servers and workstations. Apple buys in much higher quantities (except for Xeons) and is an early adapter of Intel backed technologies (thunderbolt, USB3).
 
I just hope Apple maintains the low end unit at the current $599 price point.

I'm guessing even the lowest end Haswell-based GPU would be faster than the current HD Graphics 4000.

Maybe this way, they would enable them to have 8gb RAM as standard.
 
I can't replace the integrated GPU. I would be happier if they beefed up the GPU and shipped them without RAM. A huge portion of mini users toss the small dimm they ship with anyways.
 
This is what I think would be likely from a late 2013 Mac Mini

Smaller Form Factor
CPU - i5-4882u or i7-4558u - both have 23w TDP and 5100 graphics
Memory - Non Replaceable DDR3 1600
1x PCIe SSD (Same as new Macbook Air)
Bluetooth 4.0
AC Wifi
Gigabit Ethernet
2x Thunderbolt 2.0
3 or 4 USB 3.0
Combo analog/digital Headphone
Combo analog/digital Line In

Here is a picture of the back ports of my proposed late 2013 mac mini. Pardon the poor photoshopping.
 

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This is what I think would be likely from a late 2013 Mac Mini

Smaller Form Factor
CPU - i5-4882u or i7-4558u - both have 23w TDP and 5100 graphics
Memory - Non Replaceable DDR3 1600
1x PCIe SSD (Same as new Macbook Air)
Bluetooth 4.0
AC Wifi
Gigabit Ethernet
2x Thunderbolt 2.0
3 or 4 USB 3.0
Combo analog/digital Headphone
Combo analog/digital Line In

Here is a picture of the back ports of my proposed late 2013 mac mini. Pardon the poor photoshopping.


I hope the highest i7 processor will be much better with Iris Pro HD5200. Also, 8GB RAM is a good basic standard....However, I am not sure if updated Mac mini appears this year...let's see!
 
I hope the highest i7 processor will be much better with Iris Pro HD5200. Also, 8GB RAM is a good basic standard....However, I am not sure if updated Mac mini appears this year...let's see!

I would think that with Apple's push towards Open CL they would rather go with a separate AMD graphics chip rather than going with a higher end i7 with 5200 etc... Just my opinion obviously.
 
Intel's cost on processors is fractionally low (like 5-15% of retail). Furthermore, they don't produce hundreds of structurally unique processors. They produce several different processors and clock them at different frequencies.

The i5-4350u and the i5-4200u are the same processor with different frequencies thus different thermal profiles. They are the same physical chip. Neither costs a cent more for Intel to produce. However, Intel charges nearly $50 more for the i5-4350. There is only a single base design for all of Intel's i5 mobile offerings. Their are 3 base designs for all of Intel's mobile i7 offerings. Even within these reference designs, the production cost differences between models are nearly non-existent.

Apple is paying a fraction of retail pricing. With the quantity they are purchasing, they can pretty much grab whatever model in a series they would like with nearly non existent price hikes. I have seen what HP pays for processors for their servers and workstations. Apple buys in much higher quantities (except for Xeons) and is an early adapter of Intel backed technologies (thunderbolt, USB3).
It has even been a practice for a while with AMD and Intel to bin their chips. That way they can select for the chips that clock higher stably. They close (or open) a trace on the die that locks in that freq and sell it as the best clockspeed it can support (in theory). Hardware overclocking enthusiasts have known about this for years, using various tricks to unlock more multipliers and frequencies than are available stock.
I'd also add that quite a few product lines with dual, quad, sextuple or octal cores are often the same CPU as well. They simply sell a quad CPU with 2 cores disabled (perhaps they are below spec or just bad). AMD and Nvidia have done this with video cards for years.
It's simply cheaper to build the same chip by the tens of thousands and use trimming lasers and solder to configure the chips than build a dozen distinct chips with relatively short product lifecycles.
 
It has even been a practice for a while with AMD and Intel to bin their chips. That way they can select for the chips that clock higher stably. They close (or open) a trace on the die that locks in that freq and sell it as the best clockspeed it can support (in theory). Hardware overclocking enthusiasts have known about this for years, using various tricks to unlock more multipliers and frequencies than are available stock.
I'd also add that quite a few product lines with dual, quad, sextuple or octal cores are often the same CPU as well. They simply sell a quad CPU with 2 cores disabled (perhaps they are below spec or just bad). AMD and Nvidia have done this with video cards for years.
It's simply cheaper to build the same chip by the tens of thousands and use trimming lasers and solder to configure the chips than build a dozen distinct chips with relatively short product lifecycles.

You said it a lot more eloquently than I could have put it. In essence, the lower chips are likely to be ones that didn't make the grade to be higher end chips. Higher prices are due to relative yields - some of the chips off a wafer will be DOA, other will have to be binned lower due to defective or substandard cache or cores and the chip has to be prepared as such.

Apple are prepared to make a special order for the best of the best i7-4950HQ that can overclock the graphics part so it can be used in a Macbook Pro Retina 15" without resorting to an NVidia discrete GPU. Note there's benchmarks of a 55W version of the i7-4950HQ with boosted graphics and Apple have the muscle to get this or something similar with exclusivity for a length of time. I believe the current Retina enclosure can handle upwards of 85-90w so unless Apple are going for thinner with more battery life there could be room to overclock the graphics even more.

To reiterate what I said earlier, there's no doubt that Apple will get a volume discount but they're not going to pass it all on so the prices we've been discussing are valid even as comparators between one CPU and another.

Apple price stuff according to what the customer will pay. Anandtech estimates that adding Iris Pro to a quad core mobile CPU will cost an extra $90 in computers that require power savings such as laptops.

The Mac mini doesn't really have that imperative apart from keeping the heat down in a smaller enclosure. It also doesn't sell enough to justify Apple asking for a line of processors just for the Mini as the discount just wouldn't be there.

We're therefore back to my theory of which CPU will Apple use and it's clear that it'll use one that is already on volume order for a laptop.

Don't forget that Apple could go down the route of sticking with Ivy Bridge if there's no cheap dual core Haswell to maintain the Mini at the entry price point they require. This decision would be linked to a continuing non-retina Macbook Pro 13" in my opinion. In both cases there probably wouldn't be any innovation in cases and we'd be using the same one for another generation. One upside could be that a quad core CPU from a refreshed Retina Macbook Pro could then be used in a Mini whose case isn't innovated. This opens the door for a quad core CPU with Iris Pro 5200 to be slotted in and for the prices to drift upwards by $90-100 in the middle and upper range models.
 
This is what I think would be likely from a late 2013 Mac Mini

Smaller Form Factor
CPU - i5-4882u or i7-4558u - both have 23w TDP and 5100 graphics
Memory - Non Replaceable DDR3 1600
1x PCIe SSD (Same as new Macbook Air)
Bluetooth 4.0
AC Wifi
Gigabit Ethernet
2x Thunderbolt 2.0
3 or 4 USB 3.0
Combo analog/digital Headphone
Combo analog/digital Line In

Here is a picture of the back ports of my proposed late 2013 mac mini. Pardon the poor photoshopping.
You forgot on the i7 version that is 99% secure that will come with 4 physical cores with HT.
 
Intel's cost on processors is fractionally low (like 5-15% of retail). Furthermore, they don't produce hundreds of structurally unique processors. They produce several different processors and clock them at different frequencies.

The i5-4350u and the i5-4200u are the same processor with different frequencies thus different thermal profiles. They are the same physical chip. Neither costs a cent more for Intel to produce. However, Intel charges nearly $50 more for the i5-4350. There is only a single base design for all of Intel's i5 mobile offerings. Their are 3 base designs for all of Intel's mobile i7 offerings. Even within these reference designs, the production cost differences between models are nearly non-existent.

Apple is paying a fraction of retail pricing. With the quantity they are purchasing, they can pretty much grab whatever model in a series they would like with nearly non existent price hikes. I have seen what HP pays for processors for their servers and workstations. Apple buys in much higher quantities (except for Xeons) and is an early adapter of Intel backed technologies (thunderbolt, USB3).

Are the chips that come from the center of the die not of a higher quality than those around the perimeter and hence where they are located on the die determines to a large factor what frequency they run at?

I also thought that a trace get's burned open by carefully shorting it out with an electrical current or is this now old technology?

Cheers
 
I'd like to see the Mac mini cube!

Something like this but with an Apple logo on the top:

41uA2Z8nOrL._SX300_.jpg
 
Just thinking about buying Mac Mini, however here in Czech Republic it seems that the largest retailers are out of stock including iMacs and MBPs but their stocks are full of MBAs. It seems to me that on September event, we might see all non-Haswell devices refreshed.
 
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This is what I think would be likely from a late 2013 Mac Mini

1x PCIe SSD (Same as new Macbook Air)
AC Wifi
2x Thunderbolt 2.0
...
I agree with the likelihood of PCIe based SSDs and 802.11ac. However, unless the next Mac mini update is sometime after March of next year they will not have Thunderbolt 2.
 
Are the chips that come from the center of the die not of a higher quality than those around the perimeter and hence where they are located on the die determines to a large factor what frequency they run at?

I also thought that a trace get's burned open by carefully shorting it out with an electrical current or is this now old technology?

Cheers

The center die chips are still of higher quality and potentially higher frequency than chips on the perimeter. However, even among the high end chip... Intel uses software to lock the frequency of the processor. One chip might be capable of 4ghz and another capable of 4.3ghz. However, both will be clocked via software at 2.9ghz or 3.1ghz and called an i7-XXXX.
 
The center die chips are still of higher quality and potentially higher frequency than chips on the perimeter. However, even among the high end chip... Intel uses software to lock the frequency of the processor. One chip might be capable of 4ghz and another capable of 4.3ghz. However, both will be clocked via software at 2.9ghz or 3.1ghz and called an i7-XXXX.

Interesting to find out that it is now controlled through software. I wonder if that is how the "over clockers" increase the throughput. I never had any interest in pushing a CPU beyond what the manufacturer specified since I believe that it will either give errors or shorten the life of the component. Hard enough to cope with software errors/conflicts without introducing spurious hardware errors.

I wonder how Intel determines what the maximum frequency for a given chip is - cannot see them testing every individual chip.
 
I wonder how Intel determines what the maximum frequency for a given chip is - cannot see them testing every individual chip.

They would test a representative sample and look for how many failures there are, one would think.
 
This is what I think would be likely from a late 2013 Mac Mini

Smaller Form Factor
CPU - i5-4882u or i7-4558u - both have 23w TDP and 5100 graphics
Memory - Non Replaceable DDR3 1600
1x PCIe SSD (Same as new Macbook Air)
Bluetooth 4.0
AC Wifi
Gigabit Ethernet
2x Thunderbolt 2.0
3 or 4 USB 3.0
Combo analog/digital Headphone
Combo analog/digital Line In

Here is a picture of the back ports of my proposed late 2013 mac mini. Pardon the poor photoshopping.

Nice picture. That is more or less what I want to see as well, for Apple to get the mini's thermals under much better control, so the processor cores and the graphics cores will be able to sustain Turbo like in the Retina MBPs.
 
So without reading the whole thread given the lack of bandwidth on my mobile connection at the moment, is there likely to be a new Mac Mini announced soon? My old MacBook Pro 17" is kaput, and need a replacement machine soon, but not prepared to spend a small fortune on another Mac laptop at the moment given i have a 4th gen iPad for mobile use.
 
The more I think about it, the more I think the Haswell Mac mini will use the form factor of the new Airport Extreme / Time Capsule. I expect to see 802.11ac Wifi and a second Thunderbolt port replace the Firewire port. Otherwise, I expect the ports to remain the same.
 
Personally, I think the form factor of the Mac Mini is going to stay the same for this next release. There has been zero leaks of information or photos to suggest a different form factor.

I do expect the big changes for the Haswell Minis to be:
1x PCIe SSD (Same as new Macbook Air)
Bluetooth 4.0
AC Wifi

I think they'll redesign the form of the mac mini over the next 12 months or whenever they can get hold of the Broadwell chips from Intel as Broadwell will necessitate a new motherboard.

While serving a totally different market from the Mini the new Mac Pro is likely the only new design we'll see for OSX products this year. Apple wouldn't blow is its aesthetic load twice in the space of a month with a new design for the Mini and a new design Mac Pro.

This year the Mac Pro is the priority and next year I would imagine they can put the bells and whistles on the Mac Mini (Thunderbolt 2 etc...) but the Mac Mini is still a very capable machine for most peoples uses.

I would imagine a redisign of the Mac Mini would make it even smaller and lighter and potentially making it the home hub machine and for it being part of :apple: and their plans to compete in the living room.
 
Personally, I think the form factor of the Mac Mini is going to stay the same for this next release. There has been zero leaks of information or photos to suggest a different form factor.

I do expect the big changes for the Haswell Minis to be:
1x PCIe SSD (Same as new Macbook Air)
Bluetooth 4.0
AC Wifi

I agree...but it's very possible to see higher RAM as "standard", cheaper "Fusion drive" and also, IRIS Pro 5200 graphics in the i7 Haswell Mac mini models...I am not sure if 2013 Man mini models are available earlier than Nov. 2013....some thoughts for a new Mac mini in Mar.-Apr. 2014 with TB2...;)
 
Personally, I think the form factor of the Mac Mini is going to stay the same for this next release. There has been zero leaks of information or photos to suggest a different form factor.

I do expect the big changes for the Haswell Minis to be:
1x PCIe SSD (Same as new Macbook Air)
Bluetooth 4.0
AC Wifi

I think they'll redesign the form of the mac mini over the next 12 months or whenever they can get hold of the Broadwell chips from Intel as Broadwell will necessitate a new motherboard.

While serving a totally different market from the Mini the new Mac Pro is likely the only new design we'll see for OSX products this year. Apple wouldn't blow is its aesthetic load twice in the space of a month with a new design for the Mini and a new design Mac Pro.

This year the Mac Pro is the priority and next year I would imagine they can put the bells and whistles on the Mac Mini (Thunderbolt 2 etc...) but the Mac Mini is still a very capable machine for most peoples uses.

I would imagine a redisign of the Mac Mini would make it even smaller and lighter and potentially making it the home hub machine and for it being part of :apple: and their plans to compete in the living room.

I agree completely.
 
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