Mac Mini+iPhoto - compared to iMac+iPhoto

[Fletchzky]

I have always liked the Mini as a machine but the one thing that has always kept me away from it is it's performance in iPhoto (at the Apple store, anyway).

Basically, it's like this - when I open up iPhoto on an iMac, and open up a photo, the photo "zooms" in and renders very quickly. However, if I do the same thing on a Mini, the photo zooms in much slower and renders much slower - the difference is extremely noticeable.

Now, the Mini's (I think) only have 2GB max at the Apple stores, so I don't know if increasing it to 3GB will make the photos render quicker in iPhoto. Does anyone know what I mean? I know it sounds kind of trivial, but I have a ton of photos and I really want that extra speed in the program that you see on an iMac.

Thoughts?

 

[Decrepit]

It's probably the HDD more than it is the memory.

The slow HDDs in the Mini can be slow to do many things. I bought an external drive and use it as the boot drive now. The internal drive is my Time Machine.

This way, my OS is faster and the Mini runs cooler. If the Mac dies, I replace it, plug in my external HDD and go. If the external HDD dies, I plug in a new one, and backup from the internal Time Machine.

So, I'm pretty happy right now.

I just want a NEW Mini so I can upgrade from my original PPC version.

 

[koobcamuk]

With a 5400 RPM drive (or better, a 7200RPM) iPhoto flies. I have no issues. 2GB RAM and 5400 RPM 160GB.

 

[Fletchzky]

The Mini's use laptop hard drives, right?

 

[GimmeSlack12]

It's probably the HDD more than it is the memory.

You don't think it has anything to do with the GPU of each machine? If I remember correct the Mini has a shared GPU, and the iMac has a dedicated GPU. Sure the HDD is an issue, but I'd imagine the performance lag is not entirely to blame on the HDD.

I'd recommend the iMac if you are getting a new Mac. The Mini is nice, but I think the iMac is the much better deal.

 

[Decrepit]

You don't think it has anything to do with the GPU of each machine? If I remember correct the Mini has a shared GPU, and the iMac has a dedicated GPU. Sure the HDD is an issue, but I'd imagine the performance lag is not entirely to blame on the HDD.

I'd recommend the iMac if you are getting a new Mac. The Mini is nice, but I think the iMac is the much better deal.

I think it's the drive only because it's the slowest component in the system, and loading up a pile of photos or something is disk intensive as well as memory.

GPU should have nothing to do with it. There is no difference between rendering a photo and rendering your desktop. In fact the desktop should take more resources due to the 3D aspects. The photo just needs to be read and then displayed. If you could load 10 photos into a RAM disk or something, I'll be the Mini could render them instantly.

I could certainly be wrong, but in this case I could see the drive being the bottleneck.