Mac Mini Performance

[JoshAlder]

I currently have a 2009 macbook pro 15" which i use for lightroom, university work and general internet browsing. I was wondering how the latest/future mac mini will perform in lightroom? im a little woried about intel hd at the moment and thats the only thing that is putting me off. If anyone could shed some light on experience with lightroom on a mac mini or any infomation they know, that would be brilliant. Thanks

 

[blanka]

Just add an SSD (you can slide one in pretty easy on the 2012 models) and you should be fine. Only bottleneck on the Mini's is the slow 5400rpm HD.

 

[corvus32]

I currently have a 2009 macbook pro 15" which i use for lightroom, university work and general internet browsing. I was wondering how the latest/future mac mini will perform in lightroom? im a little woried about intel hd at the moment and thats the only thing that is putting me off. If anyone could shed some light on experience with lightroom on a mac mini or any infomation they know, that would be brilliant. Thanks

Forget every concern you have about HD 4000 graphics because, compared to your Core 2 Duo, Ivy Bridge will be a huge upgrade.

Not only is the processor far superior, but you also gain USB 3.0, Thunderbolt, faster wifi, etc.

 

[fa8362]

My lightroom software is on my i7 2012 Mini, but I keep my jpeg preview library on a 2 TB USB 2 desktop external. My library is approaching 50,000 images. Can't recall whether the external is 5400 or 7200 RPM.

My archive of raw images is on a separate 2 TB USB 3 hard drive.

Speed is not an issue with the desktop external, but I also have the library on a portable USB 2, bus powered, 5400 RPM external and speed is an issue with that one. The trade off for portability I guess.

The 5400 RPM HD in the Mini is faster than the Firewire 800 7200 RPM external hard drives I own.

 

[corvus32]

My lightroom software is on my i7 2012 Mini, but I keep my jpeg preview library on a 2 TB USB 2 desktop external. My library is approaching 50,000 images. Can't recall whether the external is 5400 or 7200 RPM.

My archive of raw images is on a separate 2 TB USB 3 hard drive.

Speed is not an issue with the desktop external, but I also have the library on a portable USB 2, bus powered, 5400 RPM external and speed is an issue with that one. The trade off for portability I guess.

The 5400 RPM HD in the Mini is faster than the Firewire 800 7200 RPM external hard drives I own.

FWIW, after upgrading to an SSD, I use the 500GB hard drive that came in my Mini as an external media drive. It's connected via an Apricorn SATA Wire 3.0 adapter. Read and write speeds are around 105 MB/s using Blackmagic Speed Test. A 320GB Scorpio Black drive that's connected in the same fashion is slightly faster. When this same drive was connected to my 2010 MBP using USB 2.0 it topped out around 35 MB/s, so just being able to work with large files over USB 3.0 is worth the upgrade.

 

[applefan777]

The HD 4000 graphics really are not bad like people tend to think. It should whip through lightroom, photoshop or any other photo/video editing software. Especially if you get the i7 model.