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Mini to Run CS4 & Parallels w/AutoCAD?

T

thebreadking

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 26, 2008
38
0
I wasn't sure whether to put this in the Buying Tips sub-forum or this one, so Mods, please feel free to move it if necessary.

With the new Mini updates today, I've started to seriously consider picking one up as a workhorse at home. My current computer is the 1.67 Powerbook G4 w/ 2G RAM, and for what I need at the moment, it runs decently; however, I can tell that its a 3.5 year old machine and it won't run everything I'll need it to.

So my question to you is this: would the low end Mini, which I would upgrade w/ a larger 7200rpm HDD and 4G Ram, effectively run Adobe CS4 and Parallels/VMWare Fusion w/ AutoCAD at a decent clip? I understand that its Apple's low(ish)-priced competitor, but keep in mind that I'd be coming from using CS (and obviously no AutoCAD) on an older G4, so any increase in speed coming from three and a half years of computer advancements would still be fast to me...but would they be fast enough for my programs?

Thanks for the help!
 
thebreadking said:
effectively run Adobe CS4 and Parallels/VMWare Fusion w/ AutoCAD at a decent clip?
Click to expand...

Are we talking AutoCAD LT, or do you do any 3D modeling? Have you considered running AutoCAD via Bootcamp instead?

I can't imagine any problems running AutoCAD LT, or even some light 3D work as long as you allocate the virtual machine enough memory. For heavy 3D stuff I would use bootcamp.

I'm currently taking an intro CAD course and using Solidworks on my Mid-2007 2.4Ghz iMac w/4GB of ram. I have a bootcamp partition w/Vista that I can boot into or use as a virtual machine within VMware Fusion. While its perfectly usable inside VMware Fusion, I prefer boot directly into Vista when running Solidworks.
 
Thanks for the response. Ideally I'd prefer to run it under virtualization software just so that I can easily switch back and forth into Photoshop. As for 3D work, I wouldn't be using anything in the AutoDesk suite, unless we decide to go to Revit, though I do use SketchUp Pro on a pretty regular basis. Though SketchUp doesn't seem like the most processor-intensive application.

How much does processor speed play into the overall scheme? I usually wouldn't consider it, but is it actually worth it to spend the extra $150 for the extra .26ghz in order to better do what I want to do? Or is everything I'm looking for it to do more RAM-dependent?
 
I was originally running AutoCAD 08 under VMWare which worked great for line drawings, no matter how large. I was also running Photoshop CS2 and InDesign at the same time on a low end mac mini I bought 12 months ago.

I switched to Boot Camp since I started using the 3D modeliing tools of AutoCAD.

As far as 2D is concerned, your workspace should function just fine with a new mac mini
 
That's a good resource, thanks. Does anyone have any experience with a Mac Mini, or a machine spec'd similarly, running SketchUp Pro? I assume an upgrade to 4GB of RAM would help immensely, but is performance limited by the graphics card? Or is SketchUp a basic enough program to not have its performance throttled back due to the 9400M?

Thanks again for the help!
 
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