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New Mac Mini 7-2010 are they Worth It?

Wicked1

Wicked1

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Apr 13, 2009
3,283
14
New Jersey
I have been thinking about upgrading and selling my mid 2009 mini for one of the newest models, question is I have the 2.0 with 4GB Ram and 320GB HDD with 7200 RPM and the Nvidia 9400M

Are the new ones that much better or would I be wasting my money, I only play COD on a Boot Camp partition and some other games that do not require wicked fast graphics.
 
I agree, there would be a speed increase if you upgrade, but I don't think it would be significant from your current system to warrant the cost.

Does you system seem slow to you now?
 
iVoid said:
I agree, there would be a speed increase if you upgrade, but I don't think it would be significant from your current system to warrant the cost.
Click to expand...

Probably true, but the one he wants to sell could fetch a significant chunk of the value of the new one. Total cost of the upgrade might not be that much.
 
I believe that if he waits a year for the next Mac Mini update, He'll have already enough cash to buy the Mac Mini without selling the one he got. If he's gonna start saving...
 
No, my system is nice and quick, however I am trying to find a quicker HDD thinking of a Seagate Momentus Hybrid.

For what I use it for the Graphics and speed are ok now that I went to 4GB, however I need a faster drive bc my current Hitachi 7200RPM 320GB with 16MB cache is just not quick enough and SSD are still too expensive for a 250-500GB
 
I have a Mid-2010 with a 500GB Momentus XT, 8GB of memory, and a FW800 drive hanging off the back (for virtual machines) with a 2005-era aluminum 23" HD Cinema Display.

I run Snow Leopard and Windows 7 64-bit (Boot Camp). Common apps for me are VMWare Fusion, Visual Studio 2008 Database Edition, SQL Server 2008R2, Handbrake and Civilization IV.

The only place where the Mini feels lackluster is CPU performance, particularly for video encoding. Yet I knew going in that it wouldn't be as good as a Core i7 iMac in that regard (probably only 35% of the performance). The same goes for games. I play Civ 4 BTS at 1680x1050, and many other games at 1440x900 or 1280x800 with medium-quality settings. I fully intend to run Starcraft II on it next week.

New games? Constant video encoding? iMac. Even the 21.5" with the Radeon 46X0 has 50% better overall GPU performance over the nVidia 320M in the Mini. The upcoming iMac revisions will be even better (presumably a Radeon 57X0 or 5850 in the 27"). Casual use or development? The Mini hacks it just fine.
 
A real upgrade (if you're brave enough to open your machine) is exchanging your current hard drive with a solid state drive, i.e. Intel X-25M and getting a FW800 drive for storage.
 
Here's a simple guide.

  • If you have a total storage need of < 500GB and want SSD-like performance for most everyday use cases (non-random I/O, no large sustained transfers where throughput matters), I have to say go with the Momentus XT.
  • If you need between 128GB and 256GB and want the best raw performance possible, Crucial's Real SSD (MLC) is the top of the pack, though around $700.
  • If you need less than 128GB of storage, get an SLC SSD. Expect to pay $500+ for 128GB.
  • If you need > 500GB total storage, 128GB MLC SSD + large FW800 drive (high performance) or Momentus XT + large FW800 drive (still very good performance). NAS that supports iSCSI is also an option.
 
cherry su said:
A real upgrade (if you're brave enough to open your machine) is exchanging your current hard drive with a solid state drive, i.e. Intel X-25M and getting a FW800 drive for storage.
Click to expand...
^ This.

If you want fast, put in a 160GB Intel X25-M G2 SSD. Give 80GB(?) for a Windows partition. Use an external drive for storage, I'd recommend having two, one for storage and one for backup.

The new 320M 256MB GPU offers up to 80% more performance than the 9400M according to Apple.
 
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