2010 MAC MINI REVIEW DRIVERS
2010 MAC MINI REVIEW PRO
2010 MAC MINI REVIEW WINDOWS

RyanSmithAT: AnandTech is still looking for a new managing editor to help cover the bustling tech industry.Was an oversight on my part, sneaky sneaky gavbon86: Yeah not sure when you checked it, but I altered that.gavbon86: I would love a copy if you're willing to share.gavbon86: RT Want to watch something before the Apple event starts in 20 minutes? How about details on the latest Threadripper Pro….I've only considered 元 cache in my piece, not the 'enha… gavbon86: RT Apple's 'Peek Performance' spring product launch event kicks off in 15 minutes (18:00 UTC).I would expect its GPU to feel slow after another year. The mini is good enough for today’s games on the Mac (although not at 1080p). There’s also the matter of the dedicated frame buffer (512MB) vs. The 8800M GS has more shader horsepower and runs at a higher clock than the GeForce 320M. The 2008 iMac is still considerably faster since it uses a faster CPU and a much faster dedicated GPU.

2010 MAC MINI REVIEW PRO

Performance is a bit lower than the 13-inch MacBook Pro in our OS X Half Life 2 Episode Two test, presumably because of the meager 2GB of memory the system ships with by default compared to the 4GB you get with the MBP. Even a GeForce GTX 285 runs like garbage under OS X with those drivers, you need to use the latest betas from NVIDIA which unfortunately only work on the GTX 285 (at least the installer portion).

2010 MAC MINI REVIEW DRIVERS

For what it’s worth, Apple’s current NVIDIA drivers included in OS X 10.6.4 are absolutely horrible for performance in Starcraft 2. Unfortunately Starcraft 2 came out after I already sent the mini back so I couldn’t get a feel for how well it would run on the mini. The GeForce 320M GPU isn’t fast, but it’s fast enough to run things like Half Life 2 at playable frame rates. The 2010 Mac mini is basically a 13-inch MacBook Pro in a different form factor.

2010 MAC MINI REVIEW WINDOWS

Steam is now alive and well on OS X and last month’s Starcraft 2 release ships with both OS X and Windows versions on the same disc. With a growing installed user base and a higher guaranteed minimum GPU level, the Mac platform is becoming more attractive to game developers. The first Fusion parts might be a logical starting point. If I were a betting man I’d say that Apple is gearing up to eventually support AMD CPUs as well as Intel. Even on Apple’s website, the Intel shoutouts are limited. There’s not a single mention of Intel being inside the Mac mini. ILife, NVIDIA graphics and WiFi are the only things mentioned on the packaging. In fact, one look at the mini’s box reveals Apple’s thinking: The Mac mini continues the trend as Apple sticks to last year’s Penryn based Core 2 Duo P8600 instead of moving to a Core i3. The 2010 13-inch MacBook Pro was our first example, where Apple opted against moving to a Core i3/i5 in order to ship with a NVIDIA GPU. But today, Apple definitely values putting more money towards GPUs than CPUs. The Larrabee announcement and subsequent increase in integrated graphics investment tells us that Intel is finally trying to win this business back. I was surprised that it took Intel until this year to really heed the call. For the second largest consumer of semiconductors in the world to publicly tell Intel that its graphics wasn’t enough had to be a wake-up call. Two years ago Apple (and NVIDIA) sent a clear message to Intel - its integrated graphics was no longer good enough.

2010 mac mini review