The Mac mini is in the Macworld Lab, and we’re continuing to test both the 1.25GHz and 1.42GHz models. We’ll have a full review and Speedmark scores soon, but here’s a sneak preview at our tests on the 1.25GHz model (see table below).
In short, the Mac mini generally performs like a comparable 1.25GHz eMac, with one exception: it’s slowed down by the speed of its hard drive, as you can see from the results of our iMovie and Photoshop tests.
Want to see all our coverage of the Mac mini? Visit our special Mac mini page.
Mac mini: Preliminary Lab Tests
| Cinema4D 8.5 | iMovie HD Render | iTunes 4.7.1 MP3 encode | Photoshop 8.0 Suite | Unreal Tournament Avg. Frame Rate | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mac Mini 1.25 GHz | 5:26 | 1:27 | 2:50 | 2:31 | 17.2 |
| eMac 1.25 GHz (10.3.7) | 5:28 | 1:05 | 2:53 | 2:14 | 16.4 |
| 1.6GHz iMac G5 (10.3.7) | 3:25 | 0:45 | 2:04 | 2:06 | 34.7 |
| <better | <better | <better | <better | >better |
Best results in bold. Reference systems in italics.
Photoshop, Cinema 4D, iMovie, and iTunes scores are in minutes:seconds. All systems were running Mac OS X 10.3.7. with 512MB RAM. We tested MP3 encoding with an audio-CD track that is 45 minutes long, converting it from the hard drive using iTunes’ High Quality setting. We used Unreal Tournament’s Antalus Botmatch; Average Frames Per Second score tested at a resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels. The Photoshop Suite test is a set of 14 scripted tasks using a 50MB file. Photoshop’s memory was set to 75% and History was set to Minimum.