EDITOR’S NOTE : The following is a series documenting Macworld Senior Editor Rob Griffiths’ first week with an Intel Mac mini. You can view each individual series installment:
VII. Testing the Mac mini
You can see the results of the Macworld Lab’s tests in our full review. Since my personal objective was to learn as much about the Mac mini as possible, I sought out additional test tools to add to what the Macworld Lab tests told me.
Geekbench benchmark: Impressed with the relaunch speeds of applications, I went looking for a benchmark test that would measure the raw computing power of the Core Duo chip in the mini. With some help from Google, I found Geekbench, which runs in the Terminal and runs a whole slew of number-crunching tests (and works on Windows and Linux, too). I ran Geekbench on all three Macs. One interesting feature of Geekbench is that there’s a Rosetta version as well as a native version, so you can see just what kind of performance impact Rosetta makes.
Geekbench is, well, quite geeky, so dig into the table below only if you want to see all the gory details.
Rob’s Geekbench Results
| Intel Mac mini (rosetta) | Intel Mac mini (Native) | Rosetta as % of Native | PowerBook | Dual G5 | Native as % of Dual G5 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Emulate 6502 (1 thread) | 71 | 152 | 47% | 65 | 154 | 99% |
| Emulate 6502 (4 threads) | 136 | 290 | 47% | 70 | 282 | 103% |
| Blowfish (1 thread) | (see note) | 291 | N/A | 184 | 143 | 203% |
| Blowfish (4 threads) | (see note) | 494 | N/A | 181 | 253 | 195% |
| bzip2 Compress (1 thread) | 49 | 115 | 43% | 79 | 132 | 87% |
| bzip2 Compress (4 threads) | 101 | 219 | 46% | 76 | 240 | 91% |
| bzip2 Decompress (1 thread) | 57 | 115 | 50% | 66 | 141 | 82% |
| bzip2 Decompress (4 threads) | 117 | 215 | 54% | 65 | 269 | 80% |
| Mandelbrot (1 thread) | 62 | 123 | 50% | 64 | 131 | 94% |
| Mandelbrot (4 threads) | 118 | 234 | 50% | 62 | 247 | 95% |
| Latency | 210 | 432 | 49% | 73 | 222 | 195% |
| Read Sequential | 152 | 306 | 50% | 38 | 213 | 144% |
| Stdlib Allocate (1 thread) | (see note) | 119 | N/A | 156 | 114 | 104% |
| Stdlib Allocate (4 threads) | (see note) | 139 | N/A | 157 | 117 | 119% |
| Stdlib Write | 134 | 135 | 99% | 34 | 132 | 102% |
| Stdlib Copy | 156 | 158 | 99% | 45 | 134 | 118% |
| Stream Copy | 79 | 108 | 73% | 34 | 135 | 80% |
| Stream Scale | 62 | 109 | 57% | 33 | 133 | 82% |
| Stream Add | 82 | 162 | 51% | 18 | 138 | 117% |
| Stream Triad | 70 | 158 | 44% | 18 | 135 | 117% |
Noted results differed significantly from native tests, suggesting a possible bug in the test program.
Testing by Rob Griffiths using GeekBench .
If you just want the summary version of the results, here it is:
Clearly the Core Duo is a powerful chip, based on its raw number-crunching abilities. As more applications go Universal, we (consumers) will see the benefits in terms of improved performance.
Cinebench benchmark: The free Cinebench benchmark uses the Cinema 4D engine to test the graphics performance of your Mac. I tested all three of the Macs here, and then, for an added data point, also tested my homebuilt Windows XP PC (which literally hadn’t been powered up in months). Here’s how the machines performed:
The first thing that stands out, quite glaringly, is that the Windows XP box kicked some serious Cinebench butt on the OpenGL benchmarks—it was over twice as fast at the hardware accelerated test! Now Maxon’s OpenGL engine implementation may not be the best, but the fact is that Cinema 4D’s OpenGL engine will run twice as quickly on my homebuilt Athlon-based single-core CPU as it will on my Dual G5. That just doesn’t seem right.
Also obvious from the charts is that the 12-inch PowerBook is really not a great machine for Cinema 4D work. It was substantially behind the mini on all tests.
What do these results mean to you, if you don’t work in Cinema 4D all day? Not necessarily a whole lot, other than to put the relative performance of the machines in perspective, and to note that the mini’s onboard graphics chip works much better than the PowerBook’s separate video card.
Xbench: This is one of the older Mac benchmarking applications, and it too is now available in Universal form. I ran all three machines through the standard test, and here are the results:
Rob’s Xbench Tests
| Intel Core Duo 1.66GHz | PowerBook G4 1.33GHz | Power Mac G5 2GHz | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | 63.94 | 55.59 | 100.14 |
| Thread | 164.8 | 58.38 | 101.17 |
| Memory | 94.66 | 25.91 | 91.58 |
| Quartz Graphics | 57.99 | 62.17 | 101.16 |
| OpenGL Graphics | 184.9 | 68.73 | 116.16 |
| User Interface | 23.83 | 34.23 | 90.17 |
| Disk | 30.25 | 26.38 | 50.86 |
| Overall Score | 53.87 | 40.83 | 87.46 |
Testing by Rob Griffiths.
Xbench is designed to return a score of 100 on a 2.0GHz Dual G5, which just happens to be my desktop machine. As you can see, my system did better in some areas like graphics (where my XT800 card is quicker than the stock card), but much poorer in others—I completely failed the disk test, for example. I’ll have to look into that at some point!
The interesting figures here are the three tests where the mini beats the Dual G5. The Thread and Memory results don’t surprise me, given the much faster RAM and the Intel chip’s capabilities. The OpenGL results, though, I have no explanation for. My Dual G5 is clearly much faster than the mini at anything using OpenGL, but these results suggest otherwise. And yet, in something like the iTunes visualizer, running at the same resolution on both machines, the Dual G5 is about 50 percent quicker than the mini. I really don’t have an explanation for this result, and welcome any thoughts from others on the subject.
Three takeaway points:
These test results are more for general interest than specific comparison purposes, especially as they lack any comparative info for the prior-generation mini. Still, they do show that the mini has a powerful CPU and not-too-shabby graphics chip, both of which should help it easily fulfill its role as Apple’s entry-level Mac.
VIII. Rosetta and Intel transition issues
I’ve touched on these topics in other sections before, but I thought I would also consolidate the subject here for easy access.
Rosetta: Rosetta works, and in my opinion, works amazingly well. The fact that something like Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 can be converted on-the-fly to run with an acceptable (if slow) framerate on the Intel mini is just amazing. And in more typical usage, such as in Word or Excel, the performance hit from Rosetta isn’t really noticeable unless you’re pushing the limits of these program’s capabilities. The most visible signs of Rosetta are slower scrolling, and perhaps a bit of lag in screen redraws.
Now, if you try to do something like edit a multi-megabyte TIFF image in Photoshop CS2 on the mini, you’ll definitely feel the Rosetta impact. In working on this article, I used Photoshop Elements extensively, and at only one time did I really notice the slowdown. I had opened four 1MB TIFFs for conversion to PNG, and it took a few seconds to open the “Save for Web” dialog for each one. Not a big deal, time-wise, but notably different than either the PowerBook or the G5.
For most typical users, who spend their time in e-mail, on the web, and working on simple letters and spreadsheets, I don’t think Rosetta is going to be noticed much, if at all. If, on the other hand, you’re a power user who works on massive Excel spreadsheets, huge image-laden Word documents, or monstrous 20MB advertising layout TIFFs in Photoshop, you’re going to want to wait for native versions of your applications before you switch.
Intel transition issues: At the end of the day, the mini is really just another Mac, regardless of what’s powering it. If nobody told you, you wouldn’t know there’s anything different under the hood. The machine is a Mac, just one with a different engine powering it than we’re all used to. That scares some people, myself included. But after having used the thing for a very-intensive seven days, I can see that my fears were mostly unfounded. The mini is a Mac, through and through, regardless of what it looks like inside.
That said, there are some things you’ll want to be aware of before you switch. If you use hardware or software that requires a kernel extension or similar driver to function, it won’t work until that driver is converted to work on the Intel-powered Macs. If you use a MacBook Pro, for instance, that means you can’t yet use the wonderful SideTrack to add functionality to your trackpad. And for me, it means that I can’t use Snapz Pro to capture screenshots and movies, which is why the two movies in this article look so ugly, despite my efforts with the tripod and digital camera.
On the positive side of the transition issue, native applications work really well. They tend to launch more quickly than their counterparts on similarly-powered PowerPC machines, and performance within the applications is snappy. On the games I tested, the Universal versions had amazingly good frame rates, at least compared to the PowerBook’s version of the same games.
If you use Java applications, you’ll be thrilled to see that these (usually) don’t require any conversion to run natively on Intel…and they run fast . jEdit on my G5 feels slower than jEdit on the mini, which is quite the feat for a “low end” Mac.
Three takeaway points:
I really think Apple has done a good job with Rosetta. Yes, there’s a performance hit, but really, it’s not that obvious unless you’re really stressing the machine. Many people probably won’t even realize something’s running under Rosetta unless they’re told; it’s a very seamless technology.
And I’ve been thrilled with the speed of the native applications, especially the Finder! I keep having to remind myself that I’m using the second-cheapest Mac you can purchase, and not something near the top-end of the food chain. Yes, my Dual G5 is still quicker in most things, especially gaming and graphically-intensive applications. But for everything from e-mail to web browsing to working in the Finder to iPhoto to iTunes, etc., the mini feels at least as fast, if not much faster (Finder!) than the Dual G5.
IX. Conclusion
If you’re still reading this, you’ve got an incredible amount of patience, interest in the mini, or you just jumped down here to get to the good stuff first. Whatever the reason, here are my concluding thoughts after a long, busy week working intently with the new Intel Core Duo mini—thoughts on both the mini itself, and the Intel transition. Because my fingers are nearly ground down to stumps, I’m going to present the conclusion as a bulleted list…
The final question is…would I buy one of these myself, and/or recommend it to friends? That’s a tougher question; it would really depend on who the user was and what their needs were.
For first-time Mac buyers, I don’t think the machine makes a lot of sense, unless they already have a keyboard, mouse, and monitor from a PC system. If you order a 1GB Core Duo, that’s $899 up front. Add a keyboard ($20), mouse ($10), and monitor ($150), and you’re up to $1079. For an extra $300, you could have an Intel-based iMac with a faster processor, twice the hard drive space, and an included iSight camera. The iMac has a better video card as well, and makes a better gaming machine. Unless budget was “absolutely no more than $1100,” I would probably try to convince a newcomer that the iMac was the better value proposition.
Yes, you can knock the mini’s price down by $200 by getting the Core Solo, but I’m not sure that newcomers will be as impressed by the performance of that machine, based on our review and lab tests… and it won’t play back HD video, so it wouldn’t work as well in the home entertainment center.
For those who already have the accessories, however, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the mini, especially the Core Duo. Even power users may be surprised at how well the mini does some things—just don’t expect it to be a Photoshop-in-Rosetta powerhouse! As an add-on system, it’s amazingly fast, very quiet, and can be placed almost anywhere. It’s also a great way to get acquainted with the Intel processors, and perhaps test the waters before diving in with a new high-end Intel tower later this year. And as a centerpiece in a home entertainment system, it would perform admirably.
And now, I really am out of things to say about both the Intel transition and the Core Duo mini. I hope you’ve found this information useful, and thanks for reading along!
[ Rob Griffiths is a senior editor at Macworld and runs MacOSXHints.com. ]