Apple Mac mini Review (Mid 2010)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 9, 2010 3:37 AM ESTThe 2010 Mac mini vs. the 2005 Power Mac G5
The Apple IIe was the first Apple I ever owned, and the Power Mac G5 was the first Mac I ever owned. While not my original Power Mac, I do still have an early 2005 model with a pair of 2.5GHz PowerPC 970FX processors, 4GB of DDR-400 memory and an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro video card (AGP 8X of course). Brand new, this system cost $2699 (not including the memory upgrade). Today you can find slower G5s on eBay or Craigslist for around $400, and faster dual dual-core models going for as much as $800. That’s an amazing resale value for a five year old computer based on a seven year old platform.
Like all PowerPC Macs, the G5 won’t run anything newer than OS X 10.5 (Leopard). I stopped using the G5 during 10.4 (Tiger) and hadn’t tried anything newer, until now.
Power Mac G5 (left) vs. Mac Pro (right)
I was curious to see where the performance of a high end G5 fit in today’s Mac lineup. The PowerPC 970FX, a 90nm version of the original 970, was a very impressive architecture. Unlike the Pentium 4, the 970 was a very shallow (9 stage integer pipe) and wide microprocessor (5-way instruction dispatch). Running at up to 2.7GHz, there was enough IPC on the table for the Power Mac G5 to at least remain competitive with the Core 2 Duo in the new Mac mini.
I popped in a 600GB VelociRaptor and was quickly reminded that I was using a 5 year old machine. Despite being a SATA drive, the G5 was very unhappy with the new VelociRaptor. I couldn’t get Leopard to install to the drive without errors. I went back to something more 2005: a 150GB Raptor.
This time around Leopard installed just fine. I updated the OS to 10.5.8 and went about installing applications. While many modern OS X applications are now Intel-only, there are a surprising number that will run on PowerPC systems. Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Apple’s Aperture 2, both OS X benchmark favorites of mine, fully support the Power Mac G5. They installed without a hitch.
I tried to level the playing field as much as reasonably possible. I ripped out all but 2GB of memory from the G5 system, but left the 3.5” HDD in place. Most G5s would probably have a slower spinning, but potentially faster overall drive by now. And there’s no reason to assume that a G5 owner would have a 2.5” 5400RPM laptop drive in their system so that’s just going to have to be an inherent advantage over the mini.
The OS differences are obvious as well. Leopard is the best the G5 will run, while Snow Leopard comes standard with the 2010 Mac mini. Snow Leopard is faster so that’s another mini advantage.
This isn’t the most fair comparison, but it does give you an idea of how much of an upgrade you’d see as a G5 user if you wanted to replace your aging machine with the most affordable Mac:
| Mac mini vs. Power Mac G5 | ||||||||
| Adobe Photoshop CS4 | Aperture 2 | Cinebench R10 (Single threaded) | Cinebench R10 (Multithreaded) | Quicktime Encode | ||||
| Apple Mac mini (Mid 2010) - Core 2 Duo 2.40GHz | 60.7 seconds | 1.78 photos per second | 2727 | 5021 | 54.6 fps | |||
| Apple Power Mac G5 (Early 2005) - PowerPC 970FX 2.5GHz x 2 | 54.8 seconds | 1.82 photos per second | 1871 | 3395 | 23.7 fps | |||
Photoshop performance surprised me. If both systems were outfitted with 2GB of memory, the dual 2.5GHz G5 was 11% faster than the Mac mini. Moving to 4GB however opened up a bottleneck for the mini’s 2.40GHz Core 2 Duo (42.1 seconds) while memory size didn’t seem to have any impact on the G5 indicating that the system is CPU bound at this point.
My Aperture import test is a lot closer since we are more I/O bound. The G5 system only holds a 2% advantage over the 2010 Mac mini but it is at least competitive.
Cinebench and Quicktime video encoding are two areas where the mini really pulls ahead. A lot of this is going to boil down to what you can do with a good amount of compiler and software optimization, but given that all applications going forward are targeted at x86 architectures on the Mac I’d say that these results are valid and representative of at least a good portion of OS X applications.
Both single and multithreaded performance is around 47% faster on the Mac mini in Cinebench. The Quicktime encoding frame rates are double, but part of that is due to the difference in applications - Quicktime X is Snow Leopard only, while Leopard ships with Quicktime 7.
With performance varying from similar to significantly worse than the 2010 Mac mini, the real advantage the newer Macs have over the older G5 is power consumption:
| Mac mini vs. Power Mac G5 | ||||||||
| Idle | Load | |||||||
| Apple Mac mini (Mid 2010) - Core 2 Duo 2.40GHz | 8W | 30W | ||||||
| Apple Power Mac G5 (Early 2005) - PowerPC 970FX 2.5GHz x 2 | 132W | 261W | ||||||
At idle the Mac mini draws 8 watts. The dual Power Mac G5? 132 watts. Under load the gap shrinks to only 8.7x - 261W for the Power Mac vs. 30W for the Mac mini. It’s not a fair comparison since the two systems were built five years apart and targeted at different markets, but it does put things in perspective.
While the move from a G5 to a Mac mini might not always turn out to be a huge increase in performance, you’ll at least see a tremendous drop in power consumption.
The pair of 90nm PowerPC 970FX CPUs also needed a lot more to cool. As a result, while our Mac mini measured 42.5dB(A) just 1.5” from the chassis (in a 40 dB(A) room), the Power Mac G5 ranged between 51 and 66 dB(A) depending on how fast the fans were spinning.
As soon as I tweeted that I was installing Leopard on an old G5, AT reader bacalou responding asking if I’d post some of my experiences. I’d say overall I was surprised by how well Leopard ran on the Power Mac. While the machine is 5 years old, it was very quick for its time, not to mention that most modern Macs focus on energy efficiency rather than balls out performance.
Leopard is snappy on the machine, particularly after a clean install. I had problems with the Radeon 9600 Pro and/or ATI’s drivers causing video corruption, but it was fairly limited (I’d get a corrupt box behind my mouse cursor at times).
Application performance was also surprisingly good. Photoshop was quick and honestly, other than the noise I couldn’t really tell that I was using a PowerPC Mac.
The bigger problems I’d say are application and hardware compatibility. Steam and Starcraft 2 won’t work on PowerPC and that’s the trend going forward. A few years ago maintaining backwards compatibility was key, but these days PowerPC Macs are all but forgotten.
Would I toss Leopard on an aging Power Mac G5? Probably. Although selling the thing and using the money towards more modern, power efficient hardware is probably a better bet.
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Casper42 - Monday, August 9, 2010 - link
I know you said you already sent it back, but I'm curious why you didn't toss in an 80GB Intel G2 SSD (or a SandForce as mentioned), upgrade the RAM to 4GB and run it through all the paces again?Sure it comes out to be a $1000 machine at that point, but it would have been nice to see what the total potential of the platform would be. And putting in the SSD would arguably reduce the power footprint slightly as well.
akatsuki - Monday, August 9, 2010 - link
I think Apple's SSD support is still a bit thin anyway. Once they add TRIM support, etc. I think it will be a much better time to benchmark.I can't imagine spending that kind of money on a Mini over an entry level Macbook or a dedicated HTPC device - especially since GoogleTV and AppleTV revisions are due soon and should revitalize that area.
cjs150 - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 - link
Would have hit reply but for some reason locks my machine upNo way would I use this as a server. Far better is to pick up an Atom board with a PCI-E slot (for a nice raid card), 4gb of memory and use Ebox (free) as the server software. Would cost 50% of the Mac mini price.
Having just built one for a home server it is simply and just works without fuss
thunng8 - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 - link
Some nice nostalgia with the Powermac G5 2.5Ghz. I enjoyed reading about it. I'm surprised at how well it holds up in the benchmarks. Just a minor nitpick, but the Dual 2.5Ghz model was released in mid-2004, not early 2005.aliasfox - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 - link
Agreed - would love to have seen some "vintage" games, just to see if an ancient midrange graphics card can hack it against a modern integrated chip. Throwing in an old Northwood (or was it Prescott by the end of 2004?) system just for comparison's sake would be amusing, too.Ancient's relative, too - I'm running (and occasionally gaming!) on an 8-yr old Power Mac (with a Radeon 9700pro) and do "general" stuff on a PowerBook that's nearly as old...
I think one of the reasons that Power Mac G5s hold their value so well is that they are the only machines (pre Mac Pro) that could hold multiple HDs internally, as well as be upgraded (for a price) to a relatively modern GPU - ATI 3xxxx series, nVidia 8xxxx series, I think.
As for the mini... as much as I like Apple's products, I can't get behind the pricing of the Mac mini - sure, it's a great piece of industrial design, and I'd love to have a stylish, small, nearly-silent box in my home theater set up, but having to drop $800 before getting 4GB of RAM means this is far, far out of its price range. $499-599, maybe $699 with BD and 4GB of RAM... too bad Apple doesn't believe in BD. Or RAM. Or internal 3.5" HDs...
_gescom_ - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 - link
Great machine, but definitely way too expensive at 760+ EUR.It should cost 450/500 EUR like the old one.
Why additional 250+ EUR? I know, we sheep, you bleep.
Setsunayaki - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 - link
This is actually worse than a Laptop in a many ways...The scope of computers have changed and the public has proven the majority of people view email, write papers, use internet....or listen to music. Very basic things...
I find that netbooks are way better...considering you can buy an always-on internet connection with them and their battery life is good. When one looks at basic usage, i know people can talk about performance and other things out there....
But how many people out there who own computers as basic users end up using 30 - 40% of the processor on a dual core or quad core? I am still sitting here on a Quad Core and unless I am gaming or doing something heavy, I don't use it at heavy load. Once one eliminates the need for heavy servers or Heavy Gaming altogether...computers lose their grace..
I remember I bought a Laptop in 2005 for $300 on sale. I know by now every laptop outperforms mine, but I don't do 3D gaming on the laptop and I run on Ubuntu Linux. I am not even at the point where my processor chokes and most of the time I don't even use 2GB of RAM on the laptop.
Sorry, but with so many better offerings which include a monitor, keyboard and built in mouse along with portability, this MAC-Mini would have been great 4 years ago, unfortunately too little, too late.
hummerchine - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 - link
Man, you guys are a tough bunch to please! I own over 20 computers right now, from a gaming PC me and my son built with top shelf parts, to 5 Dell PCs, to a Mac Pro running a 30 inch monitor, to my wonderful new MacBook Pro 17", to three Mac Minis (not the latest...and best...ones), and multiple other Macs and PCs. Jeez, for many uses the Mac Mini totally rocks! And for many uses, it is the best computer you can possibly buy.I just cannot get over the seething hatred of Apple I sense so often...usually from people who hate them so much that they never use any of their products, and thus really know nothing about what they are talking about.
I have not used the very latest Mac Mini, but since it's better than the two new ones I bought earlier this year that are awesome I'd have to guess it's awesome too!
Rayb - Wednesday, August 11, 2010 - link
I see you really bought into their marketing hype, line, hook and sinker.An ION1 box fully loaded can do exactly the same things, including BD playback wireless and remote for around $200 less. Do you see the irony now?
With people like you thinking this is cutting edge tech in a new shinny box, I rest my case.
aliasfox - Wednesday, August 11, 2010 - link
I for one don't hate it - I hate the price.Even without i3 or i5, it's a great box - but at $700 (or near $850 with a basic monitor, keyboard, and mouse), it's far, far too expensive - in fact, the 'on the road' price is so close to a white macbook (with screen, keyboard, trackpad, and battery), that one has to imagine that Apple doesn't really *want* the mini to sell in huge numbers.