Apple Introduces Intel Mac Mini

To follow up on jakebarnes question, will the 950 support Quartz Extreme? Seems like it would, since the GMA900 did.

Yes it supports QE and CI.

Using the core chips is what causing the price hike i think - apple could have used a Celeron D in there without any major heat issues and since PPW doesn't matter on a desktop it would have lowered the price. But they seem to be locked in to using cores - probably to get the hefty discount steve likes to think he's owed.

Did you mean the Celeron M? The D needs a pretty big fan (Prescott) so I don't think it could go in a mini.

What exactly is the core solo anyways?

Apple's strategy is quite good though. Introduce esthetically identical products to show a seemless transition and limit the devaluation the PPC versions of the products.

Using the core chips is what's causing the price hike i think - apple could have used a Celeron D in there without any major heat issues and since PPW doesn't matter on a desktop it would have lowered the price. But they seem to be locked in to using cores - probably to get the hefty discount steve likes to think he's owed.

I agree they sould have used another CPU, but PPW does matter on a small pc like this becouse of heat problems.

Core Duo soldered or socketed?

LOL apple store wont even load here.. news travels fast...

I have a Celeron D running without a fan at all albiet just below the case exhaust so their is airflow - no problems with heat though, so i think it could be done - it would just take some creative heatsink design. The G3 in my ibook ran hotter.

Anyway - so i guess that means ibooks in April?

Using the core chips is what's causing the price hike i think - apple could have used a Celeron D in there without any major heat issues and since PPW doesn't matter on a desktop it would have lowered the price. But they seem to be locked in to using cores - probably to get the hefty discount steve likes to think he's owed.

 

I can't wait to see a analysis of this baby to find out what Apple's profit margins are on it.

I'm not entirely sure about the Celeron D. I'm not sure on the Rosetta performance of the "Core" series of processors, but it absolutely stinks on the Celeron D. Lack of L2?

Universal/Intel apps have acceptable performace, but since we all know there are still many apps that don't have their universal equivalent ready, I'm not quite sure if the Celeron would have been the best decision at all.

Maybe a P4? How's the pricing compared to the Cores?

Check this test between several GPUs.

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/579-5/comp...lieu-gamme.html

The GMA950 is a low end gpu, i can't believe Apple is using this for the Mini.

EDIT > English Version http://www.behardware.com/articles/579-2/1...phic-cards.html

Everyone seems to be gryping about the price on these new Mini's. Everyone should keep in mind these Core Duo and Solo chips are brand new. I could easily see these selling as sub-$400 boxes by the third or maybe fourth quarter as intel ramps up production. And please I think we need to give a special note here as these new Mini's have hopefully overcome their PPC counterpart's greatest flaw...slow ass laptop hard drive. Didn't see the form factor anywhere, but these are SATA drives at least, I couldn't imagine anything slower the a 7200 RPM. Just by $75.24 (2 cents adjusted for Bush economy inflation).

Check this test between several GPUs.

 

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/579-5/comp...lieu-gamme.html

 

The GMA950 is a low end gpu, i can't believe Apple is using this for the Mini.

I have the GMA 950 chip on my current mobo, I am very happy with the performace. How many Mac folks are hardcore 3d gamers where they would need more power then the onboard GPU? Only real 3D game I have is X-Plane, and it runs great for me.

Read in the review :

GMA 900/950 : Intel i915G/i945G

This integrated core supports the DirectX9 and Shader 2.0. It includes 4 pixel shader pipelines and 4 ROPs but not any vertex shader pipelines. All geometric calculations must be made by the GPU. It doesn’t support FSAA. It is hard to know exactly how many transistors this core requires, probably 30 million.

One important detail is that the GMA 9x0 features 2 MAD units per pipeline just like the G70 or the GeForce 7800. This of course is the only thing they have in common! The GMA 9x0 pipelines are relatively short and don’t give the possibility of efficiently masking texture access latency. These accesses are shifted to mask their latency. This is very efficient except for complex textures accesses (which are more and more common) which result in a serious performance reduction.

The GMA 900, integrated in the i915G is clocked at 333 MHz as compared to 400 MHz for the i945G GMA 950. Intel integrated cores don’t have any local memory bandwidth and have to share the entire system memory bandwidth with the rest of the system.

The GMA950 is a low end gpu, i can't believe Apple is using this for the Mini.

Er, because the mini is a low end Mac? These aren't machines for hard core gamers - they are introductory level machines for PC switchers who want to get a taste of OS X and the iLife; they are cheap macs for schools and offices. At least they will finally support core image/video and they apparently have 2 RAM slots now too.

FWIW, the core duo AOpen miniPC is allegedly going to cost a touch under $1000.

And your point, VaiOSX? GMA950 graphics will still outperform what was in the previous Mac Mini, which wouldn't even support Core Image.

true... no true value on this one...

it'll become a deluxe product as did the iMac.

Any information about EFI vs. BIOS on this one yet? Will it be any easier to hack windows onto it?

My point is for a few more bucks, it would have been better to put a "real" gpu (e.g X1300 with the Avivo* support).

This Mini is not supposed to be a media center ?

*Avivo is a technology which let the ATI gpu decode the H264 (mpeg4) videos, and I know that the mini is not designed for hardcore gamers.

And for god sake, GPU doesn't only mean GAMES !

My conclusion is that INTEL gets rid of those GMA because they won't be supported for VISTA.

Mac mini's real name should be Intel mini.

So, does anyone else offer a Core Duo computer right now that isn't a laptop?

So, does anyone else offer a Core Duo computer right now that isn't a laptop?

Some models have been announced from different companies, most of them small media centers

Any information about EFI vs. BIOS on this one yet? Will it be any easier to hack windows onto it?

I would imagine it would be similar if not the same.

I think the new mac mini looks great, probably get one and return my pc to xp world with a sneaky os x partition just for the hacking fun...

i gotta get a mac mini to help about booting xp

I'm still waiting for Apple to release a intel core duo machine in a Tower configuration. Perhaps then we'll see some real upgradability, with room for a real graphics card... Plus, maybe they'll replace the dual processor G5 towers with dual core duo processors. Mmmmm 4 cores! (I seem to remember other rumors of intel making future versions of core duo type processors - but with 4 or more cores on one chip...) Maybe I'll hold out until I can buy a 64-core dual processor Apple G6...

Speaking about the Intel GMA950: is there something like a Intel GMA950 AGP videocard one can buy seperately without it being integrated on an Intel motherboard?

If so, could this be used on a AMD supporting motherboard???

I still think we have to wait for at least Conroe to see a PMac replacement. At least I'd think we're stuck until 946 and 965 chipsets are out.

Speaking about the Intel GMA950: is there something like a Intel GMA950 AGP videocard one can buy seperately without it being integrated on an Intel motherboard?

 

If so, could this be used on a AMD supporting motherboard???

Nope, integrated only.

It's a mini - what where you expecting in the graphics department?

I wasn't expecting a downgrade.

Thx for the quick reply, cyrana

So, what is the cheapest videocard I could buy (ebay) to install into my AMD based pc to get QE and CI?

I'm currently using 10.4.5 on my Centrino based HP widescreen laptop in VESA mode (ugly stretched 1024x768 desktop) so I'd like to get a decent picture on my 19" tft connected to my desktop pc