On the other hand, the previous high-end model, with its discreet AMD Radeon HD 6630M graphics, was faster on GPU-intensive tests, like Portal 2 (9 percent more frames per second) and Cinebench OpenGL (24 percent more frames per second). MathematicaMark was 78 percent faster on the new system, Cinebench CPU tests took 53 percent less time to complete, and HandBrake was 24 percent faster than the old model. The older system took nearly three times as long to complete our Photoshop action script.Īs you’d expect, processor-intensive tests that can use all four cores (and eight virtual cores, thanks to the Core i7’s Hyper Threading technology) showed the new high-end Mac mini to be much faster than the 2011 high-end Mac mini with a dual-core 2.5GHz Core i5 processor. The 2012 Mac mini was 68 percent faster and finished the Cinebench CPU test in half the time of the 2010 model. We also looked at the performance differences between the new low-end model and a mid-2010 entry-level Mac mini with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor. The new Intel HD Graphics 4000 helped the 2012 low-end Mac mini beat last year’s system by 60 percent in the Cinebench OpenGL test and by 27 percent in Portal 2. In our testing, we found the new $599 Mac mini to be 31 percent faster overall than its predecessor.

Mac mini i7 quad core vs dual core