Primate Labs Blog

Yesterday, Apple updated its entire desktop lineup. This update had been a long time coming, especially since the Mac Pro hadn’t been updated since January 2008 and the Mac mini hadn’t been updated since August 2007!

However, a lot of people were disappointed with the updates, since it felt like an incremental update rather than a substantial upgrade. Now that Geekbench results are coming in for the new iMac and Mac mini, we can look at one aspect of the updated hardware — processor performance — and see if the upgrade is incremental or substantial.

Setup

I’ve gathered results for the latest iMacs and Mac minis and compared them against previous generations (note that results for some hardware configurations aren’t available yet; I’ll update the post when they are available). Results were collected from the Geekbench Result Browser for Macs with standard processors (i.e., no processor upgrades or overclocked processors). I’ve reported the average overall score for each model and processor combination.

If you’re unfamiliar with Geekbench and how it measures performance, a score of 1000 is the score a Power Mac G5 @ 1.6GHz would receive. Higher scores are better. Also, Geekbench 2 only measures processor and memory performance which is why models with the same processors but different video cards have roughly the same score.

iMac Benchmarks

Mac mini Benchmarks

Conclusions

Processor performance hasn’t increased substantially in the latest hardware; the performance increase seems to scale with processor speed. This isn’t surprising, since neither the iMac nor the Mac mini moved to a new processor architecture.

You might want to keep this in mind if you’re looking for a new Mac; you might be better off getting a discontinued (or refurbished) previous-generation Mac rather than one of the new Mac models.

Along with new iMacs, Apple announced (well, sort of announced) updated Mac minis last week. While the Mac mini updates are much more modest than the iMac updates, they’re still significant, and with the Mac mini’s move from the Core Duo to the Core 2 Duo, Apple’s current computer lineup is 64-bit (which is a first for a PC manufacturer, I believe).

Of course, how much of a performance improvement does the switch to Core 2 Duo processors bring to the Mac mini? To find out, I’ve compiled a comparison of the new Mac mini models against most of the previous Mac mini models (including the PowerPC-based Mac minis) using Geekbench 2 results from the Geekbench Result Browser.

Setup

• Mac mini (Mid 2007)

  • Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.00GHz
  • 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.4.10 (Build 8R3014)

• Mac mini (Mid 2007)

  • Intel Core 2 Duo @ 1.83GHz
  • 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.4.10 (Build 8R3014)

• Mac mini (Early 2006)

  • Intel Core Duo @ 1.83GHz
  • 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.4.10 (Build 8R2218)

• Mac mini (Early 2006)

  • Intel Core Duo @ 1.66GHz
  • 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.4.10 (Build 8R2218)

• Mac mini (Early 2006)

  • Intel Core Solo @ 1.50GHz
  • 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.4.10 (Build 8R2218)

• Mac mini

  • PowerPC G4 (7447A) @ 1.50GHz
  • 1.00 GB PC3200U-30330 DDR SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.4.10 (Build 8R218)

• Mac mini

  • PowerPC G4 (7447A) @ 1.42 GHz
  • 1.00 GB PC3200U-30330 DDR SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.4.10 (Build 8R218)

• Mac mini

  • PowerPC G4 (7447A) @ 1.25 GHz
  • 1.00 GB PC3200U-30330 DDR SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.4.10 (Build 8R218)

I’m reporting the baseline score, rather than the raw score, for each benchmark (where a score of 1000 is the score a Power Mac G5 1.6GHz would receive). Higher is better.

Results

Overall Performance

Integer Performance

Floating Point Performance

Memory Performance

Stream Performance

Conclusions

Moving from the Core Duo to the Core 2 Duo brings modest performance improvements without an increase in clock speed, and moving from 1.83GHz to 2.0GHz brings (unsurprisingly) another modest increase in performance. If you’re running a previous generation Mac mini I see no real reason to upgrade (unless, of course, you want to use 64-bit applications).

Of course, if you’re moving from a PowerPC (or Core Solo) Mac mini, you’ll notice a huge improvement in performance, not only from the improved Core 2 architecture, but also from the addition of an extra processing core.