Will a Mac Mini make a big difference?

[re:dream]

This is one of those 'I want new hardware' threads

Currently my desktop machine is a 2.5 ghz PC machine, ca 2010 or so, Win 7, dual core. (I run an Edirol 101 soundcard, on firewire). My notebook computer is a Mac. For some time I have been planning to swop over the PC to a mac machine too, but have been in no rush.

But I am starting to come up against the performance limits of the PC, particularly since acquirin Zebra 2. All too easily I start getting pops and clicks when cranking the Zebra.

I have been shopping around, and am thinking of a Mac Mini, since I already have a nice big monitor & don't really want to spend all that money on an imac.

I can get a fairly decent price on a Mac Mini, quad core, i7, 1 TB hard drive, 2.3 ghz. And I am willing to spend the money if it will give me an appreciable performance improvement.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

[SensualPanda]

Yes! I own the late 2013 model with with max specs on the CPU and upgraded with 16GB of RAM. This setup can run high track/plugin counts and I have had very few issues with anything audio related. This is my primary studio computer.

Cheers,
Kamil

[Raffi2508]

Same here, great machine. Using it every day on heavy projects with loads of plugins.

To illustrate it's power. My mac mini i7 2.6ghz 16GB RAM outperforms my 2008 8-core Mac Pro.
How crazy is that

[TomViolenz]

Be careful as far as I know, no late 2013 model is out (it's actually late 2012 that is sold now) So an update is imminent!

So says Macrumors at least:
http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac_Mini

[re:dream]

Yep, but I don't want the update. It will be much more expensive, and it will run Mavericks, which for now seems to be causing hassles for Live 9.1

Thanks for the feedback. I have a birthday coming up, and itchy trigger fingers. I think I will set phasers on 'acquire'

[2pauluzz2]

Some more debate on the Mini here; viewtopic.php?f=1&t=200145

- So are you saying that this Mini is 2012, not 2013? http://store.apple.com/nl/buy-mac/mac-mini (I thought Mini was updated recently? Is MacRumors not up to date?)

(edit: this seems to cover my question: http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/mac/new- ... i-3472956/ - They expected an update in October last year"within a few weeks". )

-

and it will run Mavericks, which for now seems to be causing hassles for Live 9.1

. Care to explain this? I do not see a lot of complaints from Ableton users? Ableton also says it's Mavericks compatible?

[beats me]

I have a 27" iMac I am more than happy with but my plan going forward is to get a Mac Mini because it's a lot more cost effective to replace that than an iMac. I'll just get a snazzy monitor, Apple or not.

[beattorrent]

I'm also using a mac mini late 2012, but mine is only core i5, 8gb ram and 500gb HD, so far no problems encountered for a year and i haven't updated it to mavericks since i read a lot of issues regarding it.

[SensualPanda]

Be careful as far as I know, no late 2013 model is out (it's actually late 2012 that is sold now) So an update is imminent!

So says Macrumors at least:
http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac_Mini

Ah my mistake, I meant to write '2012'. Sorry for the confusion!

[login]

o course it will, new processor are always more powerfull, and moving from 2 cores to 4 is a big step.

[2pauluzz2]

@ The Finn: I was also told that i7 processors support hyper threading, which means that core's are counted double.. The software will treat your quad core as an octo (8) core. I'm not sure how this applies to Ableton though.

So Macrumors thought the new Mini's would come to the market in November 2013. Now they claim 'Haswell update coming soon'. I'd hate to spend the same amount of money on an older machine when an update is imminent, but on the other hand: all that matters for me is better performance and being able to continue working. The 2012 version might be sufficient.

[pencilrocket]

If your current setup is faster than 3615QM 2.30GHz then no. If not, yes.

[re:dream]

My current setup is dual-core. The chip you specify is quad-core, so I assume there will be a difference?