The M2 Mac mini base has 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores.
The M2 Mac mini Pro base has 6 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores.
If you have an app that can use those extra cores, the M2 Mini Pro could be (for CPU tasks) perhaps 50% faster.
The GPU is 16 cores in the base Pro vs 10 in the normal M2 mini, so the Pro could be 60% faster if you have an app that can use all of those cores.
For most common apps that you as a user use for everyday things, the only thing that matters is single-threaded CPU speed, and at that, the M2 and M2 Pro are exactly the same speed.
I went to the Pro because:
1. It was immediately available
2. It had 2 more TB4 ports
3. I wanted the faster GPU with 60% more GPU cores (for the almost nonexistent MacOS games)
4. The price premium was $330 or so. Not happy, but it is what it is.
The additional 2 cores of CPU didn't really figure into it for me, as I almost never have jobs that overwhelm "even" "just" 4 CPU cores.
For code-compile, multimedia encoding, and some music creation tasks, particularly in Adobe and Apple professional apps, there is a significant gain to be had there. For Chrome, Edge, Safari, Mail, and GarageBand, probably not as much...
expiredsocalguy9 posted Feb 20, 2023 08:41 PM
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Item 1 of 5
expiredsocalguy9 posted Feb 20, 2023 08:41 PM
Costco Members: 512GB Apple Mac Mini w/ M2 Pro Chip
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(MB/sec)
256GB = 1500
512 = 3000
1TB = 6000
Pretty crummy, borderline criminal of apple to not advertise this little change and give all the youtube reviews early-access to the 1TB knowingly hiding this important fact upon launch.
The M2 Mac mini Pro base has 6 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores.
If you have an app that can use those extra cores, the machine could be (for CPU tasks) perhaps 50% faster.
The GPU is 16 cores in the base Pro vs 10 in the normal M2 mini, so it could be 60% faster if you have an app that can use all of those cores.
For most common apps that you as a user use for everyday things, the only thing that matters is single-threaded CPU speed, and at that, the M2 and M2 Pro are exactly the same speed.
I went to the Pro because:
1. It was immediately available
2. It had 2 more TB4 ports
3. I wanted the faster GPU with 60% more GPU cores (for the almost nonexistent MacOS games)
4. The price premium was $330 or so. Not happy, but it is what it is.
The additional 2 cores of CPU didn't really figure into it for me, as I almost never have jobs that overwhelm "even" "just" 4 CPU cores.
For code-compile, multimedia encoding, and some music creation tasks, particularly in Adobe and Apple professional apps, there is a significant gain to be had there. For Chrome, Edge, Safari, Mail, and GarageBand, probably not as much...
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It's wild to have a laptop that can run toe-to-toe with my high end Windows desktop, all while consuming less than 10% of the power, with a 10+ hour battery.
In macOS what you really can look at is the memory pressure graph. If it's frequently in the orange/red range, you don't have enough RAM for your needs. In that case, you're stuck without selling the computer and buying something with more RAM. If it's mostly green, you are good.
I did some scientific computing test runs on an M1 MacBook Air with 8 GB of RAM and never had major issues. It wasn't ideal for my needs (I'm running a different computer with 32 GB now) but was workable.
Normally I'd agree with this sentiment, but it'd be impossible to achieve the level of efficiency the M1 platform has with off-the-shelf components like SSD, RAM, etc, and Apple didn't sacrifice performance.
It's wild to have a laptop that can run toe-to-toe with my high end Windows desktop, all while consuming less than 10% of the power, with a 10+ hour battery.
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The M2 Mac mini Pro base has 6 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores.
If you have an app that can use those extra cores, the machine could be (for CPU tasks) perhaps 50% faster.
The GPU is 16 cores in the base Pro vs 10 in the normal M2 mini, so it could be 60% faster if you have an app that can use all of those cores.
For most common apps that you as a user use for everyday things, the only thing that matters is single-threaded CPU speed, and at that, the M2 and M2 Pro are exactly the same speed.
I went to the Pro because:
1. It was immediately available
2. It had 2 more TB4 ports
3. I wanted the faster GPU with 60% more GPU cores (for the almost nonexistent MacOS games)
4. The price premium was $330 or so. Not happy, but it is what it is.
The additional 2 cores of CPU didn't really figure into it for me, as I almost never have jobs that overwhelm "even" "just" 4 CPU cores.
For code-compile, multimedia encoding, and some music creation tasks, particularly in Adobe and Apple professional apps, there is a significant gain to be had there. For Chrome, Edge, Safari, Mail, and GarageBand, probably not as much...
(going to be using this mostly for coding as mentioned in the previous post)
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