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
Item 1 of 5
Item 1 of 5
expiredsocalguy9 posted Feb 20, 2023 08:41 PM
Costco Members: 512GB Apple Mac Mini w/ M2 Pro Chip
+ Free Shipping$1,250
$1,299
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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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https://www.costco.com/concierge.html
Similar language is mentioned in the product page under "warranty and services"
Have a MBP 16 Pro with 16GB and MBA M1 with 8GB, for a development machine (running a lot of heavy dev tools, DB, video/audio processing locally), 16GB is fine. for normal home user, 8GB is plenty enough.
(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.
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
(going to be using this mostly for coding as mentioned in the previous post)
Stick with the cores. Don't worry about 24GB; 16GB is plenty. Honestly, 8GB is plenty too. Take a few minutes and pore over this: https://github.com/devMEremenko/XcodeBenchmark
A few takeaways:
1. 1 SECOND difference between M2 8/256 and M2 16/512. With the "double the speed" faster SSD.
2. RAM doesn't clearly help with compiling.
3. More cores helps, but it doesn't scale perfectly. 50% more performance cores might be 20% faster. The base 8GB M2 8/256 isn't half bad, and destroys an (older) i9.
4. The M2 is a good bit faster than the M1 when compiling. In spite of having "slower" SSDs.
5. Hackintosh on new 13th gen Intel hardware is REALLY fast.
Used to be 3 years in total with Citi card, now its 2 years in total with Costco Concierge in addition to the 1 year manufacturer warranty.
Stick with the cores. Don't worry about 24GB; 16GB is plenty. Honestly, 8GB is plenty too. Take a few minutes and pore over this: https://github.com/devMEremenko/XcodeBenchmark
A few takeaways:
1. 1 SECOND difference between M2 8/256 and M2 16/512. With the "double the speed" faster SSD.
2. RAM doesn't clearly help with compiling.
3. More cores helps, but it doesn't scale perfectly. 50% more performance cores might be 20% faster. The base 8GB M2 8/256 isn't half bad, and destroys an (older) i9.
4. The M2 is a good bit faster than the M1 when compiling. In spite of having "slower" SSDs.
5. Hackintosh on new 13th gen Intel hardware is REALLY fast.
The air is snappy all day everyday. I am a power knowledge worker not a Xcode developer so take that for it's worth
(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.
Still like Costco, but it's not the same anymore.
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
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