“There are enough results in the Geekbench Result Browser for last week’s new Mac models that I can now update the Mac Benchmark charts,” Primate Labs reports.
“I’ve compared the latest generation of Mac minis against the previous two generations of Mac Minis,” Primate Labs reports. “The Sandy Bridge processors in the new Mac mini provides a tremendous boost in performance: the quad-core Mac mini server is 2.3x faster than the previous Mac mini while the dual-core Mac minis are 1.6x to 1.9x faster. Another interesting thing is that the Mac mini server has roughly the same performance as the entry-level Mac Pro. While this will not hold true after the next Mac Pro update (which is overdue), it’s impressive to see Apple’s smallest computer provide comparable performance to Apple’s largest computer!”
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“I’ve compared the latest generation of MacBook Airs against not only the previous generations of MacBook Airs, but also against the current generation of MacBook Pros,” Primate Labs reports. “Like the Mac mini, the new Sandy Bridge processors provide a tremendous performance boost to the MacBook Air lineup: the 13-inch MacBook Air is 1.9x faster than the previous 13-inch MacBook Air, while the 11-inch MacBook Air is an incredible 2.6x faster. The Core i7-based MacBook Air is almost as fast as the Core i5-based MacBook Pro.”
Full benchmarks in the full article here.
Picked up a 13″, 4GB RAM, 256 GB Air to replace my Rev B.
Originally, I bought the Air ‘cos I had to carry a laptop all day, and considered it’s speed (or lack of) a trade off for its size and weight.
No more. The Air is silly fast and it’s easily my fav Mac ever.
Wow! Can anyone remember when Apple’s lowest-performing machines leapfrogged their highest-performers in a single iteration? Are Intel’s newest chips real knockouts this time, or is there something else behind this?
Hmmm..
Mac mini (server) sandy bridge (RUNNING LION) V’s base mac pro on older intel chipset (RUNNING SL)..
This might be what we might be looking at…
just got mini server & trying to get lion to run on it (don’t need/want server, got it for hardware)… how did you do it?
I would have thought you just shut down all of the services of Server, Wiki et al it becomes just like a standard Lion client.
Don’t forget Lion Server is just a Lion Client with an extra set of bits that cost $29.00.
If you absolutely want it to be a pure client, I think you hold down CMD+R whilst powering up and you get the Recovery menu.
Lion Server has all the capabilities of standard Lion – it just includes an extra app and a few extra tools to help with server administration, particularly remote administration.
I did the same as you – I wanted the 1.5 Tb of storage in the mini form factor as much as anything.
Just set up new mini server this morning.
I was surprised when MenuMeters revealed 8 CPUs.
Total overkill for my needs. Setup was a bit quirky, probably due to newness of Lion Server (not to mention I only half know what I’m doing), but it is running perfectly now.
Totally blows away the Core Duo mini it replaces (that part’s no surprise). It probably does blow away my 2008 Mac Pro, which still more than adequate.
Indeed, the future is here, and it comes in very small packages.
Those are 8 virtual cores. It is a quad-core with hyperthreading .
Running the new Mini Server now. It’s snappy, and oh so very quiet.
“Benchmarks: Apple’s new Mac mini and MacBook Air models speed past previous models”
Dammit, and here I had all my money bet on the new models being slower!
MacBook Air is testing better than the MacBook Pro. Which leads me to think Apple should have the pro using solid state running on the pci express channel (ala MacBook Air) to run the os and apps while having a possible removable drive using the serial ata controller (which is slower)
So what has happened to the MacPro rumors? They have gotten strangely quiet.
I bought a mac mini core 2 duo a few weeks back and was allowed to return it for the core i5. Night and day. The core 2 duo was slow and I have to reboot it every few hours, because it would not open programs (and that was with 8-gigs of RAM).
Not so with the i5, I put the same 8-gigs in this thing and it a superfast media server that I’ve never had to reboot, not even once!
“The core 2 duo was slow and I have to reboot it every few hours, because it would not open programs”
That’s a ridiculous statement. I have a Core 2 Duo mini that runs nonstop for months at a time without reboot. And in 3 years I’ve had exactly *one* kernal panic.