Apple Mac Mini (1.25GHz) review

Application performance
Using an older, slower G4 processor, the Mac Mini couldn't keep pace with its G5 family members on our Photoshop benchmark. Also hurting its performance was its piddling allotment of memory: the Mac Mini ships with 256MB of RAM, while the iMac G5 and the Power Mac G5 models we tested had 512MB and 4GB respectively. The Mac Mini took 23 minutes, 1 second to complete our test of applying a variety of techniques to 15 images. The iMac G5 completed the same test in 8 minutes, 31 seconds, and the Power Mac breezed though the test in 3 minutes, 13 seconds -- more than seven times faster than the Mac Mini.

But that's to be expected; the Power Mac G5, for one, has two processors to the Mini's one -- each of which is clocked twice as fast -- and it has eight times the memory. For lengthy photo-editing sessions, you may grow frustrated with the Mini's modest specs. If your photo editing rarely goes beyond reducing red-eye, then the Mini can save you a bundle and still suit your needs. We do recommend, however, spending the additional £30 to upgrade the Mini's memory to 512MB.

The Mac Mini had a better showing on our iTunes test, taking just over 45 seconds to convert a 10 minute song (in AIFF) to MP3. It still trailed the iMac G5 and the Power Mac G5, but not by nearly as large a margin as our Photoshop test. And the Mini narrowly outpaced the similarly equipped eMac, which we attribute to the optimisations Apple has made to Mac OS X between versions X 10.3.3 and 10.3.7. Editor's note: since this review was written, Apple has started equipping the Mac Mini with Mac OS X 10.4, better known as Tiger.

Photoshop CS
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

(Time in minutes)

Power Mac G5 dual 2.5GHz (4,096MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz)

3.22

Apple iMac G5 (1.8GHz PowerPC G5, 512MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz)

8.52

Apple Mac Mini (1.25GHz PowerPC G4, 256MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz)

23.02

We use Adobe Photoshop to evaluate a system's performance as an integrated whole -- the CPU, the memory, the hard disk and the graphics card. We run an automated suite of operations that simultaneously stresses a variety of the machine's subsystems and simulates a real-world Web-production work flow. The suite includes launching the application; converting between colour spaces and bit depths; applying a variety of filters; working with layers, selection areas and alpha channels; and resizing and compressing images. We time how long it takes to run the suite on 15 files that range from 1.8MB to 49.2MB and in 8- and 16-bit colour.

iTunes
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

(Time in seconds)

Power Mac G5 dual 2.5GHz (4,096MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz)

17.9

Apple iMac G5 (1.8GHz PowerPC G5, 512MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz)

37.3

Apple Mac Mini (1.25GHz PowerPC G4, 256MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz)

45.2

Apple eMac (1.25GHz PowerPC G4, 256MB DDR SDRAM, 333MHz)

46.5

We use Apple iTunes as another indicator of a system's performance. In this test, we time how long it takes to convert a 107MB AIFF audio file to MP3.

Graphics and gaming performance
The Mac Mini produced a playable frame rate on our Quake III benchmark at just over 60fps, but before you get too excited, we should note that Quake III is an older game, and the test was run at a fairly low resolution of 1024x768. The Mini's 32MB ATI Radeon 9200 is a step up from an integrated graphics solution that borrows resources from main system memory, but it's still not a card you'd find in a high-end gaming system. Today's games, though not generally available for Macs, will prove too taxing for the Mini. Then again, any gamer shopping for a £339 computer couldn't expect to run the latest software. The Mini can handle running the apps found in iLife '05 -- for manipulating photos, music and movies -- which should keep most prospective Mini owners pleased and productive.

Quake III
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

(Frames per second)

Power Mac G5 dual 2.5GHz (ATI Radeon 9800)

319.1

Apple iMac G5 (Nvidia GeForce FX 5200)

72.2

Apple eMac G4 1.25GHz (ATI Radeon 9200)

68.8

Apple Mac Mini (ATI Radeon 9200)

60.7

To measure 3D gaming performance, we use Quake III Arena for OS X. Although Quake III is an older game, it is still widely used as an industry-standard tool.

System configurations:

Apple eMac
Mac OS X 10.3.3; 1.25GHz PowerPC G4; 256MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz; 32MB ATI Radeon 9200; 80GB 7,200rpm Ultra ATA/100

Apple iMac G5
Mac OS X 10.3.5; 1.8GHz PowerPC G5; 512MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 64MB Nvidia GeForce FX 5200; 80GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA

Apple Mac Mini
Mac OS X 10.3.7; 1.25GHz PowerPC G4; 256MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz; 32MB ATI Radeon 9200; 40GB 4,200rpm Ultra ATA/100

Apple Power Mac G5 dual 2.5GHz
Mac OS X 10.3.5; Dual 2.5GHz PowerPC G5; 4,096MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 256MB ATI Radeon 9800; 160GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA

Edited by Matthew Elliot
Additional editing by Nick Hide