miniMacintel - now shipping!

Whoops! Sorry, deleted a comment by Tom by accident when I removed the redundant post. He said that he ordered a single core within an hour of it's release and the estimated ship date was March 1.

Holy crap. I'm almost (almost) sorry I already bought my G4 Mini. Of course now I can start the saving cycle again... Or allocate money from various inputs (accident payment, tax return, consulting proceeds) I'm still stunned they really put the Duo, the remote and digital audio out AND in and two RAM slots in the same case!

EDIT: Oh, wait! SATA HDD? It's probably still the 2.5", but that leaves more performance options, like running a SATA cable to the back in place of one of the USB ports, then using an external high performance 3.5" SATA drive directly.

Whoops! Sorry, deleted a comment by Tom by accident when I removed the redundant post. He said that he ordered a single core within an hour of it's release and the estimated ship date was March 1.

Actually, it just shipped. Or rather, the package data was "transmitted to FedEx".

I hope they use a parity bit. I'd hate for it to get mangled and have you get a tower or something.

...I've been good. honest.

Looks like a collector's item to me.

That happened when I ordered my iBook. It took another 72hrs for the package to *actually* get into FedEx's hands.

Cheers,

The Czar

... with the price? $599 & $799? Are the Intel processors that much more expensive?

Not that long ago (October) I bought a refurb 1.42GHz G4 mini for just over $400.

It arrived at 6:43 this afternoon. I'll try to get some pictures up tonight.

With full takeapart pics too, I trust? 8)

No full take-apart yet, but I just posted pics of how to access the RAM and HD. See the front page.

man it uses the intel GPU. i wish they went with ATI or nvidia. intel could never make a good GPU at all every one i seen sucked. They should have stayed with ATI or nvidia they support more stuff and have all around better proformance

But, the Intel Mini has Core Image support. Even the GPU in the G4 Minis didn't have it.

still the intel GPU uses yesterday's tech you will see if and when you try to play a game. I know cause my friends owned new PC's with a intel GPU in them that was supost to be new but it used old tech and didnt play worth crap. a old ATI or nvidia chip can easly out run and gun a intel GPU any day i call a intel GPU lackluster in every way. you can see for your self every intel GPU that they tryed to compete with another GUP maker say like ATI or nvidia in the same time frame the intel GPU was blown away by ATI and Nvidia GPU's. Intel could never make a competitive GPU

There's no denying the new mini's not a gamer's machine, but neither was the G4 version with its piddly 9200SE. That's not the intended market.

Intel, which incidentally is the leading graphics chip vendor - not ATI or nvidia - said of the 950 (released in May 2005, so I don't know how fair it is to compare it to their older GPU chips):

"Do you want to burden 90% of the market with 10% of the market's needs?" Katen Shah, a platform architect for Intel asked. "In general, we are not going after the discrete and high end where thermal (heat values), power and cost become real issues. Our per-unit (graphics processor) prices, for example, are now only $7."

So, the focus of the 950 is to be a cheap, Average Joe chip, that can efficently handle the OS interface (and the 950 will supposedly handle Vista's new graphics intensive interface), play video well, and not burden the system with excess heat or power requirements...all at $7 a pop.

I was a bit disappointed the wasn't more Chutzpah in the new mini's graphics, but after doing some reading, it seems like they made a good decision in matching the GPU with Apple's target demographic.

Intel, which incidentally is the leading graphics chip vendor - not ATI or nvidia - said of the 950 (released in May 2005, so I don't know how fair it is to compare it to their older GPU chips)

The 950 isn't much to crow about. Here's a set of benchmarks comparing it to the 900, the previous model:

http://www.behardware.com/art/imprimer/579/

The speed improvement relative to "last year's model" isn't much... maybe 20-30% or so, which reflects the greater clock core clock speed.

Not that I'm ripping on it, of course. It performs *almost* as well as the weakest ATI chipsets (X300, et all), and is bascially free. I just sort of have to laugh at Apple for taking swipes at it only to end up using it.

Ironically the G4 Mini would of been an excellent place to use a shared-memory video chipset. The G4 CPU, having only a single-clocked memory bus, basically wasted half the available DDR RAM bandwidth anyway.

--Peace

like i said they should have stayed with ATI and or Nvidia and avoided the Intel GPU like the flu. like i said you can out run a newer intel GPU with a older ATI or nvidia GPU. Still there is some people out there that cant afford the top of the line Intel Mac and would like to play current games but cant cause of a whack GPU.

The GPU works for Core Image and HD playback, what more could a Mac user want? The best games I ever play on Macs are either emulated 2d games or other kinds of less-than-intensive games. Any 'serious' Mac gamer is insane.

My main gripe with the intel Mini is the onboard video/shared system ram.. If the gpu didnt share system ram It would not bother me that much. But havbing the GPU steal system ram is a big nono in my book. even the ppc mini's 9200 didnt steal system ram..

With every PC I've had with Intel integrated graphics the first thing I would do is disable it and put in a nvidia or ati card.

Same with the onboard audio as well.

From what I've read the Mac Mini Intel Core Duo can do 1080p 24fps but I don't think the Core Solo will.

1080p at 24FPS is cause of the slow GPU if it had a up to date GPU and its own memory "AKA not sucking system resources" it would be faster. there is a few things the intel GPU cant do and it relys on the cpu to do it for the GPU and that is another reason i wont be buying a intel mini. yea its for a budget consumer but they could at least put a newer ATI or nvidia GPU in it with at least 128mb vram the ATI or nvidia GPU dont have to be top of the line but enuff will handle everything you throw at it which the intel cpu cant do even on some older games. IMHO they killed the intel mini by going with the stank ho intel GPU. they should have thought there are some consumers out there that cant affors $250-$500 more to buy a iMac and have to settel with the mini that wont play to much in games that is why ther buy computers if for there kids to use and in tern kids want to play games and the intel mac wont be up to much gaming

Interesting enough, but I don't consider 1080p ar 24 fps slow.

24fps is not some kind of performance limitation. It's the framerate at which most video is recorded. Macs are not, and have never been, computers suited for gaming. Your punctuation and grammar causes many of your posts to be very confusing to read, too; it would probably help your cause if there was some more time invested in it.

i dont know about you guys but isnt it strange that even though in general the ppc family was better at graohics render and calculations than intel chips? but even with that Macs are not "gaming" machines. its not that the hardware support isnt there, RISC chips tend to be better at graphics anyway its just that with apple's un-agressive maketing and high prices kinda killed gaming for the Mac platform.