[MacTechAspen]

In reply to:

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Do we actually know for certain that anything else besides Unreal Tournament got slower?

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I would count myself as a gamer, but I am not the UT type. So while I understand why it is used in the benchmarking, I think it is a bit misleading for the real world.
I have had literally dozens of clients over the last year that would benefit from an upgrade to a Mac Mini. Not one of them plays UT. I am not saying that no one does, I am sure many, many Mac users play UT, but the casual adult Mac user is more interested in iLife.
Unreal Tournament specifically taxes the graphics on a system. That is why it is used here, and why the new Minis did poorly. The lesson to be learned? The Mac Mini is not an ideal 3D gaming machine.
What does that have to do with iLife, email, and the Internet? Not a thing.
Is the Mini for everyone? Of course not. This does not mean, no matter what one reads on the boards, that the Mini is not for someone.
For the average user, who does not game, the graphic capability of the Mini is not a huge concern. Granted, they can't download 1080p trailers, but if the Mini is an upgrade for them, they couldn't before either.

[booga]

In reply to:

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For the average user, who does not game, the graphic capability of the Mini is not a huge concern.

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I think you mean "For the average Mac user". There's a reason why Apple's market share is so low, even among "home computers", and the gaming situation on Macs is a significant part of the equation.

[Machound]

"If you were thinking of buying a G4 Mini, buying the Intel is a no brainer."
Not so fast! Will the new Mini run my kids' Franklin the Turtle Goes to School under Classic? Absolutely not. Will it let me do simple Windows stuff in Virtual PC? Don't think so. Will it let me play classic 1990's games like Harry the Handsome Executive? No way!
This is not a "no brainer" situation. Some of us have a software investment.

[garyi]

Can I just ask how Macworld came to their average frame rates for Unreal?
I have the 20 inch iMac and did max out ram and GC and I am getting 88FPS on full res.
How come they can only eek out 50 FPS on the iMac 17 inch?
I just think that perhaps the amount of things Macworld tries to do all the time might mean their results are a little flaky.
Let me tell you about the mac mini. I have always owned Apple, as a result my father in law invested in a G5 powermac and the trimmings, my brother in law who could not afford an iMac but wanted to be part of it got a mac mini, and feels involved.
This product is important for apple, and I think the new iteration is a good move forward, but still the Graphics chip thing is a poor move IMO, apple need to remain separate from the herd.

[steve333]

I agree. Apple does not know how to make hardware that is worth the money on the low end. The iMac is still a good deal but if you don't want a monitor built in you are screwed.
The Intel Mac Mini is a POS. The Graphics are horrendous. How can a new computer get lower frames per second than an old model?
Integrated Graphics suck. They sucked before, they suck now, they will suck in the future.
Apple blew it big time with this Mini!

[jdb8167]

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Intels Conroe line of processors is not due until the third or fourth quarter of this year and until then, the Power Macs will remain PowerPC. Considering the last Power Mac upgrades were in October, we could very well see one last iteration of PowerPC-based professional Macs before the Power Macs go Intel; perhaps in the next month or two.

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If Apple did this, it would likely be a stealth update like Apple did with the G4 Mac mini. It would depend on IBM creating a faster G5 though and I haven't heard of anything like that. IBM made some noise about a low power G5 late last year but I doubt it was real. It was probably just some butt covering for PR reasons. Apple was never going to use a low power G5 so IBM could make any claim it wanted without worrying about someone calling them on it. But there has been no report of a 3 GHz G5 or even a 2.7 GHz dual core that I'm aware of.

[jdb8167]

In reply to:

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I want good performance out of my computer in general -- and this includes a minimum standard even for so-called entry level or low-end computers.

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But other low end computers are also using integrated video. I know because I looked. And the integrated video they are using isn't even as good as the GMA 950. While I wish Apple had put a real video card in the Mac mini, their competition doesn't do this either. So, for the low end, it is at worst a wash at this point in time with Apple nominally ahead because they have the better integrated video chipset. In 6 months it might become an issue though as the Dells and Acers try to compete.

[hayesk]

Wow, you guys are so full of it.
You claim this Mac mini is a "POS". But yet, you get a tiny case, full wireless, firewire, a remote. Even the integrated graphics are faster than the previous model for all but the most demanding 3D games. The new mini even plays HD video smoothly. Try that on the old mini.
You guys are latching on to one little spec and hyping it like it's the end of the world. The new mini is better than the old one in everything but 3D games. And guess what? Mini buyers aren't hard core 3D gamers.
Sure, you all would love the mini to be great at every computing task, but it's an entry-level computer. Entry level PCs aren't as good as this. They are slow, don't have wireless, don't have a remote, and come in big clunky plastic boxes. Show me an entry level PC as good as a mini.

[hayesk]

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Apple's market capitalization of 72 billion dollars due to their surge in stock price has very little to do with overall computer sales.

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Market cap is based on the investing public's perception of a company. Since the rise of day trading, market caps have had very little to do with the company's goals, purpose, or health of the company.
Trying to use market cap to justify Apple "being a music company" is ridiculous.

[steve333]

Who needs a remote? Put the modem back in a leave out the remote.
The integrated graphics is awful, the frame rates are lower than the previous model, it hogs system RAM and the CPU. It just stinks. It was a bad move on Apple's part. They are catching a lot of flak for it and deservedy so. I thin instead of trying to find ways to make it seem OK, time would be better spent telling Apple that it is not OK. JMHO.
Plus, they have no model in the $499 sweet spot anymore. Bad move all the way around with this one.

[jhmaughan]

B/c while we may all be up in arms about the graphics, i'd have to laugh if Macworld got bad results not b/c of the graphics but because they used the wrong program version to run the test.

[jamesbond007]

A mixed bag? According to the results, the Intel minis are better than the G4 minis in every case but the Unreal Tournament 2004 test. And this test is pretty irrelevant to me. (But not to the "integrated graphics" whiners. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif)
So, this just reinforced my belief that the new Intel minis are a great value.
Get over this integrated graphics issue, please. No matter how unhappy you are, the thing is done. And from my viewpoint it is not such a bad thing. I repeat, if you do not like them, then don't buy them, and stop whining.

[Peter Cohen]

In reply to:

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And guess what? Mini buyers aren't hard core 3D gamers.

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Maybe not "hard core" 3D gamers, but a lot of games, even casual ones, rely on OpenGL graphics acceleration.
As a matter of fact, considerably more "casual" games shipped last year on the Mac with OpenGL acceleration than "hardcore" games. So this performance test potentially shows how the Mac mini's graphics will perform on those, as well.

[Jon Seff]

In reply to:

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B/c while we may all be up in arms about the graphics, i'd have to laugh if Macworld got bad results not b/c of the graphics but because they used the wrong program version to run the test.

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Yes, the UT2004 we tested was the Universal version. There aren't that many 3D games that are Intel native, and we need ones that have repeatable demos that measure frame rates in order to offer some meaningful comparisons. We did run some tests on the Universal version of Nanosaur 2 on Friday afternoon (at Apple's suggestion) and found much better performance.