[X4U] Negligible speed bumps...

[Neil]

On Mar 7, 2009, at 9:36 AM, Ken Johnson wrote:

> I'm a huge fan of the Mini, but I'm pretty sure that Apple could  
> have squeezed a little more horsepower in there - others have done  
> it (upgrade kits).


Yes, the new CPU is nearly identical to the one Apple introduced into  
the Mini a year and a half ago.  After this much time, I expected at  
least a 20% bump in CPU power.  That would have been 2.2 and 2.4GHz.   
I thought 2.33/2.66 was a possibility.   I wonder if OpenCL will give  
the Mini a major improvement in MP3/AAC/h.264 encoding speed when Snow  
Leopard is released.

On the positive side, the support for dual displays including dual- 
link DVI, plus FW800 and the fifth USB2 port are nice and not entirely  
expected.  Overall, this would have been a nice upgrade if it came six  
to ten months ago.

I still don't see why the new model is actually SLOWER than the old  
one in MP3 encoding, unless it is because of the smaller cache.