700-800 dollars sounds like a lot to ask for a mac mini with a low end AMD radeon, but older mac minis from 2008 and 9 have integrated intel GPUs(400-500 dollars). So how does that stack up for unity3d performance for 2d development?
I think anything after 2009 would run things reasonably well for mobile development.
What makes you think that an integrated Intel GPU is better than the HD 6630M?
Pricing. While a Radeon HD in a mac mini performs a lot faster then integrated intel graphics, my question is does it handle well with less demanding 2D graphics.
The Intel GMA950 in my 2007 Mac mini plays Warcraft 3 perfectly well, for whatever that’s worth.
–Eric
I would agree. Check out the graphic card benchmarks and see what modern games it can run. I think its a low end card for todays standards of normal gaming. It would work well for casual and mobile dev though.
It stacks up well - though I would imagine that you’d probably want to be testing directly on an iOS device most of the time anyway, not your computer.
In fact, having a worse GPU could ultimately make your product run better, since you’d be optimizing things as much as possible.
Oh now I get your question! You are deciding between buying a new mac mini or buying a second hand one!
I think the $599 for the i5 model with 2.0GHz, 500GB HDD is pretty good. Not sure if its worth getting a core2 Duo off ebay thats a lot slower in comparison just to save $100.
For the $200 more you get quite a few goodies. +200Mhz, +2GB ram, + dedicated graphics card. I would probably get it.
You are better off getting the new one with i5 which is twice faster than Core 2 Duo generation.
Also, you get Thunderbolt interface, which would probably be the defacto standard replacing even USB3.
Haha firebolt VS usb 3.0 could be a long discussion. I still have my doubts about firebolts future. I have the feeling it might turn out a bit like firewire.
You do the comparison: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-2010/compare,2407.html?prod[4793]=on∏[4433]=on
Something related as an example:
Image rendering 3Ds max:
i5: 265s
Core 2 Duo: 719s
I think that speaks for itself.
Mac Mini base 2011 + 8GB RAM and you get the integrated Intel HD 3000 Graphics with 512 MB. Not bad for mobile devs until… 2017?
Firebolt? You meant Thunderbolt?
Well, Firewire was developed by Apple and its development largely driven by Apple so it failed due to it being a platform use more or less only on MAC.
Thunderbolt on the other hand was developed by Intel (previously known as “Light Peak”), and driven by Intel - and first adopted by Apple - because its Intel its more likely to be widely adopted and be fully crossplatform and accepted by the public than Apple. Not to mention its many advantages over USB 3.
I have my doubts that you know much about Thunderbolt, since you don’t even know what it is called.
The new Mac Minis are awesome computers, assuming you have your own peripherals.
I was obviously talking of Thunderbolt and not ‘firebolt’. It was a brain mix up of firewire and thunderbolt. You are pretty quick calling me an idiot for that.
Yes Thunderbolt might have its advantages over USB 3.0 but today it is a lot easier to buy a USB 3.0 hard disk than a thunderbolt one. I know thunderbolt technically opens ‘possibilities’ of having external graphic cards, but honestly… I believe it when I see it.
I don’t see where in my post I used that word. Trust me, if I thought you were one, I would have no qualms with typing it.
USB3 has drawbacks, like never be of any use if you intend to get a Mac cause apple will simply never add any support for it. You got FW800 and you got TB, why the fuck would they waste money on a controller, even more so cause even Intel postphoned support for USB3 on their controller for quite some time.
Its a nice standard but I doubt its gonna land, its a temporal step cause the actual next gen USB is still not signed and cause TB cable and controllers are too expensive, but its none to last like USB2 did