Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Time for a new Mac

After many many years of using a Mac I purchased in 2011, it's finally time to upgrade to a new one. I just placed an order with Apple and I expect to have it in a week or two. The new computer will be much faster than the old one, but it will be missing a few I/O ports and the new version of macOS it runs will be pretty different.

Here's a table comparing the old and new systems.

Old Mac New Mac
Model Mac mini Server (Mid 2011) Mac Mini (2018)
CPU model 2nd Gen Intel Core i7 (2635QM) 8th Gen Intel Core i7 (8700B)
CPU speed 2.0 GHz (Turbo boost to 2.9 GHz) 3.2 GHz (Turbo boost up to 4.6 GHz)
CPU cores/threads 4 cores, 8 threads 6 cores, 12 threads
CPU cache 6 MB on-chip shared L3 12 MB on-chip shared L3
RAM 16 GB (maximum) 16 GB (expandable to 64 GB)
RAM speed PC-10600 (1333 MHz) DDR3 PC4-21300 (2666 MHz) DDR4
Storage Two 750 GB SATA hard drives (7200 RPM) 2 TB SSD (NVMe PXIe x4)
GPU Intel HD Graphics 3000 Intel UHD Graphics 630
Displays 2. One HDMI port. One Thunderbolt 2 port (1 or 2 displays) 3. One HDMI port. One Thunderbolt 3 port (1 or 2 displays)
Graphics memory Up to 384 MB (shared with main memory) Up to 1.5 GB (shared with main memory)
Maximum resolution 1920x1200 (HDMI) or 2560x1600 (Thunderbolt/DisplayPort) 4K (HDMI). 2 4K or 1 5K (Thunderbolt/DisplayPort)
Wi-Fi networking 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4) 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5)
Ethernet networking 1000BASE-T 1000BASE-T
Bluetooth 4.0 5.0
USB 2.0 (4 ports) 5.0 (2 ports) plus 5.1 gen 2 (4 ports) via Thunderbolt 3
FireWire 800 M (1 port) 800 M (via Thunderbolt adapter
Audio input Analog/optical None
Audio output Analog/optical, built-in speaker Analog
macOS version 10.12 (Sierra) 10.15 (Catalina)
Geekbench 5 benchmark 560 (single core), 1996 (multi-core) 1161 (single core), 5225 (multi-core)

I will write more about the experience when the new system arrives and I migrate all of my content to it.

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