New mini Mac - Second Life

Can someone who knows more about these things than me take a look at the specification of the newly-launched Mini Mac at http://www.apple.com/macmini/ and tell me whether it'll be good for running SL?

I've wanted to get rid of this bloody PC for ages, and now I'll be able to afford to ...

It looks possible to run SL on this machine - but I wouldn't expect stellar performance.

The ATI Radeon 9200 isn't a very new/top-of-the-line graphics card. It was a decent "budget card" at the end of 2003 - you can look on www.tomshardware.com to find some benchmarks, if you want concrete performance numbers. The RAM for both the system (256MB) and the vid-card (32MB) is a bit on the low side. The system RAM can be expanded; but the Video-card & its RAM appear to be hard-wired in. The processor is equivalent to a lower-end PowerBook G4. I would DEFINITELY spring for the $599 version, as the faster processor would undoubtedly make a noticeable difference.

Bottom line: Probably better than a $500 PC (if you already have a keyboard/mouse/monitor); but not as good as a medium-price PC (or Mac G5) with more RAM and a newer-generation Video-Card. The Radeon 9200 is really the "weak point" of the system - while its certainly a capable card for most things, its perfomance is going to be slower than the cards that have come out in the 2 years since it was introduced (for reference, a "new generation" of graphics chips comes out every 6 - 8 months). While the 9200 might work as a "budget 3d graphics card" now, it simply won't make the cut 1 or 2 years from now.

Take care,

--Noel "HB" Wade
(Tread Whiplash)

256MB / 32MB is rather low. I'd have expected at least 512 / 64 - RAM doesn't cost that much!

My current PC is an Intel Pentium 4, 2.6 Ghz with 512MB and a Geforce4 64MB card - and it's rubbish on SL! I was hoping the increased stability and efficiency of the Mac system over Windows would be enough to let me use SL without it looking like a slideshow.

Thanks for your help

C

Although a GeForce 4 is a little further behind technologically (in real "bare metal" technical speak) than a Radeon 9xxx series card, the actual performance benchmarks of the Radeon 9200 put it in the exact same ballpark as a low-to-mid-level GeForce4.

A note about processor speed: All Macs run on "slower" processors than Intel or Athlon "x86" chips. But they work in very different ways - so a "1.4 Ghz" Mac processor is NOT necessarily slower than a "1.4 Ghz" PC. Its a tough comparison, because each chip does certain things better and other things worse - but a (very) ROUGH comparison would be to multiply the Mac processor speed by about 1.5; for an equivalent PC processor speed (assuming same Video card & RAM between both).... however, this is a very un-scientific method.

Charlotte - save your money and go upgrade your machine: add another 512MB of RAM and buy a $200 - $300 video card from ATI or nVidia (I know, it takes a lot of research to avoid being ripped off, with all of the confusing product choices). You'll probably see a big boost, especially from replacing the video card with a newer one. Oh, and also try to make sure you shut down any and all other programs you're running on your machine when you play SL - especially ones that may be lurking in the "System Tray" down next to the Windows clock.

Take care,

--Noel "HB" Wade
(Tread Whiplash)

Thanks for that! It's very late here and it's all a bit much for me at present so I shall respond tomorrow

I may well pop down to the Apple Store on Regent Street and see what they have to say.

C

The minimum specs for SL on the Mac are:

G4 1GHz
512mb RAM
32mb ATI 8500 or nVidia GF2 or better

I have successfully ran versions of SL on an iBook (G4-800, 256, ATI 9200 32mb) and a Powerbook (G4-867, 640, GF4 32mb).

The Mac Mini is:
G4 1.25GHz or 1.42GHz
256mb RAM (upgradeable to 1gb)
32mb ATI 9200

It will not be spectacular, but it will run above tolerable I believe.

This is only my option. But is it based off of running sl on many different apple computers. iBook, power book 12"14"17" g4dual 500. Sl is a video game. It's a very intensive video game, worse it isn't nearly as optimized as some other games. If you want sl to run, you really want as much video memory as you can afford. Along with a decent bus speed, and ok processor. Having 512 to a gig of ram would be a plus.

Some times a good bus can make up for low amount of video ram. But honestly I would be very shocked if the mini can run sl with great performance. It only has 32 mb of video memory. Every computer I have tried that has had 32mb of video memory ran sl horrible. Sense the mini only has 32mb I'm going to say it's not going to performances all that great. Plus that specific card is not a raw power card. It's a slower card with re programable graphic units. Great for doing effects like real time shadows. But sl doesn't really use those tech.

I would recommend the iMac. It comes with 64mb of video memory. It may cost a little bit more. But it also include a flat screen monitor.

If you just want a computer to play sl. I would get a pc. Because you can get a buget pc, and toss in a a hundred into the video card and come out with 128 mb video card. And you can get a mother bord with a good bus speed. Witch is what you really want for video games.

I run SL on an G5, G4 imac and a powerbook, performance is very good indeed but not as amazing as it could be with a better graphic card on a PC. However I wouldnt ever consider running OS X on 256 MB! At the very least get 512 MB memory installed, and i would recommend the full 1gig for best performance it really is worth it.

Bump.

I'm interested in this box too. I question the need for any PC device to cost more than $500 these days. I'd also rather have a PC with NO fan, or at least a quiet fan. I already have enough space heaters with "Itel Inside" to suit me. I think I'm more concerned about it being an ATI card than anything else. Haven't all the ATIs been problematic for SL?

The iMacs are cute, but I just don't want a monitor-PC combo. To me, those might as well be laptops. On the other hand the full sized Apple G5s have something like 6 fans in them. I can just imagine the doors on my computer cabinet vibrating off. In terms of speed, I've been using SL on an old 800mHz Dell, so I bet even this thing will be an improvement. The real question I have is will I get screen corruption, hangs, or other types of unreliability.

AFAIK the ATI problem is to do with the driver on the PC and not the card per-se.
My powerbook works fine even though it has a rather aging ATI card.

Oh, that's great to hear. I'll almost certainly try one of these then. Soon as I hear that the first units didn't catch on fire or anything.

You can even get one for FREE now, though you have to jump through some hoops, of course. It's marketing, but I read through the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy at the site, and it looked good to me. You have to sign up for something (credit cards, Blockbusters new online rental program, etc) or buy something. I bought $45 worth of printer ink, since I needed it anyway. Here's the link.

If I can get one, I want to hook it up to the big screen HDTV I plan to get shortly. It would make a great media server and I could play SL on it too, wich would be neato on 50+ inches! hehehe

you would be very very surprised then, all the fans are low (although variable) speed and very quite compared to most PCs.



jester

That's from the same muppets who brought us Free Ipods.com - the cause of many a piece of messageboard spam.

Sell your friends personal information, fabulous prizes!

I looked into it, and found this Wired article about the company. Seems it's legit and not a pyramid scam. And if it's just giving out a URL, it's not selling other people's personal info. They can click or not as they wish. Looks like the site also encourages you to send out a form letter to all your friends (and entering in their emails to do so)... THAT would not be cool. Don't do that.

Gratis' free iPod marketing seems to have been working for the end users, and though the Mac mini isn't even out for a few more days (so they can't have given any away yet) I see no reason to think this isn't also legit. But enough of that. One mention is enough.

I just want one of these minis... Or a half dozen of them!

It's a pyramid scheme, but since the pyramid is so incredibly shallow, most people don't realize it.

The tower divided the computer into cooling zones. Each zone has it's own heat sensors controlling the speed of the fan. By divided the areas the hot power supply can not heat up the general tempter of the case. Allowing for less fan use in other zones. Apple chose to use large fans, witch allow the computer to push more air into the computer at low rotational speeds. Because the air dose not need to spread out, and has a straight line of site through the computer, there is less resistance.

It's real, but it's also a scam simultaneously. People do recieve the products, but the age old saying about a free lunch is true as well, you will get spam, telemarketing, junk mail all in large doses for both yourself, and anyone you give information about.

It's both shameless, and a pyramid scheme (classified as MLM). It is _not_ worth doing, and if anyone of my friends decides to let me in on this, I plan on visiting them with a cluebat personally.

-Adam

"Get a FREE Mini Mac!"

And anyway, isn't it a Mac mini?

Good point. Those signing up for that website will probably find themselves the proud owner of a small anorak.