Thanks to Intel’s quad-core i7, these Late 2012 Minis have the same level of power as the 8-core Xeon-based Early 2008 Mac Pro. And at the top of the Mac mini line, the 2.6 GHz Late 2012 falls between the performance of the 8-core 3.0 GHz and 3.2 GHz Early 2008 Mac Pros. The 2.3 GHz Late 2012 Mini edges past the powerful 8-core 3.0 GHz Early 2007 Mac Pro and the 2.8 GHz Early 2008 Mac Pro. Even the 2.0 GHz Mid 2011 Mac mini has more raw power than the 3.0 GHz dual-core Late 2014 Mini – and it’s in the same Geekbench multicore range as the 2.93 GHz 4-core Early 2009 Mac Pro and the 2.8 GHz 4-core Mid 2010 Mac Pro. If you need a Mac mini that you can push to the limit, perhaps as a server or a video production machine, the 4-core i7 is the way to go. The big improvement came with the jump to Intel’s new “Core i” architecture – the least powerful of these scores 50% higher on the single-core test and a whopping 80% higher when using both cores! Core i5 and i7 Models

Although there were some improvements from the Merom version used in 2007 and the Penryn used in 20, they are not very significant as far as raw processing power. The most powerful Core 2 Duo model scores 46-47% higher than the least powerful, precisely what the difference in CPU speed would predict. CPUs are dual-core unless noted as 4-core. The number after the slash is the multicore score, which shows how much total power the CPU has. The number before the slash is for a single core, and many apps only use one core, so that will give you a general feeling for relative power. We’re going to start with 64-bit Geekbench scores, beginning our list with the least powerful Minis and working our way toward the most powerful ones. We have had 64-bit software since the release of OS X 10.6 seven years ago, and that has only increased since Apple began shipping 64-bit only versions of the Mac OS. In this overview, we will be looking at 64-bit single core and multicore performance, ignoring 32-bit results. Across the board, 64-bit operation provides more processing power than 32-bit operation. The 32-bit multi-core score for the same model is 1870, and the 64-bit score is 2032 – 8.6% higher. The single-core 64-bit score is 1152, an improvement just over 7.7%. Better Performanceįor instance, the 2.0 GHz Mid 2007 model has a single-core 32-bit Geekbench score of 1069. But to truly unleash these models, you want a full fledged 64-bit operating system with as many 64-bit apps as possible. That’s our starting point, since all versions of OS X for the past five years have been 64-bit. The entry level model for running Lion was the Mid 2007 Mac mini, which shipped with either a 1.83 GHz or 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo Merom CPU. Where Snow Leopard supported Macs with 32-bit and 64-bit Intel processors, Lion required an Intel Core 2 Duo or newer, officially leaving behind the Early 2006 and Late 2006 Minis.

It wasn’t until OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard arrived two years later – in August 2009 – that we had the first version of OS X for Intel Macs with 64-bit support.Īnd then in roared OS X 10.7 Lion, the first 64-bit only version of the Mac OS, in July 2011. Apple released the first Mac mini with a 64-bit CPU in August 2007, although the Mac OS that shipped with it was a 32-bit operating system, whether OS X 10.4 Tiger or 10.5 Leopard.

Geekbench 4 scores macbook pro 2012 i5