Graphics test results were a bit surprising, however. The 2.3GHz Core i5 Mac mini, with its integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000, wasn't as fast as the older 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo Mac mini and its integrated GeForce 320M graphics. The older mini was able to display 42 percent more frames per second in Call of Duty and 7.5 percent more frames per second in Cinebench OpenGL test. The 2.5GHz Core i5 Mac mini, with its discrete AMD Radeon HD 6630 graphics, showed a vast improvement; compared to the old 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo Mac mini, it was able to display nearly twice as many frames per second in Cinebench's OpenGL test, and 53 percent more frames per second in our Call of Duty tests.
Hard drive-intensive tests showed the new Mac minis to be faster than the older Mac mini. But since both new Mac minis use the same 5400-rpm 500GB hard drives, their results were similar to each other, and not that far off from the results of the 5400-rpm 320GB hard drive in the older Mac mini.
Comparing the new Mac minis to the entry-level ( Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice ), we see both of the new Mac minis outperforming the laptop in hard drive tests and iTunes MP3 encoding. The MacBook Pro's iMovie test results landed directly in-between the results of the two new Mac minis, while its Cinebench, Call of Duty and HandBrake results were nearly identical to that of the 2.3GHz Core i5 Mac mini.
When comparing the new Mac minis to a $1499 ( Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice ) with 4GB RAM, a 7200-rpm 1TB hard drive, and AMD Radeon HD 6770M discrete graphics (we are working on Lion test results with the entry-level $1199 ), the results show the iMac beating the new Mac minis in every test. On the iMac, duplicating the 2GB folder was about 30 percent faster, zipping the 4GB folder was 21 percent faster, and unzipping the compressed file was 43 percent faster than the new high-end Mac mini. Importing the Word document into Pages was 16 percent faster on the iMac than on the 2.5GHz Core i5 Mac mini, while importing a camera archive into iMovie was 34 percent faster. Exporting the iMovie project to the iTunes Mobile preset was 21 percent faster on the iMac than the new 2.5GHz Core i5 Mac mini, 38 percent faster in our HandBrake encode, and 33 percent faster in the Cinebench CPU test. Graphics tests also showed the iMac to be superior, with 48 percent higher frame rates in Call of Duty and nearly twice as many frames per second in Cinebench's OpenGL tests.
Check back soon for more tests including all of the models. And if you have suggestions for tests you'd like to see be included in Speedmark 7, we'd love to hear them.