Just picked up a new Intel core 2 1.83 mini. Will I see a noticeable improvement by upgrading RAM with 2x2gb matched sticks and a 320g/7200rpm drive? How easy is it to reinstall the OS on a new drive? Can I use Time Machine to back it up on an external drive and reinstall?
View 1 RepliesI have an original mac pro with the stock 250GB drive (along with 2 500GB and 1 TB).
The OS is on the stock drive. If I replace it with the 640GB WD Caviar (on sale at OWC for $80 - [URL] will I see much of a performance improvement?
Can anyone tell me, point me to a link/chart that describes the performance boost the i5/7 chips get over a c2d chip? I've heard both: some say it's significant, some say not so much.
Which is it.
I run a late '08 15" UMBP. 2.53, 4 gigs of RAM.
Would upgrading to 6 gigs of RAM increase the performance of my machine when running VMware with Vista? I can't get any answers in any of the other threads.
I know about Bootcamp, that's not my question. I have another pc.
I use Windows for Lectora Publisher, which is an authoring software for online learning modules. It's basically interactive PowerPoint. It's not a super heavy software, but the content can get heavy with video, sound, animations, etc.
My Activity Monitor says I'm using nearly 4gigs when I open VMware and a few of my Mac apps, but don't actually load those apps with content: (Keynote, audacity, acorn, draw it, quicktime)
Would upgrading even help since I'll lose dual channel? I know nothing about how RAM benefits machines aside from higher numbers = good.
I am wanting to upgrade either my 17" Unibody MBP or my early 2008 2.8 Octo Mac Pro. I mainly am doing audio production with some video production. My MacBook pro has the stock 320 gb 5400 rpm drive in it and I can see some slight performance loss when using many applications/plugins in Pro Tools. My Mac Pro has the stock 2gb of ram that came in it and I see the same performance loss.
So, what do you think I would see the most gain with. Should I go with a 7200 rpm drive (I am thinking about the 500 gig Seagate but I have seen a lot of issues with the drive) or added ram for the Mac Pro? I don't think I could swing adding two 4 gig modules of ram so I would just go with adding 2x2gb sticks from OWC.
I'm looking at getting a Mac Pro (but will likely wait about 4 more weeks to see if a new one comes out...you never know!!) and am looking at my options. Basically what I want to know is, if I was to put a solid state drive (say 64GB) in for OS X, then stick say a couple of 1TB SATA drives for apps/docs, would there be a noticeable speed difference in the OS? Obviously docs and apps are still coming from a physical drive, so there wouldn't be an improvement from that perspective, but in general would the OS be faster? If so, would this be a very noticeable speed difference or minimal?
View 14 Replies View RelatedJust wondering what else, if anything else, I can upgrade on my system.I have an original 2006 launch model (2 x 2.66 Ghz Dual Core Xeon, 8GB 667 DDR2 RAM from Crucial, 4 x 1TB Western Digital RE3 7200RPM drives w/ 32MB Cache in a Software RAID)However, I still have the original NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT card in here and I've never been super-impressed nor disappointed.Should I replace it? I do mostly graphics work in Photoshop and writing code as a web-developer but I do occasional gaming so I'd see a benefit there.. I'm just wondering if it'd boost performance in the OS. Honestly, the computer runs fine... I would never replace it unless it had an issue. I'm just thinking about the future.
View 2 Replies View RelatedMy old Mini is in the next room to the wireless DSL modem. It gets one to three max bars, usually two, and it's just through one interior wall. I don't want to spend a bunch of money, I just want to get a little better reception in the next room. I have seen USB wifi antennas advertised. Would that do anything for me? My iBook G4 in the same spot gets full reception no problem.
View 5 Replies View RelatedUnder Tech specs for new 2009 Mac Pro:
"Turbo Boost dynamic performance (up to 3.33GHz on 8-core 2.93GHz system)"
As this is a feature of the chip I'm assuming this is true for the new Quad core as well. Is it? How can I find out? Any online reviews/overviews/etc. that looks at the new chips?
I'm having what I'd consider poor performance on the new 2ghz Mini in XP.I get non-responsiveness when moving large files across the network and it just is slow overall.Its slower than my previous 1.8ghz Mini.
The standard MS drivers for the SATA controller are installed even though I ran the Bootcamp install, does anyone else show the Nvidia SATA controller driver installed? That is usually the biggest cause on non-Intel chipsets, the default MS driver for the SATA controller...I was just going to install Forceware and see what happens but wondered what other people show in Device Manager.I get a lack of response from Remote Desktop, and after several hours of high network traffic it just stops responding to the network period.OSx I'm not sure about because I rarely use it but I did boot it up to do some surfing in Safari and found its response time to be slow.
How do get an image on a Samsung HD TV via HDMI adapter and cable?Currently get a static image of the desktop and then a grainy gray picture.
Info:
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
Should I go for a 2.26GHz + 4GB ram mac mini for photoshop, illustration works, some video editing and my 3d studio Max the most. Does 2.0 & 2.26Ghz really tell the different when I am doing the rendering on my 3d max?
View 24 Replies View RelatedI was thinking of upgrading but I am not sure it is worth the money for the difference of what I have and what I will gain out of the new OSX? Is there much of a difference that I would gain on performance with a Mini 2009 2 Ghz 4 GB Ram OSX Leopard 500 GB WD Blue 5400 RPM.
View 2 Replies View RelatedI am looking to get a mac mini. If I was to get the Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz with 2Gbs of RAM how would it perform with Parallels Desktop? share any thoughts or experiences with your own macs. Main thing, will it run smoothly?
View 3 Replies View RelatedIs it a reasonably smooth and fast experience?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI've noticed something rather subtle at first. My new mac mini just did not give me any faster feel comparing to old one, as matter of fact my old mini seamed faster and smoother. After comparing minimize/maximize animations while holding shift on old and new system system by side, I have noticed that new one gives off as having 2 times slower frame rate or slight flickering when doing minimize, maximize and magnify effects on dock. Also gave some shabby feel comparing to old one.
After I have run XBench of both systems and 2 restarts, it came as consistent result that new system scored 125+/-4 vs old one 280 on OpenGL test, more than 2 times slower! I expected upgrade to be upgrade, not downgrade! What could be issue, it is supposed to be 5 times faster. Is it not tuned up or quite not ready drivers. Will this issue be fixed by apple anytime soon? I love apple but I feel disappointed that my old system gives smother user experience than my new one.
After reading some of the threads here with people being very happy with their minis, I decided to head down to the Apple store and give it a go. I used each of the computers (a Mac mini, Mac Pro, and iMac) for about 10 minutes (which seems like forever when you are in a crowded retail store) doing things I would normally be doing at home. The iMac was fine, as expected. It handled just about everything with satisfactory speed, even thought it was the base 24" model with no fancy processors or graphics.
Video
The Mac Mini though was quite disappointing. To render a 1 minute video in iMovie it took around 4 minutes. The Mac Pro did the job on the same exact movie (sample file found on every display computer) in about 45 seconds. Another big difference was apparent, while the movies were rendering, the Mac Pro was completely responsive and I was able to load iPhoto, Pages, Numbers, Safari, and iTunes. Each opened up within seconds, and each interface was running smoothly as if nothing was happening in the background (granted for a short period as the movie finished rendering quickly).............
I am using an Apogee Duet with a late 09 Mac Mini, and have suffered through crappy graphics/general performance for some time. I really kinda shrugged this off until getting quite tired of it and did some searching around. After looking around I have discovered that I am not the only one who experiences this problem, and it has been pegged to core audio drivers. Which is odd.Disabling core audio through plists does indeed alleviate the issue it seems. Unplugging the Duet also alleviates this issue. When it is plugged in I see higher temperatures, slower overall performance and very choppy graphics performance, especially in expose and spaces. However this also affects the standard graphics in OSX.
View 3 Replies View RelatedFirst I wanted to upgrade my new mac mini with a Momentus XT but now I'm thinking about getting a "real" ssd + a FW800 drive for storage to have the huge speed boost of the ssd drive. Does anybody have this combination in his mini? What I want to know: How is the performance like of the external drive connected to FW800? Is it comparable to a standard internal hard drive?
View 11 Replies View RelatedI just got a brand new Mac Mini 2,26 Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2 gig RAM, and it's hooked up to my tv with a mini-DVI adapter. Snow Leopard installed. I noticed right away that the screen looks really sluggish, with screen tearing and laggy video performance. Playing videos in Plex for instance there is a lot of screen tear and I had to set the display to 720p to get it decent, and even then it's rough, even on SD videos! So I ran Xbench, and got a remarkable slow score on OpenGL; 43. My MacBook Pro running with the 9400M card got 97.
View 11 Replies View RelatedI need some advice on whether a hardware update will actually improve my video performance or not. Currently I am using a mac mini snow leopard server 2009 model hooked via mini display port to hdmi adapter to my lg 37 LED LCD TV. The mac mini has a intel x25 m 80 gb bootdrive.
2 external fw 800 drives used as video storage. Mostly I use boxee eyetv sat all controlled via appleremote - sofacontrol.
Altogether a great setup. With big mkv files in full hd the picture sometimes is choppy. Would a upgrade to the new 2010 mac mini server with direct hdmi port and 320M graphics actually improve the video quality - graphics performance? or should I stick to my current setup? (I bought the current server cheap from the uk)
If I've understood it correctly, it has to be 3 gbps. But does it has to be in a certain size, and are there other things I have to look out for before buying a couple of SSDs? The last thing I'd want to do is to buy something I can't use.
Info:
Mac Pro
Alright so I bought the Logitech V470 Bluetooth mouse for my MB. It's kind of small but I like it.
Anyways, I had the Logitech drivers and everything was going decent, but the mouse was still kind of laggy. Now after reading a thread on a Logitech mouse, everyone said Logitech's drivers were horrible. So I uninstalled everything that said Logitech Control Center. I didn't get everything though, because it still says Logitech Control Center connected whenever I connect my mouse. Is there anyway to get rid of it? I can't find anything about Logitech anywhere on my system.
Now to my second problem, the mouse pointer lags! I go and try to click the back button and it takes me a couple tries every now and then because it over shoots it and then lags back. It's really annoying.
Is there anything I can do about that?I might add that I'm using an external monitor.I'm thinking of just buying a new mouse, but that's another $50...
How do I go about arranging all folders by kind? Whenever I goto view options and select "use as defaults", it only applies to that folder...not to all folders!! I have Snow Leopard
View 3 Replies View Relatedold mac g4 (digital audio) working well this morning, then power cut, now mac is off and cant get it going.
pressing power on the front of the tower, the light behind the power button comes on but no chime or boot up or fan sound ..
could have an internal fuse gone?
My Mac is acting up I'm sure do to me trying to "clean" up for space. Is there any kind of backup or restore options available on Mac?
View 6 Replies View RelatedI do not think my 10.5.7 updated correctly. I have a unibody. When I click on my battery icon it does not show the different profiles. I updated my brothers MBP (Santa Rosa) and he DOES have the profiles in the task bar. The main problem here is that his installed with no problems. MINE, on the other hand, was installing, it freaked out, and I had to force restart it. When it restarted, I had 10.5.7. Is there a way to kind of uninstall it and then reinstall it?
View 11 Replies View RelatedI am wondering what kind of SSD is stock in the Rev A MBA and how much you could sell a used SSD for and also what are some good options to swap out that out for a 128GB SSD - I know the Runcore is out there - any other options?
View 1 Replies View RelatedJust wondering if the majority of people use some kind of security software on their Mac's. Either antivirus software or just using the firewall. There is no need to debate viruses/trojans and all that stuff. Just wondering if people use some kind of security software of if you just use your computers as is out of the box. I don't use any security software at this point, I just have my firewall turned on. I'm wondering if I'm in the minority or majority.
View 3 Replies View RelatedI imported a video in to iTunes, and it came in as a movie. It's an educational video, so I thought it would be nice to set its media type to iTunes U. I did that, then clicked iTunes U in my left hand pane, and the video did not appear. I created a smart playlist where media kind = iTunes U, and there it was. So I figured I'd change it to Podcast. I changed it, and it didn't show up under Podcasts, (but again does appear under smart playlist). So I figured I'd change the media kind back to Movie, but now that media kind is no longer available from the dropdown list! My only choices are Music, Podcast, iTunes U, Audiobook, Voice Memo.How can I change the media kind to movie so it appears in my movies?
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7)
