Mac mini to PC Hack 692
DiZASTiX writes "Kevin Rose, the ever so popular host of G4/TechTV's The Screen Savers, has managed to fit a PC inside the Mac mini. 'I've seen a ton of articles around the web lately comparing the Mac mini to the near full size desktop PC. What they fail to compare is the amount of computing power per square inch you get with the Mini. So, I decided to take it upon myself to create the fastest PC possible with the size constraints of the Mini's small form factor.' The article covers most everything he did and includes pictures."
MirrorDot link (Score:1, Informative)
Re:MirrorDot link (Score:4, Informative)
Re:MirrorDot link (Score:3, Informative)
That's not a link, that's a URL. this [mirrordot.org] is a link.
faster?!? (Score:5, Informative)
I have an Epia system; to me it feels pretty anemic for its clock speed in comparison to say a PII or better.
So.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Need a review (Score:5, Informative)
The video card is also a 4MB card. The Mac mini has a ATI Radeon 9200 with 32MB of RAM. Again, a huge difference.
While the Espresso is in the right ballgame for size, weight, etc, performance is not even close.
No CD/DVD (Score:3, Informative)
I'd say his project failed. The whole idea of such a device is to not have all sorts of other bricks (like external media) plugged in. Esp if it is to sit next to the nice 36" LCD TV (of course using DVI connector) and act as a media box.
Re:Apparently they never heard of the Cappuccino P (Score:3, Informative)
But, yes, you're right - the point of the mini is to get a nice reasonably powerful box that takes up no space, costs very little and runs OS X.
Re:Been there, done that, spent less (Score:2, Informative)
Mini - 6.5" (W) x 6.5"(D) x 2.0" (H)
Been there, done that, spent less? Don't think so...
The mini is smaller.
The mini is more than likely less noisy.
The mini comes standard with certain things you might need in a computer, such as:
- hard drive
- cd rom
- processor
- memory
- operating system
The base price of the Sumicom PC is cheaper, but I doubt you'd actually build that PC for less than the price of the mini (especially if you actually paid for Windows *gasp*; Linux excluded).
Not to mention the Logic device is just plain fugly.
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Re:Apparently they never heard of the Cappuccino P (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Celeron != G4 (Score:2, Informative)
CISC vs RISC
Re:Nah! Let's try something better... (Score:5, Informative)
The Lisa was a completely seperate thing, but a lot of ideas did get shared between the two groups.
Target audience (Score:4, Informative)
Good question, and thanks to a disaster with my PowerBook Saturday, I have my own input. Had you asked that earlier, I would have said the target audience was rather vague...perhaps people that wanted to test out the Mac, the Mac cultists, and a handfull of switchers. It's the price point that erases all the "well the Mac is too expensive" excuse that many people have.
After a nasty power issue with the laptop, I've had to take it in for repairs. Aw criminy...what to do? Can't really afford a new G5 or anything...ayeee! But wait...only $499 for the Mac Mini? That's a perfect solution. I can just use that temporarily, it's got a decent processor, is small...yeah...that's the ticket. And then I can use it as a database server when I get my PowerBook. Totally beats buying a G5 (even though I want one) or something used off of eBay.
Re:faster?!? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Need a review (Score:4, Informative)
The super small boxes that are via mini itx based are not selling like hot cakes. When you get to that size you are paying more for smaller less standard components and not equal performace. Plus there has been no large push by any mini itx system makers. Shuttles have been doing great cause the company has been pushing them very well, and they are something people want.
The mac mini will sell good though, it's cheap for what you get and has proper marketing behind it. And it runs OSX, which will be a huge bonus for a long time. Most people run windows, and if they are looking for something different it's going to be OSX cause it's just as easy for them, and plenty common and so forth. The selling point to macs is the OS not so much the hardware though the hardware helps.
Re:Celeron != G4 (Score:3, Informative)
x86 CPUs haven't been CISC since the mid 90s.
I like the analogy of a person physically moving 1,000 boxes from one side of the house to the other. The CISC person might be able to get from one side to other (and back) in 2 seconds, but each time he does he can only carry a single box with him, so it would take 2,000 seconds to move all boxes. Whereas the RISC person might take 5 seconds to make the same round-trip distance, but each time he can carry 20 boxes, so it takes a total of 250 seconds (5 seconds * 1000 boxes / 20 boxes-per-trip).
Your analogy is arse-about-face. The principle of RISC is to have small, basic operations and execute lots of them quickly. The principle of CISC is to have large, complex operations and get more work done from each one. In other words, CISC is the architecture that can carry 20 boxes at once and RISC is the architecture that can move 1 box twenty times in the same time period.
The real irony here is that most of the flagship processors for an architecture ostensibly designed for pumping up clockspeeds (RISC) don't actually have particularly high clock speeds.
Re:Celeron != G4 (Score:2, Informative)
I'm sorry but you're wrong. I have 2 computers:
1: Mac G4 1.33 GHz, 512 MB PC2700 RAM
2: AMD Athlon 3000+ (2.1 GHz), 1 GB PC3200 RAM
And both of them do raw MPEG-2 to Divx/XviD encoding at nearly the same rate. They also rip audio CDs to MP3s at nearly the same rate.
The G4 is a decent chip. The G5 is better however, because of its addressing and memory management (the two areas PC chips were still "winning" in). The only negative is the total GHz for PPC CPUs available is lower.
Re:Need a review (Score:3, Informative)
A Pentium M is at *least* as fast as a G4 clock-for-clock, and given the much higher bus speed and memory bandwidth, will spank it in general-purpose performance.
Mini comes with S-video adapter (Score:3, Informative)
CD ripping is I/O bound nowadays (Score:3, Informative)
They also rip audio CDs to MP3s at nearly the same rate.
I/O bound! I/O bound! No Compact Disc Digital Audio ripper will go much past 48x max (really about 36x over the entire surface of the disc) because a drive that spins the CD much faster than that will break it.
The only negative is the total GHz for PPC CPUs available is lower.
Which can translate to lower current drain and thus a lower electric bill.
Re:Nah! Let's try something better... (Score:3, Informative)
Second, it would have been McIntosh, but Jef Raskin changed the spelling to avoid a trademark issue with the McIntosh stereo people. It didn't work (because how words sound is more important than how they're spelled for trademark purposes), and they had to come to an agreement.
Nehemiah 1Ghz Processor? (Score:5, Informative)
Never mind the media encoding/decoding capabilities of the G4. It doesn't even come close in regular desktop use. Not even with Linux installed. To even do half what the G4 can do encoding/decoding wise, you'd have to add a PVR card (which won't fit in that case).
If the guy is doing this to build the "fastest PC possible with the size constraints of the Mini's small form factor," he should have left the G4 in there (unless PC=Intel/AMD in this case).
I'm all for hardware hacking, but I hate to see a perfectly good machine go to waste. I hope at least that he retrofitted in a non-destructive way so that he can put the original machine back together again. Some people just have too much money...
BTW, If I was a VIA executive, there's no way that I would loan out a Nehemiah for review so that it could be pitted against the G4. Nothin' but bad news there. Somebody outta get fired over that one!
Re:faster?!? (Score:3, Informative)
I dunno. I just saw the thing in person today for the first time. It's small, and its internal space would be about the same as a small notebook (not a subnotebook, as they usually rely on external CD-ROMs). And the smaller notebooks have not been speed demons, even in raw MHz.
Certainly none of the desktop-replacement Wintel laptops I've seen have that little volume--they're gargantuan. In fact, the only thing that would equal it is, well, a Mac laptop.
There may exist a faster laptop out there that comes with all the stuff the Mac Mini does but faster, but they're hardly ubiquitous.
Re:Nah! Let's try something better... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Need a review (Score:4, Informative)
Tiger will need 64MB VRAM for CI/CV to be crunched in the GPU. However, if the GPU does not have the requisite memory/power, Tiger will be smart enough to direct the CI/CV crunching to be done by the CPU (unlike Panther, which just sends the eye-candy to the GPU, regardless of whether or not the GPU can do it).
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Re:Nah! Let's try something better... (Score:3, Informative)