16GB M1 Mac Mini vs 192GB Mac Pro - Yes, it's FASTER.. By Max Tech

Yes, I know I should not be doing this comparison, but you know what this is my Mac pro, and this is my Mac mini, and we're going to put them head to head, and you know what you're going to be absolutely shocked in some of these tests. Hey guys its max before we jump in, I have to say thank you for helping us reach 500 000 subscribers before the end of the year. We absolutely appreciate it and for those of you guys that are not yet subscribed. Our next milestone is march, which is going to mark two years of us doing this channel. We want to hit 600k before then. So, if you want to see me, ditch the mac pro replace it for daily use with the Mac mini and report back, make sure to hit that subscribe button and help us reach our next goal.

Now, as you guys can see, there's a massive price difference between these two machines and a pretty big spec difference as well. My Mac mini is under a g compared to 15 000 for the mac pro now. Of course, not everything is apples to apples on this spec sheet, but if we go ahead and get rid of the afterburner which doesn't help in most of the tests we'll be looking at, and we bump down our ram to 48 gigs, which is pretty much comparable with 16 gigs of unified ram here, and we drop the SSD storage, the macro is still coming in right: around 10 000 about 10 times that of the Mac mini now. Yes, there is a reason why the mac pro costs this much money. The whole case, the design, the Leon CPUs, the ECC memory.

We have tons of PCI slots, so there's so much you can upgrade yourself. Mine also has eight thunderbolt 3 ports compared to just two on the Mac mini. I also have a HDMI just like the Mac mini does, and the Mac mini will support two external displays compared to the mac pro that supports four, maybe 6k displays. I also have two 10 gigabit Ethernet ports compared to just standard one gigabit Ethernet. So this is a professional machine with expensive professional parts, but what I want to know is how does it perform in most of the tasks that I use we're going to look at photo editing, video, editing, logic, x, code, some gaming performance, how much power these use, temperatures and more, let's start out by comparing the 12 core processor to the 8 core and the m1 for those cores are actually efficiency.

Cores, not performance cores, I'm going to start out with geek bench 5 and as far as the single core performance, the Mac mini, is 56 faster. The single core performance with the Mac mini and the other m1 max is just off the charts beating every other CPU out there, and you can actually tell day-to-day opening folders applications. Simple things are super quick on the Mac mini now as far as multi-core. This is where the mac pro shines, with a score that is 63 higher, and it's going to be interesting to see how this affects real world performance. Now, geek bench tests a wide variety of tasks, and most of them don't max out the CPU.

So, let's take a look at cine bench r23, which I haven't yet ran on the mac pro until doing this video and here the mac pro was 83 percent more powerful or got 83 higher score. Now, that is a pretty big difference. But honestly, I was expecting a bigger difference because the mac pro actually uses up to 193 watts compared to the new Mac mini, which only uses 13 watts, which is absolutely mind-blowing, and that's because it's not only an arm design which is efficient. It's also a 5 nanometer processor compared to much older, 14 nanometer design, and because of that it actually gets 594 points per watt compared to 73 points per watt. On the mac pro now.

As far as temperatures, I was actually shocked to see that the Mac mini is actually cooler as well. The old Mac mini the fan would run at full blast the intel 6 core, and it would be running at like 97 degrees Celsius. It was crazy. This new one actually maxed out at 72, and that is the hottest that the high performance cores got. The high efficiency cores are actually much cooler and the mac pro was at 85 under full load, and the other awesome thing is both of these fans were running at idle.

The slowest speeds they could, so the systems are silent and now, let's talk about graphics, my Mac pro has the Vega 2, with 32 gigabytes of memory. That's doubled in the whole system in the Mac mini which actually shares the 16 gig, with the CPU and graphics and with geek bench 5's metal test. The mac pro scores over 4 times the performance 22 000 compared to 98 000. Now, as far as gaming, I use GFX bench which is optimized for metal and that's all the games coming out on Mac and here, instead of over four times the performance, we actually got about two and a half times performance on the mac pro now, along with that, what is absolutely mind-blowing is that the GPU only uses 5.6 watts compared to the mac pro, which uses somewhere between 200 and 250 watts. I couldn't find any way to get an accurate readout like I did on the Mac mini, and that means that instead of getting about 14 frames per second per watt, it actually got one frame per second on the mac pro or even less than that.

So as far as efficiency, of course, these new macs are crazy, but of course, we're not using batteries on these, so it doesn't really matter like it does with the MacBook Air or the MacBook Pro. Now, let's talk about the SSDs. Both of these have ultra-fast ones. You can't upgrade the mac pro, but you have to buy apple's expensive SSDs, whereas the mini is built in now, just got the base storage option and taking a look at speeds as far as read they are very similar, but for write, speed. The mac pro is about 600 megabytes per second faster, getting further into performance.

Let's talk about web browsing, so I ran the speedometer 2.0 using safari and the Mac mini is actually 72 faster in web browsing. I definitely noticed the difference going between the mac pro to the iMacs, the new ones, the 2020s and then going to the m1 Mac mini everything is just faster. It's snappier, almost instant, where I do have to wait a little when I switch pages on the mac pro, not a big complaint, but it definitely is noticeable. And now, let's talk about audio production, we tested Logic Pro and here the Mac mini actually pulled off 90 tracks before it crashed. So its great performance, and it did that completely silent.

Now, the mac pro, on the other hand, actually could run 220 tracks, also completely silent. So as far as logic, the mac pro is definitely on another level. But with that said, the m1 is plenty for most people and now, let's talk about coding, we're testing the max tech benchmark that maxim Armenia made for us and our mac pro took 125 seconds to compile this project here, whereas the Mac mini it took 120 seconds. So it was actually five seconds faster. Even though you have way less ram, you have less performance, it is just incredibly optimized for Xcode and now, let's get into photo editing, I am using Lightroom classic.

And yes, that means that this program is not optimized for Apple Silicon, yet so we're using Rosetta to translate it to be able to run, and let's just start out by talking about the photo, editing experience and using both of these. I really can't tell a difference um as far as moving the sliders doing my standard adjustments now as far as brushes the Mac mini has a little of delay when you first start out, but the mac pro actually works the same exact way. It gets a little of lag at the start, and then it's perfectly smooth, so that is identical and then, as far as switching between these images for some reason, the Mac mini is slightly more responsive, slightly faster when I'm switching through, which really doesn't make sense. But as far as editing, both these do a great job, and you don't have to wait for photo editing applications to be optimized. It works great now as far as exporting I went ahead and exported 50 of these 42 megapixel images with a bunch of corrections and the mac pro absolutely smokes the Mac mini.

Now I was expecting that, because in our previous tests, we noticed that, with the six channel memory in the mac, pro is quite a bit faster than the 4 channel memory in the iMac Pro in dual channel memory in the regular iMac. Even though the IMAX performance of the CPU is very similar to the mac pro the 10 core model, so channel memory really makes a difference here. I also built one-to-one previews because a lot of you guys asked for that and once again, the mac pro is quite a bit faster and now, let's get into video editing something that we do a ton of here at max tech, I'm going to focus on final cut. If you want to know the results in premiere pro and da Vinci resolve as well I'll leave a link to my other channel in the video description, and I'll make a much more detailed video in the future. Now, let's jump into Bruce x, which tests out the graphics, card's performance, and here the mac pro is a little more than twice as powerful and that's interesting to see, because the actual metal performance in geek bench is more than four times as powerful.

So it looks like we're getting some optimization here in final cut now stabilizing on one minute: 4k file h.265, the Mac mini, is actually faster. It's getting close to being twice as fast, which is crazy, but that is because this new Apple Silicon m1 chip has really fast decoders much faster than the older Vega 2 graphics card, and that helps with this new kind of footage. That's coming out in most new cameras getting into 4k video editing, smoothness, the Mac mini, has no issues, even though I have a couple cuts applied. I have film grain. It is playing it back perfectly, just like the mac pro, and this is the kind of footage that most people work with now.

As far as exporting a five-minute project. The mac pro is faster by about 34 seconds, not really a big deal there. I did want to see if this was a GPU limitation, because obviously a graphics card is much slower in the Mac mini, so I took off all the effects and the times didn't change at all, meaning we're just limited by the encoders, not the graphics performance. I then switched over to a similar project, but using this new h.265 footage and playing back is no issue with both of these with color correction and the effects on here and then exporting it. The Mac mini was actually faster than the mac pro by five seconds because of the new decoders and with those new decoders.

We have to talk about canon 10 bit footage. This is from the canon r5 and my Mac pro. As you see it's just stuttering, it can't handle this footage, even though it's so powerful in terms of hardware moving over to the Mac mini it's playing this back perfectly smoothly. Now I also exported a five-minute project and the Mac mini exported it two and a half times faster. That is just crazy once again, because of those decoders.

So not only can you play it back perfectly, you can actually export it much faster as well. Now people with other macs, the new iMacs mac pros other systems. They are having to transcode this footage to proves or other formats before they can edit it smoothly, which is what I had to do before. So I did want to do a transcoding test. I transcoded 30 minutes of footage.

The mac pro took 30 minutes, but the Mac mini did the same task in 13 minutes. So, yes, it was about two and a half times faster once again, and that is just incredible as far as 4.5 k, red raw, the Mac mini, actually played it back, not perfectly, but close to that it is smooth enough to edit, of course, the mac pro has no issues in exporting this five-minute project. With film grain applied and cuts, the mac pro was two and a half times faster, so definitely a big noticeable difference and then stepping up to 8k. It actually doesn't play back this 8k perfectly. It plays back at 22 frames per second, so it's close, whereas the Mac mini plays back at three frames per second, it is horrible to look at now.

With that said, final cut has an option to go to better performance mode, and I don't like using this for 4k. It makes the footage look terrible, but for 8k it still looks good enough to edit and judge focus off of, and then the mac midi actually plays it back perfectly smoothly. It is really usable which is shocking. Now, as far as the exporting times I tested this to 8k proves and the mac pro was close to four times faster, just because this test, maxes out the CPU and maxes out the graphics card, uses a lot of ram and the mac pro obviously is a way more powerful system. So as far as 4k raw 8k raw, you are better off with the mac pro and along with that for people that are editing standard 4k.

For most of you guys out there, the Mac mini is more than good enough in final cut. So what is our verdict? Well, obviously, this is a bit of a silly comparison. These systems are way different, but with that said, for most video editors, the m1 is just fine in final cut, like I mentioned, for photo editors, this thing is works just as well in Lightroom, which is shocking and then also for Xcode. It beats out the mac pro for music production. If you're going really high-end, you still want a mac pro, but for everybody else, the Mac mini does a shockingly good job at this and overall it is just crazy how good it performs.

So, if you guys want to see me plug this in and then give you guys a one-week later comparison real world, what I noticed not just these tests that I ran here. Let me know down in the comments section I have links to both in the video description. Click that circle above, if you guys want to help us reach 600 000 before our two-year mark. That would be amazing. We have a couple other great videos over there.

This has been max, and I'll catch you in the next video.

Source : Max Tech