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375257-apple-mac-mini-2014-dimensions-and-weight

Apple tends to cycle at least some of its laptops through periodic updates, only it's not uncommon for desktop products to go longer in betwixt product cycles. The current Mac mini is a late-2014 model with a Haswell-based Core i5-4260U, Cadre i5-4278U, or a Cadre i5-4308U. An optional Core i7-4578U is besides available, though Many Mac mini fans still lament the 24-hour interval Apple canned the quad-core Core i7 version (last seen in a 2012 model).

According to Tim Melt, Apple'south CEO, the Mac mini isn't dead, information technology'southward simply resting an important product in Apple'south desktop lineup. In an email to a MacRumors reader, Tim Cook wrote:

I'g glad you love Mac mini. We love it too. Our customers have found so many artistic and interesting uses for Mac mini. While it is non time to share whatsoever details, we practice plan for Mac mini to be an important part of our product line going frontwards.

We've put together a chart comparing the CPUs available in the electric current Mac mini to Intel'south electric current offerings. The new chips we've included are:

Cadre i7-8650U: A new quad-core mobile chip with a 15W TDP.
Core i7-7660U: Intel'south fastest dual-core with a 15W TDP.

The other CPUs are the Haswell-era parts offered with the current Mac mini. Most are 28W parts.

Intel-CPU-Comp

Early benchmarks propose the quad-core 15W CPUs are still markedly faster than their dual-core cousins with higher base clocks. While the prices are loftier, go on in listen these are official prices — OEMs regularly receive bulk order discounts that make these fries much less expensive. The newer cores as well benefit from the modest performance improvements Skylake delivered and the college frequencies Kaby Lake (14nm+) and 8th generation mobile cores (14nm++) deliver.

Since graphics have changed significantly since Haswell, it'southward worth including those numbers, too.

Intel-Comparison-Graph2

The Intel integrated solutions on 8th-generation and 6th-generation fries are much faster than the older Haswell graphics solutions, and particularly the 7th-gen chip, which includes a 64MB EDRAM cache. DigitalTrends published a 2016 guide to Intel integrated performance, and while information technology doesn't include the very latest solutions, it definitely establishes a trend. We've linked the total article, but this graph is representative of performance trends:

BF4-Perf

DT compared desktop cores, and so the scaling won't be identical, just Intel's later graphics cores are clearly intrinsically faster than their Haswell counterparts. These new chips also support 4K displays, higher base clocks, and OpenGL four.4.

In brusque, at that place's a lot of functioning beingness left on the table at lower TDPs, and better, modernized features. Apple may not want to divulge hereafter product details, just when information technology does update the Mac mini information technology'due south going to deliver significantly improved functioning.