Windows Vista Ultimate on a Mac mini Core Duo with Boot Camp--How Fast Is It?
Today, we report on loading and running Vista on a 1.66GHz Mac mini Core Duo with 1GB RAM. We use a Dell 24" LCD display and a Microsoft Desktop for Mac 6000 wireless keyboard and mouse with it.
In general, the experience with our Mac mini Core Duo was the same as with our MacBook Pro. Windows Vista Ultimate ran very well. Of course, our external iSight didn't work nor did our attached FireWire external drives nor the Mac-specific keys on the Microsoft keyboard. iTunes 7.0 and QuickTime 7.1.3 and Adobe Reader 7.0.8 installed and seemed to run fine.
How fast is it? Vista has a built-in performance test suite. We ran it on our MacBook Pro and our Mac mini Core Duo. Here are the results:
|
Test
|
MacBook Pro
|
Mac mini C.D.
|
|
2.16GHz
|
1.66GHz
|
|
|
CPU (calcs/sec)
|
4.8
|
4.5
|
|
RAM (opns/sec)
|
4.8
|
4.5
|
|
Graphics (Aero Perf.)
|
4.1
|
3.3
|
|
3D Graphics (Perf.)
|
4.1
|
3.0
|
|
Hard Disk
|
4.9
|
4.5
|
Where the MacBook Pro scored nearly 5's (CPU, RAM and hard disk) the Mac mini Core Duo is no slouch either, scoring 4.5's, 90 percent of maximum. The graphics performance using Windows "new" graphics engine called Aero drops to 4.1 for the MacBook Pro with an ATI Mobility Radeon x1600 graphics card with 256MB of RAM. The Mac mini Core Duo with Intel's GMA 950 integrated graphics chip set with 64MB of RAM scores even lower at 3.3 but that's not bad. It drops another 10 percent to 3.0 for 3D graphics.
What is noticeable difference right away is that the Mac mini Core Duo's graphics system will not handle the transparency of Vista's Aero graphics where the MacBook Pro does superbly. Still, Vista looks good on the Mac mini with Aero's window shadows even without the transparency. Vista's Aero graphics is virtually identical in appearance to Mac OS X's window shadows and transparency.
Windows Vista should run very well on a MacBook since most of its hardware falls in between that of the Mac mini and MacBook Pro. It shares the Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics with the Mac mini Core Duo so we expect it to score similarly, perhaps slightly better due to a faster CPU.
In summary, once drivers for the Mac are available, Windows Vista will run very well on Intel-based Macs for those who must do it. Today, we have no need for Windows so we conducted these tests for those Mac users who are not so fortunate in their workplace. They will enjoy Vista more than XP and older versions of Windows. [Bill Fox]
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