jbltecnicspro
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Aug 18, 2006
- Messages
- 9,543
Alright, so here's the deal. I'm about to pull the trigger on a computer. My budget is $800, and I'm caught in between purchasing a Mac Mini or building a PC. The Mac Mini is a refurbished one on Apple's Mac Store - and it's $699. The PC configuration would cost me $729 (home built). When it comes to performance and such, the PC would win hands down on everything. BUT - and here's the big but... I'm a student programmer who wants to develop software, and I own an iPhone 3GS (and its iPod Touch counterpart).
I would like to try my hand at developing for iOS. And obviously, Windows PC's just cannot do it (at least not natively). There are a couple of things that scare me a little about the Mac Mini's performance. So I'm hoping that some of you Mac guys can help quiet my anxieties.
1. Dual-Core i5. I know that these are pretty darn quick, and coming from an ancient Pentium 4, they should scream. However, how long can I expect this CPU to last?
2. Only 4GB of RAM (on the refurb). Is upgrading the RAM as easy as Apple says it is?
3. Radeon HD6630m. How powerful is this card? The only games I have left are Doom 3, Far Cry (the first one, lol), FEAR, and other games circa 2006. Halo PC is a perrenial favorite, and it's still played a lot by online gamers. I would LOVE to play Skyrim on it, but I don't think it has the power nor the memory. Thankfully, 256MB videocards were plenty back in the day.
4. 5400rpm Hard Drive... Seriously? I think that the 750GB hard drive with a 7200rpm speed as an upgrade is a slap in the face. Why in the world wouldn't Apple give us a 7200rpm as a stock unit? My question is this - how much of a dog is this hard drive? I plan on using a Windows partition on it, so that I can do my C++ assignments.
Other than that, it doesn't look like that bad of a machine. My major gripe about the computer is that I'm going to eventually have to buy more stuff for it. Buy a faster hard drive, buy more RAM, buy another keyboard (yeah, yeah - I'm still using a PS/2 keyboard, lol), and buy a stupid VGA adapter. When it's all said and done, I'd have a computer that costs closer to $1000... Just for iOS programming?
Just for reference, the PC I'm thinking of building has:
Intel Quad-core i5, 8GB of RAM, Radeon HD7750, 64GB SSD (I have a 320 GB external which would store all of my music and other files), Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS, Windows Embedded Standard 7 (Windows 7 in a component form), and all said and done would cost $730.
So... Any help and dialogue would be awesome. Thanks for reading through my marathon post.
I would like to try my hand at developing for iOS. And obviously, Windows PC's just cannot do it (at least not natively). There are a couple of things that scare me a little about the Mac Mini's performance. So I'm hoping that some of you Mac guys can help quiet my anxieties.
1. Dual-Core i5. I know that these are pretty darn quick, and coming from an ancient Pentium 4, they should scream. However, how long can I expect this CPU to last?
2. Only 4GB of RAM (on the refurb). Is upgrading the RAM as easy as Apple says it is?
3. Radeon HD6630m. How powerful is this card? The only games I have left are Doom 3, Far Cry (the first one, lol), FEAR, and other games circa 2006. Halo PC is a perrenial favorite, and it's still played a lot by online gamers. I would LOVE to play Skyrim on it, but I don't think it has the power nor the memory. Thankfully, 256MB videocards were plenty back in the day.
4. 5400rpm Hard Drive... Seriously? I think that the 750GB hard drive with a 7200rpm speed as an upgrade is a slap in the face. Why in the world wouldn't Apple give us a 7200rpm as a stock unit? My question is this - how much of a dog is this hard drive? I plan on using a Windows partition on it, so that I can do my C++ assignments.
Other than that, it doesn't look like that bad of a machine. My major gripe about the computer is that I'm going to eventually have to buy more stuff for it. Buy a faster hard drive, buy more RAM, buy another keyboard (yeah, yeah - I'm still using a PS/2 keyboard, lol), and buy a stupid VGA adapter. When it's all said and done, I'd have a computer that costs closer to $1000... Just for iOS programming?
Just for reference, the PC I'm thinking of building has:
Intel Quad-core i5, 8GB of RAM, Radeon HD7750, 64GB SSD (I have a 320 GB external which would store all of my music and other files), Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS, Windows Embedded Standard 7 (Windows 7 in a component form), and all said and done would cost $730.
So... Any help and dialogue would be awesome. Thanks for reading through my marathon post.