Mac mini 2011 vs 2014- which should I go for?

[AVR2]

I gave my 2009 Mac mini to my daughter for her to do general school work and also her personal art stuff using Autodesk Sketchbook, but while it's fine for the school stuff, it's just way too underpowered for Sketchbook - it's too laggy to be useable.

So I'm looking at budget-priced upgrades and I've currently got a choice between:

2011 Mac mini, 8 GB, 2.5GHz i5
2014 Mac mini, 4 GB, 1.4GHz i5

They are both almost the same price, from (different) reputable Mac refurbishers. The 2014 is a little more expensive.

On paper, the 2011 would seem to be the obvious choice - more RAM, faster CPU, and slightly cheaper. But would I actually be better off going for the newer machine?

Sketchbook's stated system requirements for the Mac are 4GB RAM and a 2.4GHz CPU, but I'm wondering how much of a hard baseline that clock speed is.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Right off the bat, I would say eliminate the 2014 model just for how little RAM it has. That may be Sketchbooks's "minimum" requirements, but we're talking bare minimum. And if that Mac mini doesn't have an SSD in it, then that means it will perform even more poorly due to a high level of caching on an HDD. I wouldn't normally even advocate buying the 2011 just on the account of its age and you'd be locked into using High Sierra, which has been superseded by three new releases of macOS since then. That said, I have little doubt its the better performing of the two for your specific need and you know your budget better than I do.

 

[AVR2]

Well, I wouldn't be locked into High Sierra with the 2011, I could go to Catalina with a patcher (my 2009 is on Mojave).

I suppose my real question is how much difference the extra clock speed in the 2011 makes over the 2014 given that the architecture in the 2014 is newer and the GPU much more powerful.

Comparing Geekbench scores on Everymac, the 2014 1.4GHz performs slightly better than the 2011 2.5GHz in all of but two of them, where it's slightly worse.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Well, I wouldn't be locked into High Sierra with the 2011, I could go to Catalina with a patcher (my 2009 is on Mojave).

I suppose my real question is how much difference the extra clock speed in the 2011 makes over the 2014 given that the architecture in the 2014 is newer and the GPU much more powerful.

Comparing Geekbench scores on Everymac, the 2014 1.4GHz performs slightly better than the 2011 2.5GHz in all of but two of them, where it's slightly worse.

I would hazard a guess that the reduced RAM would be the bigger bottleneck between the two you are looking at. Ultimately, it's just a guess. If the 2014 has an SSD, or upgrading to an SSD is an option, it should be a lot more acceptable. As it is, if you plan to go to Catalina or later, our standing advice is to plan on using an SSD as your boot device.

 

[chscag]

Here's something to think about: The 2014 Mac Mini has its memory soldered to the logic board and can not be upgraded, whereas the 2011 will be able to be upgraded.

My choice would be the 2011 model.

Actually my real choice would be a M1 Mac Mini. A real powerhouse! But more $$$.