2014 MacBook Pro vs. M1 Mac Mini

[cborne88]

Hi,
I've got MBP mid 2014 retina 16gb and have it since new. Lately I've been running a new LG 4k 27" as a second monitor. And have noticed that sometimes when i run other browsers, youtube etc the fans start and it gets hot quick. On the new monitor I mainly use it with 6 charting browser pages on all the time and like I said, when I open other things on the mbp it gets really hot. I'm thinking of buying the new Mac Mini with 8GB memory to run my big monitor on its own but my question is, I like the16gb speed of my mbp, will the M1 match it, be better or worse. If anyone has experience of both I would be grateful for your input.

Thanks

 

[MacInWin]

Welcome to the forum. Your post is confusing in that 16GB is the RAM, not speed. As for which will be faster, the new M1 Mini will run rings around your 7 year old MBP.

Before you make a move, however, check what your software will do in Big Sur. Lots has changed since 2014.

 

[pigoo3]

...I like the16gb speed of my mbp, will the M1 match it, be better or worse. If anyone has experience of both I would be grateful for your input.

Welcome to Mac-Forums.

Regarding the question. Consider...your MacBook Pro is 7 years old. If it's too slow for you...could very be due to the CPU & GPU speed...not how much RAM is has. From what you mentioned (computing tasks)...it would probably work just as good with 8 GIG of RAM. Very likely not the anything to do with the 16 GIG of RAM.

Check out any of the reviews of the new M1 Mac-Mini. Most say the new M1 Mac-Mini is a real kick-butt computer (very fast). I'm guessing a new M1 Mac-Mini will be much faster than your 2014 MBP!

Nick

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Hi,
I've got MBP mid 2014 retina 16gb and have it since new. Lately I've been running a new LG 4k 27" as a second monitor. And have noticed that sometimes when i run other browsers, youtube etc the fans start and it gets hot quick. On the new monitor I mainly use it with 6 charting browser pages on all the time and like I said, when I open other things on the mbp it gets really hot. I'm thinking of buying the new Mac Mini with 8GB memory to run my big monitor on its own but my question is, I like the16gb speed of my mbp, will the M1 match it, be better or worse. If anyone has experience of both I would be grateful for your input.

The amount of RAM that you have installed in your Mac has extremely little to do with your Mac's speed. Generally, having additional RAM (more than 8GB) will only make a difference in repetitive tasks that have been cached (e.g. opening a Window, closing that Window, and then opening it again), or if you are running extremely RAM hungry apps such as 3D rendering, huge databases, movie editing, etc.

You can easily compare the relative speeds of two different models/years of Mac by having a look at Web sites where they have run benchmarking software on a bunch of different Macs and compared the results, such as:

Mac Benchmarks - Geekbench

All Apple Mac Benchmarks: EveryMac.com

Complete Mac benchmarks for G3, G4, G5 and Intel Macs with one click to EveryMac.com specs and all user-submitted Geekbench 2, 3, 4 and 5 results.

everymac.com

http://db.xbench.com/

 

[cborne88]

Welcome to the forum. Your post is confusing in that 16GB is the RAM, not speed. As for which will be faster, the new M1 Mini will run rings around your 7 year old MBP.

Before you make a move, however, check what your software will do in Big Sur. Lots has changed since 2014.

Welcome to the forum. Your post is confusing in that 16GB is the RAM, not speed. As for which will be faster, the new M1 Mini will run rings around your 7 year old MBP.

Before you make a move, however, check what your software will do in Big Sur. Lots has changed since 2014.

Thanks for you reply. Yeah I realise now my post is a bit confusing. I've already upgrading my MBP to Big Sur with no issues so far except for losing all the Office 2011 software I had which is now redundant.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

've already upgrading my MBP to Big Sur with no issues so far except for losing all the Office 2011 software I had which is now redundant.

If you haven't already replaced Microsoft Office, I highly recommend that you try:

FreeOffice (free)

FreeOffice: The best free alternative to Microsoft Office

FreeOffice, the best free alternative to Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) for Windows, Mac and Linux

www.freeoffice.com

FreeOffice is a really slick Office suite extremely similar to Microsoft Office. Excellent file compatibility with Microsoft format files (much better than, e.g. LibreOffice)! It may suit your needs perfectly, and you can't beat the price. If you don't like it, it's dead easy to uninstall.