New MacMini M2 announced by Apple.

[dcerezo]

Apple today announced the new Mac mini with an M2 chip. At hundreds of dollars cheaper than the Mac Studio (with older M1 chips), I'm wondering in ArchiCAD would work on the Mini. I'm not a hardware expert by any stretch, but does anyone here have any thoughts on this?

Thanks!

[DanCoyle]

Hi, I’m following this thread with interest as looking to replace my aging/dying iMac (2013) with a cost effective upgrade - it is a second machine I use at home for remote working, so doesn’t need to be the most powerful/fastest - just to be able to run AC26 smoothly (medium sized residential projects) and occasionally TwinMotion, web-browser, word etc.

I’m looking at either a maxed out Mac mini M2 Pro, (32 GB Ram, 12-core CPU, 19-core GPU, 512GB SSD) vs. Base M1 Studio (32 GB Ram, 10-core CPU, 24-core GPU, 512GB SSD). Would be almost identical costs for both options (€2,350 euro). Mac mini has advantage of being more portable, Studio has more ports / screen connection options / Ethernet 10GB etc. - but I don’t really have any need for these.

My question is given equal costs of two options which do you think is better for ArchiCAD (and occasional Twin Motion rendering) or is there no real difference? Mini has slightly more CPU, Studio better GPU.

Or are both machines overkill for my needs - would even just a Mini M2 with extra memory (24GB Ram) suffice? Thanks for any advice.

Dan Coyle

Archicad 26 User

[Rex Maximilian]

I don't think either is overkill. I would most likely go with the newer chip in your case with all things being the same. I guess the real question is does M2Pro=M1Max?

I have the latter on a laptop and am very happy with both ArchiCAD and Twinmotion performance on it.

[DanCoyle]

Thanks for advice on this.

As an update - in the end I went with the base model Mac mini M2 (8 core CPU, 10-core GPU) with (mid-level) upgrade of storage (512GB SSD), & RAM (24GB). It's a secondary machine I have at home for remote working, so I decided not worth the extra €1-2k for a maxed out Mini Pro or Mac M1 Studio.

Haven't tried TwinMotion yet, but so far am very happy with performance running ArchiCAD 26 (Native Apple Mac Silicon version). It seems very smooth working with a mid-size residential project of moderate complexity. Certainly just as good as my maxed out iMac (2020)

Dan Coyle, Dublin, Ireland    www.danielcoylearchitects.ie   

ArchiCAD 26 Solo (user since v.15, 2011)
iMac 27" Intel i7 (2020) 64GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 16GB Radeon Pro 5700 GPU

Mac Mini M2 (2023) 24GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, 10-Core GPU

[dcerezo]

A little update here, we had to buy a laptop for when we are out of the office and we purchased the 14" MBP, M2 PRO, 16 GB RAM. It runs ArchiCAD 26 wonderfully! Haven't tried Twinmotion on it, but overall it's way faster than anything else we have in the office (late 2019 iMacs).

[JosephGutierrez]

Thank you for the discussion about an update news!
I am glad to know that ArchiCAD 26 runs well on this new version!