Dual vs Quad Core...???

[Chew_Bear]

Which is better for music production...? Dual core or quad core cpu...?

Planning on upgrading from my laptop to a Mac Mini. Apple made a Mac Mini that had 4/quad cores a while back and I figured this would be the better solution for music production and heavy tasks like web browsing, email, word and video.

I have some computer knowledge and I do know that more cores in a cpu means faster and better performance.

 

[krushing]

Well, I still have and use the quad-core Mini and it indeed was a great deal at the time – the newer version have better single-core performance, but basically they downgraded the overall package by only offering dual-core models. The thing is, the "good" model is from (late) 2012, so it's now five years old, which is more or less ancient by computer standards. Mine still works very well, but I'm not sure if I'd recommend a five-year old computer unless you can get it for really cheap. Since my setup's mostly hardware-based, it manages just fine but it'd probably buckle under heavy modern plugin load fairly easily. The whole Mini range is in dire need of updates, since the "newest" model is from 2014 and actually there have been some rumours - or at least speculation - that they might do it this autumn.

So yeah. In order to answer your question - more cores is usually better, but in the case of a Mac Mini it's not a very clear-cut deal. I'd probably hold off buying one right now (unless, as said, you'll get a great deal for one) and see whether they'll finally update them, possibly in October.

 

[minervx]

Quad core does not necessarily mean better. Clock speeds, threading, cache and overall efficiency matter just as much.

Don't get a Mac Mini for a recording studio. It's portable, but it may not be powerful enough to handle DAW + plugins, it is low on storage, it's not upgradable, it has a very limited array of ports for external USB devices and it's very pricy for what it is.