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New iMac, Mac Mini Benchmarks Show Changes Are Slight
jfpoole writes "Primate Labs has posted some preliminary benchmarks of the new iMacs and Mac minis. They found that processor speed is virtually unchanged between the older and newer models. Clearly these new Macs are minor updates rather than the major upgrades many Mac users were hoping for." As reader olddotter points out, there are changes, also slight, to the new Mini's case.
With the possible exception of going from Intel's ghastly embedded graphics to Nvidia's merely weak embedded graphics.
For the first time, both the mini and the imac have enough memory capacity to be useful. Now if only they'd learn how to keep their cool when you actually use them, and make key components (like disk drives) accessible for replacement, they'd be killer machines.
You mean to tell me that Apple is trying to push style over substance? No way!
What about a video benchmark between the old 2Ghz MacMini and the new one? The main change in this machine was chipset/video related.
Menzoberranzan Networks
wow
Geekbench 2 only measures processor and memory performance which is why models with the same processors but different video cards have roughly the same score.
I was under the impression that most of the upgrades were to the video cards. With Snow Leopard and OpenCL coming I'd like to see how the new machines compare.
Second, why use GeekBench? Yes it's Cross Platform but it's not free. XBench is free (beer/not speech) and does include video. My 9600 trounces my old ATI card. It even includes a Submitted DB like GeekBench.
I was glad to see Firewire 800 on it, but it would be much better if they just gave an eSATA jack on the back. With appropriate storage, it would be just right to run XBMC.app under the television to serve movies. I already have an older Mac Mini serving as the family dictionary/browser/billpay machine and light server, but wifi just isn't fast enough to do significant data transfers.
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The new mac mini can handle world of warcraft without it looking like the original Quake, only blurrier. I wouldn't call this a "minor update".
I recently took the Mac plunge. After two months, my verdict:
Pro's
1. It's not Windows! Yay!
2. It's not just not Windows, OSX has some really cool features. Mac products seem to have some more thinking put into them as opposed to the Windows-based machines. Yeah, they have their moments of stupid like with cracking Mac Cube cases, powerbook latch failures and screen cracking, but it's nice to get a new OS and be tickled by smart ideas instead of the feeling I get with Windows which is "how are they going to bone the next version this time?"
Con's
1. Damn them for keeping upgrades under wraps. I would have held off if I knew the new one was only two months away.
2. Too dangerous to work on inside. The iMac is technically user-servicable but there's no way I'd risk doing it myself. PC innards are built like tanks and the iMac looks like it's built out of aluminum foil, tissue paper and dreams. I'd rather let the Mac store people risk breaking it and buy me a new one than do anything myself. I'd be much happier with a more robust design but understand that twinky-dink laptop parts is how they make it fit in such a small package.
3. You really pay a lot more for the parts with Apple. People will go back and forth with you on this one, are you paying for quality or hype? Even if your Vista computer is cheaper, do you really want to use Vista? Ok, you could by a generic Windows pc and run Ubuntu, are you happy? Ah, but then support for Linux isn't as good as for Windows/OSX. You can go round in circles with this.
Overall, Apple has done good and bad but the good is ahead this time around. Versus Microsoft, I don't think I've had a cheerful thought about any of their products since Windows 2000.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Of course there is little change in the CPU benchmarks: the CPUs changed only very slightly. The real meat in these new machines is the significantly upgraded graphics chips. If you are a gamer, these machines are now acceptable for all but the most extreme requirements. The ATI 4850 is ATI's #2 performer right now, which is pretty good for an iMac. I consider this to be a *value* upgrade, as well, since you are now getting a bit more machine, 2x ram, faster graphics, for a little less than before.
Minor updates in a cratering economy. Color me stunned. :-\
I was considering an iMac if it had a quad core, though. Not sure what to do now. The 24" falling to the price of the previous 20" is a pretty good deal, I would think.
While Mac gear has a higher price point for a reason, this upgrade is nice on the base unit. :
1. Superdrive - the old base base model could only burn CD and read DVDs.
2. NVIDIA vs Intel 950 display chips - the five fold improvement make more games playable - especially with all the Windows options.
3. Although the article still only references CPU an 8% improvement is of course an 8% improvement.
4. Firewire 800 vs Firewire 400 - again a very nice speed gain.
5. Dual display vs. Single display interface for HTPC - my main use.
6. iLife 9 with several big improvements to what is already the most important reason for owning a Mac.
7. 13 watt low power mode - I assume this is sleep.
There are two negatives:
1. Remote costs extra I believe 15-20
2. Display adaptors aren't cheap at 20-30 for each of the display outs.
Which I can live with as a trade off. This on top of the nice Core 2 Duo + Bluetooth + Wireless N + GigE
I personnally look forward to salting a few of these around to get me out of the "My PC is slow again" trap.
Divemaster
test the video in the $1,199.00 $1,499.00 ones that when from 128 - 256 vram to system ram for video.
Also the $1,799.00 has a weak NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 256MB memory that is just a 9500gt card.
The $2,499 mac pro has a very weak card for it's price when you can find systems for over a $1000 LESS WITH X2 THE RAM, SAME OR BETTER CPU POWER AND MUCH BETTER VIDEO.
The question is what will Psystar and others do now?
Apple changed the hardware across the product lines to support the new features in Snow Leopard. Will the performance still be slight then?
These benchmarks are meaningless and worthless. The site itself says that these are artificial tests based almost entirely on processor power. So, similar processors with the same RAM is going to give the same 'score' regardless of OS, video card, hard drive performance or any other factor. In an update defined by new graphics chipsets that were build specifically to accelerate high definition video playback these geniuses are testing the processor performance.
These are not Mac benchmarks. They are intel processor benchmarks. You could have gotten the same numbers months ago (and many sites have) by testing the new intel processors as they came out.
If you are interested in some useful numbers, anandtech did some good competitive tests on the current generation of integrated graphics chipsets. No, these are not inside a Mac Mini, but it provides much more relevant information than this ridiculous article.
Looks like on the back they removed the DVI hog port to make room for a mini dvi, a mini display, and another usb port.
Why did they add a mini dvi AND a mini display port? Can you attach two monitors to it at the same time now?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I like mac OSX a lot. I'm using it on a macbook and and old (needs to be replaced) dual 1ghz g4. I have 4 drives in the old g4 for a total of 1.5 TB (it has a sata card). I take a lot of photographs a do video editing , all the stuff that mac software makes usefull. I have a great lcd.
So what do I buy? I'd like a tower, but at 2500$ or whatever its too expensive. The mini doesn't have the expandable storage. FW800 might work with external drives, but I'd like lots of ram for photoshop and lightroom. When looking at 1200$ PC towers, they give a lot for that price.
I'm willing to pay a premium for OSX, but they don't have the hardware I want.
Thus the HW lock in I'm suffering. I use Apeture so I'm actually contemplating switching.
What bugs me, is that they should be trying to get market share up, so each machine is worth more (more software will be written). Gametap just dropped mac today.
You'll have to look for a while as the Mac Pro is the only PC available today on the market with a Nehalem processor. But keep shouting, somebody might believe you.
A company changes some of its lineup of products with other, slightly different products, and we need not one but two front page stories to commemorate this momentus news?
It's not like they are really manufacturing any of these components other than a few proprietary bits and pieces - so this story is basically just 'company builds okish computers using standard intel and ATI parts'.
I look forward to more exciting stories about Apple's new lineup as the week progresses:
- New Apples use 'mouse' to receive user input
- New Apples run on standard AC power
- Hardness testing reveals new Apple cases 0.05% harder than old models
- Steve Jobs tells: "I love free advertising"
Read Pynchon.
So, where'd you find a dual-Nehalem-Xeon system for $1000 less?
They found that processor speed is virtually unchanged between the older and newer models.
I recently bought some Sun servers. My colleagues told me they were "very slow", but since I had a loaner pair in-house, I decided to benchmark them just for a "baseline".
I benchmarked them, and found that these new machines were the fastest I could buy in class.
Were my colleagues wrong? The answer is no - its just that their benchmarks were useless for my application. Their application's needs were quite different than mine. Their app was FP intense, and mine was memory i/o intense.
I ended up buying the machine they didn't buy. They passed them up because they were slow. But I bought them because they were fast.
You just can't upgrade iMacs or Minis. By the way, exactly what modern GPU can you buy for a 5-year-old machine's bus?
That's not true at all. Did you even check?
Apple's keeping the radical I/O expansion well under wraps! At first I was like... wtf... then I was like... cool.
you had me at #!
Sure, sending me to the homepage of Dell is a strong argument. And don't tell me you didn't realize we were talking about Xeon Nehalem because that would mean that didn't even check the spec of the Mac Pro !
Here, I'll help you a little :
http://www.infoworld.com/article/09/03/03/Apple_jumpstarts_Nehalem_launch_for_Intel_1.html
Now please go back playing with your toys.
Well, according to Intel, the i7 is a Nehalem processor:
http://www.intel.com/technology/architecture-silicon/next-gen/index.htm?iid=tech_micro+nehalem
Dell just happens to be selling a Studio XPS 435 with:
Intel Core i7-920 processor(8MB L2 Cache, 2.66GHz)
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1, 64-Bit
Dell 24 inch S2409W Widescreen Flat Panel
Single Drive: 16X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) w/double layer write capability
6GB Tri-Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1066MHz - 6 DIMMs
750GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
ATI Radeon HD 4670 512MB1
Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
for... $1,549
I am not shouting and I hope nobody believes you. Guess a Mac Pro isn't the only way to get a Nehalem processor. Whats up with mac fanboys?
First, I'm no mac fanboy, just correcting wrongful statements
Second, please refrain commenting on things you know nothing about.
You are showing that you don't know what's in a Mac Pro and what a XEON Nehalem processor is.
So let me do a quick crash course :
- Dell = 1 CPU = Nehalem (you got that part)
- Mac Pro = 2 CPU = Xeon Nehalem
Nehalem without Xeon means no 2 CPUs possible
Are you starting to get the picture as well?
The $2400 is system not a dual cpu system.
when you have awesome, a slight upgrade is still awesome~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Hey smart guy, you might want to check your original post:
And I quote:
"You'll have to look for a while as the Mac Pro is the only PC available today on the market with a Nehalem processor. But keep shouting, somebody might believe you."
I didn't see you say Xeon Nehalem? Do you? I don't... Let me guess, its camouflaged? So, my original post was correct, you can get PCs with Nehalem processors TODAY. If you would have actually said 'Xeon Nehalem' then I wouldn't have said anything. Way to look like a ass.
"The $2,499 mac pro has a very weak card for it's price when you can find systems for over a $1000 LESS WITH X2 THE RAM, SAME OR BETTER CPU POWER AND MUCH BETTER VIDEO."
Link?
No?
Probably not as good, and doesn't look as nice.
Oh right, intangibles are lost on most /.ers
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Quadruple-Eight-Core processors? Liquid nitrogen cooled and overclocked to 4 GHz? After the maxed-out new Mac Pro, there's almost nowhere to go with standard hardware. There is also no reason for Apple to lower prices significantly, since their unit stales are still going strong, regardless of the economy. If you were expecting anything more it's because you're clueless.
I forgot to write Intel as well...
You know what you should write :
"A Mac Pro doesn't have a Nehalem, it has an Intel Xeon Nehalem"
Then I'll start to believe you have half a brain.
But yes, there is other Nehalem PC out there, just not the one you can find in the Mac Pro... And I heard there is even other Intel based PC out there. Amazing isn't it !
This is the blurb from the website hosting some of the pics:
Macminicolo.net, a Las Vegas colocation company, has been hosting Mac minis since their introduction in January 2005. ... They currently host hundreds of Mac minis for satisfied customers located in 26 different countries around the world.
Why on earth would you co-locate a mac mini?! It seems like the entire point of the mac-mini is their "mini-ness": that they're small, silent, and attractive -- attributes that don't matter if they're located somewhere else....
A joke site...?
We live, as we dream -- alone....
If the name 'Nehalem' or 'Xeon Nehalem' was ambiguous (big word, I know, look it up), then yes. However, seeing as Intel is the only company that makes 'Nehalem' or 'Xeon Nehalem' CPUs manufactures name is redundant.
Unfortunately for you, Nehalem is microarchitecture (another big word!) NOT a CPU. Thus, a 'Nehalem' is ambiguous term which does not describe a single CPU. So, your original foolish statment was ambiguous because it encompasses (I am not trying to confuse you) a whole family of CPUs. Thus, your original supposition(whew!) can be proven false by finding one PC maker that produces PCs with 'Nehalem' CPUs. Which I have done, the Dell XPS 435 which uses a Intel i7-920, a member of the Nehalem family of CPUs.
If you would have qualified your statment with a more descriptive name (i.e. 'Xeon Nehalem') this pleasant little discussion would not have been required.
On a side note, you don't need to attack people, you don't need to be a dick, and you don't need to be insulting. Thanks.
This little discussion could have been avoided as well if you checked the Mac Pro which was the subject of this thread, that you quickly forgot by the way.
I don't think I attacked anybody. And if you feel insulted be careful there is people out there really insulting others.
Now I'll have to go, I get tired of reading long comments based on silly word picking.
Make that Nehalem Xeon processor.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Bye!
Nice rebuttal (or lack there of), I accept your surrender.
the Mac Pro is the only PC available today on the market with a Nehalem processor
I know you meant Xeon Nehalem, but Nehalem-based Xeon motherboards and processors have been shipping for some time already. Perhaps you meant "pre-built" PC, but I'd bet there's at least a few Slashdot readers who have built their own Nehalem-based Xeon workstations already.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
Obviously you've never used a Mac, otherwise you'd know that their memory requirements are about half of what windows needs for comparable performance. What they've been shipping with is adequate for most stuff, even some video editing.
Not sure what you mean by keeping their cool, but you can't be referring to heat since they both run cooler than any PC.
Removable components would definitely be welcome, especially a way to upgrade the video and HD.
Yep, and those $1000 PCs will NOT be using high-end Xeons or ECC RAM. You're comparing commodity parts to a workstation-class machine. Not even close. That and you can BTO better video cards into the machines if you want to.
It's nice to see the Mini getting an update. The speedbumped CPU isn't even that important. The faster FSB and DDR3 memory will really help out. And it's about time we caught up with the G4 Mini graphics wise. The Intel graphics quite frankly suck.
Obviously you don't make full use of yours... This is the current state of my imac:
PhysMem: 761M wired, 1526M active, 716M inactive, 3010M used, 62M free.
VM: 13G + 374M 946799(0) pageins, 313514(0) pageouts
When I eject an optical disk from the drive, it's hot to the touch, and the vent on top makes a good handwarmer.
When I was setting up the mini I got for my parents a few months ago, I started BOINC on it. Within short order (half hour or so), it was hot to the touch. A little while later, the network stopped working (it would transmit and not receive or vica versa, I forget which) until I rebooted, and then it would work for a few minutes. It was ok after I reconfigured BOINC to only use 50% of the cpu, but sent it in for repair as it was no longer reliable. It's been running ok since that way.
Likewise, my Macbook Pro (1rst gen Intel) got so hot you couldn't put it on your lap until I installed smcfancontrol to up the fan speed; I use it as my HTPC for some things, and the internal temperature (reported by the same tool) typically runs up to 130+F even with the fan at 3000rpm. BOINC is out of the question, and I'd think twice about trying to do any video rendering on it.
Macs have a lot of nice things about the hardware, but heat management is not one of them.
FWIW, this is the state of my Mac Pro at home (w/6G ram):
PhysMem: 905M wired, 3087M active, 849M inactive, 4839M used, 1305M free.
VM: 19G + 374M 323753(0) pageins, 169268(0) pageouts
I don't believe in idle computers...
"their memory requirements are about half of what windows needs for comparable performance"
Bullshit.
"Not sure what you mean by keeping their cool, but you can't be referring to heat since they both run cooler than any PC."
Proof? But of course you can't provide any because it's a bullshit statement.
You don't have a clue what you are talking about.
BS, using Safari for a day or two will make it crash thanks to not having enough RAM if you have 2 GB. Your experience may be different than mine though. Works ok with 4 GB.
Safari, Mail, X-lite, terminal, VoodooPad, last.fm iding, activity control. Flash not working in Safari 4 beta so can't blame that:
Free: 1.04 GB
Resident: 665 MB
Active: 1.22 GB
Inactive: 1.09 GB
Used: 2.96 GB
Virtual: 40.98 GB
Pages in/out: 772/11 MB
Swap file: 41 MB
Probably quite fresh Safari only using 522 MB real mem now, Adium was using 280+ earlier, no idea why, kinda extreme for an IM-client which can't even do webcam or voip.
Is that "half" memory requirement versus XP, Vista, or 7? The reviews I've read of both Vista and OS X claimed that 2GB was the sweet spot for both, and that you shouldn't consider running either on less than 1GB. XP and 7, however, will run well on considerably less.
If you can get OS X to run well in 256MB, I'll buy you a cookie. In short, I think you've swallowed too many blue pills.
Put identity in the browser.
We use six previous-generation Mac Minis in our office (1.83GHz Core 2 Duo).
We tried stacking four of them on top of each other, but saw frequent system instability related to overheating issues. No surprise there, really.
One of the other two occasionally fails -- the system freezes completely with no response to keyboard or mouse input. This pretty much only happens when we run it out in the sun during the day, though; so we just close the blinds and hard-reboot the machine.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
10.3.9 ran quite well on my G3 iMac. But that's a long time ago.
-- Cheers!
I'll have to agree with this... to an extent. I have an '06 iMac which came with 1GB memory, which is quite enough for most simpler things. If you want to be a power user though, you really do need 1.5-2GB memory. 1.5GB is getting me along pretty well, but not completely without lag when I have lots of applications open.
Of course, if firefox would start being more intelligent about its paging I'd need about 400MB less.
Heat management has ALWAYS been a Mac issue. Jobs made it a point of ideology with the Mac Plus that it would NEVER have a cooling fan. They'd identified cooling fans as an IBM (what they called non-Mac computers back then) thing. So there were expensive hardware upgrades like a muffin fan in a plastic shroud that you could shove down into the handle hole of your Mac Plus (the fan assy cost 300 bucks or so!) to keep the thing cool. It had to remain a third-party accessory because of ideology.
Obviously you don't make full use of yours... This is the current state of my imac:
PhysMem: 761M wired, 1526M active, 716M inactive, 3010M used, 62M free. VM: 13G + 374M 946799(0) pageins, 313514(0) pageouts
That's just normal behavior for any reasonably modern Unixy kernel. You don't waste resources by keeping a large pool of "free" memory around. Instead, you have large buffers and keep disk-backed pages swapped in until you need the memory, and only then reclaim them. "946799(0) pageins" means you are not currently swapping, and with the 4k page size of the Mac, it means that you have only ever loaded 3.7 GB from disk, and swapped out 1.2. Unless your machine has just been rebooted, this is not a sign of lack of memory.
Stephan
I understand the buffer usage, however the fact that it's had to page out 1.2G in the 5 days it's been up (did a system update) means that it's short of memory, just not terribly so. If I had more memory, there are a few other things I could do with the system...
You started this thread by comparing apples and oranges. When someone pointed that out, you should have just accepted your error. Instead you behaved like a dork through your followups. Congratulations.
What a no-brainer conclusion. Doubling ram from 2GB to 4GB obviously isn't going to do much, considering 2GB was pretty optimum to begin with. Boosting a cpu from 2.4 to 2.6 is not going to even be perceived, except in a bench test. The only story here is that prices remained the same with slight spec upgrades, and video got worse on the low end. So if you were in the market for a midrandge 24" iMac, the new midrange is a better deal than it was last week. If you were in the market for an entry level 20" iMac, the new model isn't much of a deal, and with integrated graphics, a step backwards.
Heat management has ALWAYS been a Mac issue.
The G3 and G4 processors beg to differ. Don't let scorching hot G5 and 1st gen Intel CoreDuo chips (and a poorly vented Cube) ruin the entire legacy of Macintosh computers, please.
I didn't realize this. Even if Intel didn't announce these new processors yet (well, that's according to the media) ? That's something I didn't know. Very interesting.
Actually I checked the references available in your link and it looks like I can't find the one used by Apple (E5500 and E3500). Maybe they are just family references used by Apple, as your link goes to a E5520...
Core i7 has only one QuickPath interconnect and doesn't support multiple processors or ECC memory.
The Xeon 55xx processor in the Mac Pro supports both and has two QP interconnects, each faster than the i7s. The Xeon version also runs substantially cooler.
The 2.66 GHz Core i7 costs around $300 while the 2.66 GHz Xeon costs around $1,000, and Xeon motherboards tend to be much more expensive, the ECC memory a bit more than non-ECC.
My old 2006 vintage Mac Mini still seems to be the fastest in the land. I did the infamous Merom Upgrade to it almost 3 years ago and it's still alive and kicking. The Geekbench on my machine comes out to 3060.. you can see the full details here: http://www.ambor.com/public/meromswap/meromswap.html
I would be fascinated to see a link to the $1,499 machine with a Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Nehalem" processor and 6GB of ram. I would particularly interested if that machine was expandable to 2 of those CPUs and 32GB of ram.
Well, I guess the "Windtunnel" G4s did do their job of cooling the compenents well. Of course, my favorite was the G3 iMacs that had to leave their CRTs on all the time (even when in power save mode) because they depended on convection from the screen to cool the CPU/harddrive.
Citation? I had a 333mhz beige G3 chip overclocked to 400 and it didn't even have a fan. I ran that thing for about 5 years with no problems. My G4 tower is on 9 years now, and all it has is a heat sink (again, no fan needed). Perhaps the "convection" issue you mentioned had something to do with a CRT monitor being encased in a bowling ball size piece of plastic and maybe nothing at all to do with processor heat.
The base Mac Pro (the $2500 one) only has one CPU in it and no second socket, so the fact it's a Xeon doesn't even matter. Might as well compare it to the regular Core i7 because they are totally comparable in that configuration.
Most of the iMac G3's used convection to cool their CPU and thus were fanless. It's mentioned in the Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G3#Updates
Sounds like you might have had one of them if yours had no fans, though I don't remember any biege ones (it's been a while, and I don't remember all the colors available nor which ones had cooling fans, sorry). It was kind of a shame that the harddrives of that era in the iMacs ruined the fanless aspect of them.
Joe you ignorant slut.
Find me a non-Apple system using Nehalem, won't you?
In case "reading" isn't your strong suit, Nehalem went to Apple's Mac Pro 1st, and there WERE NO OTHER manufacturers using it.
I had a beige desktop G3, not an iMac. I don't remember the details either, but I'm pretty sure the chipsets where identical. There was no convection on the the G3 desktops, because the chip ran so ridiculously cool compared to Pentiums of the same era.
Do you even know what you're talking about? In other to cool something using air, you have to have air flow. You can either get by using convection (aka heat rises), or generate the air flow using a fan. At least some of the old iMacs got away with just convection, using the heat generated by the CRT to generate the needed airflow. Your desktop probably used a fan to force air through the case and across the CPU heatsink, the same way most PC desktops work (though the PC likely also had an additional fan to remove the heat from the CPU heatsink, unless it was an OEM system with a specially designed case to allow for a large enough heatsink to eliminate the extra fan).
The original beige G3 desktop and the tower (not sure about the iMac, because it came alone a couple years later) had a G3 chip with a heat sink on it, no fan on the heatsink, unlike all the pentiums of the same time. So no, the beige G3s didn't use "monitor" convection, (whatever that is) like the claim was in the first post. Of COURSE there was some sort of convection, because the power supply has a fan and the case was not in a vacuum.
So getting back to my point, the G3 chip begs to differ when it was said that Apple needed to find a way to run their computers at cool temperatures, when history (not revisionist history) shows us that the engineering in the 233, 300, 400mhz G3 chips was far cooler than any pentium offering of the same time, as evidenced by the pentiums using a cpu cartridge that ran the length of the motherboard, and in many cases, had TWO or more fans in addition to very large heat sinks.
An even shorter response is the entire line of Apple computers since the PowerPC chip cannot be stereotyped by the heat dissipation issues of closed systems like the iMac, or by the terribly hot G5 chip.
I was just discussing the G3 iMac as another example of unusual/sub-optimal cooling solutions by Apple over the years. There is nothing wrong with using just convection to cool your computer components, provided you can get away with it. Using a 50-70W CRT to generate enough convection to keep your chip cool when most other computers can put the monitor to sleep is a little unorthodox and ineffecient, to say the least.
By the way, the typical P2 was about 20-25W, with the worst at about 40W for the first generation chips. The slot design was overkill, which is part of the reason why Intel dropped it and hasn't looked back.