What are the differences between the "Early 2009/NVIDIA" Mac mini "Core 2 Duo" configurations?

The differences between the two Mac mini "Core 2 Duo" 2.0 (Early 2009/NVIDIA) configurations are quite modest.

Photo Credit: Apple, Inc.

Like all previous Mac mini models, the internal components of the "Early 2009/NVIDIA" Mac mini are enclosed in a tiny and elegant 2.9 lb, 6.5 inch square, two inch tall case.

Connectivity includes 5 USB 2.0 ports, a Firewire "800" port, AirPort Extreme (802.11a/b/g/n), Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, Gigabit Ethernet, a combined "optical digital audio input/audio line in minijack", and a "optical digital audio output/headphone out minijack", and dual video ports -- Mini-DVI and Mini DisplayPort -- that can be used to simultaneously drive two displays, the first time that the Mac mini series has supported dual displays.

Internally, "Early 2009/NVIDIA" Mac mini configurations have a 2.0 GHz Intel "Core 2 Duo" (P7350) processor with a 3 MB on-chip level 2 cache, a 1066 MHz frontside bus, support for 1066 MHz DDR3 SDRAM (PC3-8500), a Serial ATA hard drive, a slot-loading 8X double-layer "SuperDrive", and a NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with "integrated" graphics.

The configurations vary only by the amount of pre-installed memory, hard drive size, default amount of memory allocated for graphics, and price. These differences are summarized below for your convenience:

Mac mini "Early 2009"	2.0 (120 GB*)	2.0 (320 GB*)
Standard RAM:	1 GB	2 GB
Standard Hard Drive:	120 GB	320 GB
Allocated VRAM:	128 MB†	256 MB†
Apple Order No:	MB463LL/A	MB464LL/A
Price:	US$599	US$799

* In marketing copy, Apple formally distinguished between these configurations by hard drive size.

† The VRAM is "shared" with system memory. This is the minimum graphics memory usage with each configuration but the memory available to MacOS X "may vary depending on graphics needs". Installing 2 GB of memory in the low-end MB463LL/A configuration automatically will increase the allocated VRAM to 256 MB.

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Please refer to the Ultimate Mac Comparison feature to dynamically compare any Mac mini model to any other G3 or later Mac.