If you're deploying on the Mac MIni I'd strongly suggest getting the top of the line configuration. I recently did a project with a full screen camera feed and a face detection routine using CoreImage. I was using an i5 model and there was horrible lag on the video feed and was unusable. We traded up to the fastest i7 and it was fine. Not 60fps fine, but usable. Obviously, getting one for testing before deployment would be best.
cheers!
