27-Inch iMac Core i7 With SSD Is Fastest Mac Ever

kellen said:

I was thinking the same thing. Put the 6 core 3.33 with SSD and lets see who wins.

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Bingo.

It's just a measure of how the SSD outstrips the standard hard drive (gee, news flash!).

Me, I'll stick with the 2gigs of standard internal hard drive space in my iMac 21.5. I'll take massive hd space over ssd speed any day.

Now ... if only I could have both ... hmmm.

iBug2 said:

iMac would still win on non-parallel tasks. It has a newer generation CPU +chipset with higher clockspeed.

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No

Awesome!!!! This is the Mac im planning to get (my first one)!

Holy.......................****

odinsride said:

No

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Yes. If you read the article carefully it says that it beat Mac Pro on iTunes encoding test as well, which has nothing to do with drive speed.

odinsride said:

No

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Yesx2 ^

robeddie said:

Bingo.

It's just a measure of how the SSD outstrips the standard hard drive (gee, news flash!).

Me, I'll stick with the 2gigs of standard internal hard drive space in my iMac 21.5. I'll take massive hd space over ssd speed any day.

Now ... if only I could have both ... hmmm.

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I was planning on getting a 27" standard 2.7 i5. But I keeping thinking the SSD + HDD would be real nice. This just increases the appeal. But several factors. Cost. The thing just sits there most of the day. I don't earn my keep on the thing. It gets tougher to justify spending money on things like that when they spend so much time being idle. Looking to go back to school so educational discounts could lessen the upgrade costs, but it is still more than I would want to spend for the performance.

I would really love to get one of these machines (and upgrade from a 2007 Mac Pro), but I'm thinking the 27 inch model is much too big. Any suggestions?

Anyone want to see a video of my 2004 iMac G5 opening all of its apps? It's not quite as exciting.

arn said:

It's not the fastest "iMac" ever, it's the fastest "Mac" ever.

arn

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In some tasks ... quite misleading title, since it uses a SSD, instead of a HDD like in the mac pro they are comparing with ...

robeddie said:

Bingo.

It's just a measure of how the SSD outstrips the standard hard drive (gee, news flash!).

Me, I'll stick with the 2gigs of standard internal hard drive space in my iMac 21.5. I'll take massive hd space over ssd speed any day.

Now ... if only I could have both ... hmmm.

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Uh, you can.

Most of the people who ordered SSD-equipped iMacs on the Shipment Tracker got a 1TB or 2TB internal 3.5" drive with the 256GB SSD (~94% got a 3.5" disk with the SSD). My 27" will have the 256GB Toshiba HG3 and a 2TB 7200rpm internal 3.5" drive.

iMac > Mac pro = good value for money!

if I were in the situation where I needed that power

I'd happily wait for the Mac Pro. Great for folks looking for more horse power now and who can deal with Apple's $*(#@# displays etc.

Sjhonny said:

In some tasks ... quite misleading title, since it uses a SSD, instead of a HDD like in the mac pro they are comparing with ...

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Just to clarify -> from the MacWorld article.

Lab Report: Core i7 SSD iMac is the fastest Mac we've tested

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I've almost always been behind with my computers till I splashed out on the best 27" iMac the retail Apple Store offered. So glad to see it on that list! It's such a beast of a machine and it's not even an i7 with SSD. I can't imagine a faster machine (with todays OS+apps).

Long gone are the days when you had to wait a minute for a program to open. Ah, the windows 95 days... no, I don't miss them

The 27" iMac also has a very impressive GPU. The HD6970M screams - 28FPS Crysis 1980x1050 on 'Very High'. Thats on-par with a GTX 285.

roland.g said:

Just to clarify -> from the MacWorld article.

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Well look at the macrumors title there is a BTO option for a SSD in the Six-core mac pro, so this is a misleading title

arn said:

It's not the fastest "iMac" ever, it's the fastest "Mac" ever.

arn

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Well, this is really silly, since it does not compare the current Mac Pro.

Faster than a 12 core? In real-life doubtful. Especially if you slap in a few SSD in raid zero.

Benchmarks are not the full story. My MBP is 80% as fast in benchmarks as my Mac Pro, but in real life (such as rendering video) the Pro is better than twice as fast.

deannnnn said:

Anyone want to see a video of my 2004 iMac G5 opening all of its apps? It's not quite as exciting.

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hah hah hah! Man, I feel you!

That video was very impressive. I even showed it to my wife who is normally pretty non-plussed by the tech stuff I show her, and she said "wow! now that's what I need!"

I'm still pretty happy with my 2007 mbp, but when it comes time to replace it, I'm feeling a 27" iMac...

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Good question. I think the benchmarking should be done by class: base configuration, factory custom configuration, after-market config, Hackintosh, mobile/desktop/server for each of the above, etc.

It's the fastest Mac ever, except that it's not.

About 1/2 of the Macworld tests are hard drive intensive tests (duplicating files, importing files, zipping files, etc). Of course the SSD based iMac will outperform the Mac Pro on these tests.

Comparing the CPU/memory performance instead and you'll find that the iMac gets a geekbench score of 11648, while the Mac Pro gets an astounding score of 24262.

What's even more deceptive is that the SSD in the iMac is not even a high performer (220MB/s read 180MB/s write) -- it's simply better than a stock hard drive. For the same price ($500 BTO upgrade vs $550 total cost) you could get a 3rd party SSD from OWC that gets 559MB/s read and 527MB/s write.

Heck, any Mac that supports SATA III and had an OWC Mercury Extreme 6g installed would be declared the "fastest Mac ever" according to these messed up Macworld tests.

edit: Macworld compared the 2011 iMac against the 6-core Mac Pro, making the headline "Fastest Mac Ever" even more ridiculous.

kevin2i said:

Well, this is really silly. since it doe not compare the current Mac Pro.

Faster than a 12 core? In real-life doubtful. Especially if you slap in a few SSD in raid zero.

Benchmarks are not the full story. My MBP is 80% as fast in benchmarks as my Mac Pro, but in real life (such as rendering video) the Pro is better than twice as fast.

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You need to re-read the article again.

Apple... said:

I would really love to get one of these machines (and upgrade from a 2007 Mac Pro), but I'm thinking the 27 inch model is much too big. Any suggestions?

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Yes:

1. 27” is WAY too big.

2. Which is awesome! Get one!

I'd like to see it take on my dual 6-core Mac Pro I just got, seeing as mine has 3 striped SSDs.