New iMac Benchmarks Show 10-25% Improvement Over Previous Generation

[MacRumors]

Primate Labs today posted a summary of the new iMac benchmarks hitting the company's Geekbench Browser, showing fairly strong performance increases over the previous generation of machines. The analysis focuses on the 21.5-inch models, as the 27-inch models are not launching for several more weeks, and the latest high-end 21.5-inch model scores nearly 25% higher than its 2011 counterpart and even bests the high-end 27-inch model from last year by nearly 10%.

The report also pits the new 21.5-inch iMac against the current generations of Apple's other two desktop lines, the Mac mini and Mac Pro. The comparison to the Mac mini reveals that users can achieve nearly the same performance as the mid-range iMac by purchasing a high-end Mac mini, although customers would obviously have to supply their own displays and other peripherals.

What's interesting here, though, is how the quad-core Core i5 iMacs perform compared to the quad-core Core i7 Mac minis. Since Core i7 has hyper-threading technology (and the Core i5 does not), it can execute more instructions at once, leading to higher performance.

Here this means that the mid-range Mac mini is faster than the mid-range iMac that's almost twice the price. True, you do get a display and a discrete GPU with the iMac, but these Geekbench results show how powerful the new Mac mini is despite its size.

As for the Mac Pro, which is still stuck on older-generation processors rather than adopting Intel's Sandy Bridge E chips, the new iMac is now on par with all but the high-end 12-core Mac Pro models.

As for the new 27-inch iMac, a handful of Geekbench results have already appeared in the database running a special Build 12C2037 of OS X 10.8.2. The results indicate that an early benchmark that appeared in mid-May was indeed accurate and indicate that the new high-end 27-inch model will outperform its 2011 counterpart by nearly 15%.

Article Link: New iMac Benchmarks Show 10-25% Improvement Over Previous Generation

[needfx]

is that all?

[Keniutek]

Not that impressed.

[dashiel]

Originally Posted by Keniutek

Not that impressed.

I’m always curious what people who say this do with their computers. I look at people like Louis C.K. who edited the first two seasons his show on a 13" MacBook Pro and then come here and see people moaning about benchmarks … so I’m curious what do you actually do that you need such power?

[robjulo]

Only a 15% improvement while removing key components? No thanks.

[dlewis23]

Originally Posted by robjulo

Only a 15% improvement while removing key components? No thanks.

What key components?

[iChrist]

Originally Posted by robjulo

Only a 15% improvement while removing key components? No thanks.

iMac. For the pro... in all of us.

[daneoni]

Meh

[wildspin]

Just curious ... are these result with or without the contributions of fusion drives?

[HarryKeogh]

Originally Posted by dashiel

I’m always curious what people who say this do with their computers. I look at people like Louis C.K. who edited the first two seasons his show on a 13" MacBook Pro and then come here and see people moaning about benchmarks … so I’m curious what do you actually do that you need such power?

I do a lot of shopping on Amazon.com so I need the fastest computer I can get my hands on to snag the best deals.

And it's so thin!

[BeamWalker]

One Generation further and the iMacs get 2010 Mac Pro 8 Core Speed. I really thought they would manage this this time around though.

With the big Retina Macbook Pro at more than 12.000 points, the question now is, is the iMac CPU too slow or the notebook cpu line too fast.

[mono1980]

Since when have desktop computer updates ever really been that big of a deal? It's been a long time. 25% faster than blazing fast is.. um.. really frickin' fast. What a bunch of whiners.

[js09]

bahahahah at the imac as the same speed as the mac pro.

the new imac is already outdated for the price and still beats the mac pro.

those of you who bought into the fact you need 8 cores.. SUCKERS!!!

[joesegh]

Hey dopes, CPUs and other elements in the traditional laptop/desktop space DO NOT magically receive 2X speed increases from year to year.

These are not smartphones. These are very mature systems using mature components. It's simply unreasonable to expect anything more than 15-20% increases YOY, for both Macs and PCs.

[JayJayAbels]

Awesome! Picking one up later this month.

[podlasek]

Those numbers look off, Mid-2011 27" iMac Geekbench Score is 12624?

[IzzyJG99]

I think the iMac has a bad case of Anorexia Nervosa....

As for the speeds. I wonder if we're at a point where the laws of physics (Electromagnetic speed, Lightspeed..etc) have caused CPU's to hit a wall. It's possible that we cannot make a processor any faster when those things are constant, or so the Theory of Relativity says.

[chrisrayb]

No optical drive. CLEARLY a deal breaker. Especially after I found out it doesn't support floppy disks. I mean come on...

[clipse2d]

Funny, I have the last generation's imac and I just ran Geek Bench. My score is 12670.....Isn't that a little backwards.....

[MacPat333]

I would like to know the score for the following configuration:

- 27" iMac late 2012
- 3.4GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
- 32GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x8GB
- 3TB Fusion Drive
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2GB GDDR5

This is what my configuration will look like. However, I will order only with 8GB RAM and upgrade myself later.

What will be the difference between the above with 8GB RAM and 32GB RAM?

Thanks!

[michial]

had a 2.5 i5 2011 imac that benchmarked at 7500. My 2012 15inch 2.3 mbp benchmarks at 12000+

[JBZieman]

Jeez.... thinner makes it faster. Duuuh.

[monicaholliday]

I have read their comments and it seems they didn't understand your chart or what's your point. And I also noticed that I guess the improving was reversed? I just wanted to realize this. Thanks

[The Wedge]

Originally Posted by dashiel

I’m always curious what people who say this do with their computers. I look at people like Louis C.K. who edited the first two seasons his show on a 13" MacBook Pro and then come here and see people moaning about benchmarks … so I’m curious what do you actually do that you need such power?

One thing I do is produce/edit music videos. A 4 minute video probably has more cuts/edits/effects than an entire season of Louis CK.

[Mike Valmike]

Originally Posted by dashiel

I’m curious what do you actually do that you need such power?

Future-proofing.

USB3 right now is relevant to some users and not most. Three years from now, all USB peripherals or nearly all will be USB3 and any computer that has only USB2 ports will be left out in the cold. It can make the difference between getting 3 years or 5 years out of a pricey iMac purchase.

That's only one example but you get the idea. Heck, Apple themselves cause some of this by limiting how many generations back a new version of OS X will run. At some point down the road, and we don't know when this will be, OS X 10.? Ocelot will run on the 2012 iMac but not the 2011 iMac, for no reason whatsoever, completely arbitrarily, as forced obsolescence. Just like Mountain Lion won't run on early Airs etc. When will Ocelot come out and force that break? Maybe not for many years, but maybe in 2015. We just don't know. So, future-proofing.