27" iMac i7 first impressions

[Bryan Bowler]

Congratulations NJRondo! I'm glad you got your new machine and thanks for sharing your thoughts with us.

When I visited an Apple store yesterday, I bumped up the mouse's tracking speed to the highest setting and it was screaming fast. I wonder if there's been some type of update?

Bryan

 

[NJRonbo]

Brian, always good to hear from you.

Thanks for the warm wishes. I have
not updated the iMac since I got it.
The auto-update has yet to come up.
So perhaps there is a fix in 10.6.2.

 

[johnmcboston]

This is killing me! I have to stop checking these forums! I need my i7 damnit. I have some vacation time to burn when it gets here!

Vacation time? What exactly are you going to be doing with this computer?

 

[iMerlin]

Vacation time? What exactly are you going to be doing with this computer?

LOL, I know right! I just might turn it on and get all boned up for a while!!

No but seriously, I have a couple of projects Ive been waiting to start until the iMac gets here. But other than that, ill just be enjoying that beautiful screen. I might pick up COD4 for Mac too!

 

[filmgirl]

Like NJRonbo, I got my i7 on Friday too.

My previous day-to-day computer was a mid-2007 Black MacBook, so this is quite an upgrade. I went from using the MacBook connected to a 23.5" HP monitor to this insanely huge, insanely beautiful, insanely great machine.

The brightness, the crispness, everything about it is great.

I was already using an aluminum bluetooth keyboard and Magic Mouse (that I got last week) with my MacBook, so none of that has been an issue. Although I will say it's amazing how much wear consistent keyboard use for a year will actually take on a keyboard -- the new one is so much more springy. It's nice.

I'm loving the speed, though I haven't had a chance to do too much with it yet to really push the limits.

I put an extra 4GB of RAM in before I even booted up for the first time so I feel pretty confident that with the ~5 TB of external drives and the NAS server my fiance and I have setup for media sharing and the 1TB internal, I'll be set as far as specs go for quite some time.

 

[Leon575]

1. It's fast, damn fast i just ripped a DVD and it took 20 minutes to rip but the encode took 15. LOL

My 27" Core 2 Duo 3.06 Ghz used approximately 30 minutes to encode a 1:44 hour movie.
From Divx (avi) to H264 (mp4) with Xilisoft Video Converter.

 

[barefeats]

Cinebench results for iMac Core i7 versus others

We ran Cinebench 10 on the 2.8GHz Core i7 iMac. We got a multi-core score of 15290. That's very close to what we got on a 4-core Nehalem Mac Pro 2.93GHz (15521) and much faster than what we got on the newest 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo iMac (6511). For obvious reasons, all those results pale in comparison to the 8-core Nehalem Mac Pro 2.93HGz which got a rating of 25878.

Have any of you run Cinebench on a 2.66GHz Core i5 iMac? If so, please post it here.

You can run the 64 bit version of Cinebench 10 under Windows. (OS X version runs in 32 bit mode.)
Here's some scores:
Core i7-870 (used in Mac Pro 2.93GHz quad-core?) = 18115
Core i5-750 (used in iMac 2.66GHz quad-core) = 14328
(scores came from HardwareCanucks article)

 

[Fiete5401]

Have any of you run Cinebench on a 2.66GHz Core i5 iMac? If so, please post it here.

Ugh! The Mad Scientist himself! *bow*
Any results from i5 iMacs would helpful. Only one Geekbench result so far.
Where are the i5 owners? Did they touch their new iMacs and fell asleep?

 

[nicroma]

Although this is my first Mac and I haven't heard past generations, I can compare the sound of this to other speakers I've heard that are comparable in size. This 27" iMac sounds great! Frank Zappa's guitar is singing through these speakers right now.

Call of Duty: MW2 (the first and only game I have played on this yet) could have used a little more low end with the explosions, but I don't want to ruin the simplicity of this machine with a 2.1 or 4.1 speaker system. As I said, these speakers do this machine justice.

 

[Freis968]

Just loaded up COD4 MacOS version and had it at full res with everything on high and it was smooth as butter no glitching what so ever, and I had a movie playing on iTunes at the same time too. I'm not sure what the fps was since I don't know how to see that in COD4.

Ok at full res and everything on max i am getting 60-80 fps this is at 25whatever by 1440.

What about Modern Warfare 2 in bootcamp? That is what I am currently playing and will be playing with my i7 in a few weeks.

 

[nicroma]

What about Modern Warfare 2 in bootcamp? That is what I am currently playing and will be playing with my i7 in a few weeks.

I don't know what the exact framerate is, but it looks very smooth at 1080. The display goes funky if you raise it to 1440 and goes off the bottom of the screen and comes back around on the top. Hopefully the Boot Camp update will fix it.

 

[Freis968]

From what I heard the win version runs better i guess.

I had COD4 when it first came out and ran it in Bootcamp obviously because the Mac version did not come out until months later. I bought the Mac version once it came out and I can honestly say that it run MUCH better in bootcamp with Vista. I don't know the reason why, perhaps someone here can explain it, but it sure did.

The only game I will be installing once I get my i7 will be Modern Warfare 2, bootcamp w/ Vista, sure hope it runs great!

 

[Freis968]

Although this is my first Mac and I haven't heard past generations, I can compare the sound of this to other speakers I've heard that are comparable in size. This 27" iMac sounds great! Frank Zappa's guitar is singing through these speakers right now.

Call of Duty: MW2 (the first and only game I have played on this yet) could have used a little more low end with the explosions, but I don't want to ruin the simplicity of this machine with a 2.1 or 4.1 speaker system. As I said, these speakers do this machine justice.

Oh, I did not see your post. What res are you running COD-MW2 at? I currently have it set at 1920x1080 on my Mac Pro using an ATI HD 3870 card and it is choking up at that setting about 10% of the time.

I can appreciate your not wanting to ruin the simplicity of your iMac w/ a 2.1 sound system and I would love to do the same, but playing COD-MW2 without a 2.1 like my Klipsch 2.1 system just does not do the game justice. I like feeling the explosions instead of simply seeing them and barely feeling them with those puny little speakers.

 

[nicroma]

Oh, I did not see your post. What res are you running COD-MW2 at? I currently have it set at 1920x1080 on my Mac Pro using an ATI HD 3870 card and it is choking up at that setting about 10% of the time.

I can appreciate your not wanting to ruin the simplicity of your iMac w/ a 2.1 sound system and I would love to do the same, but playing COD-MW2 without a 2.1 like my Klipsch 2.1 system just does not do the game justice. I like feeling the explosions instead of simply seeing them and barely feeling them with those puny little speakers.

I have the Klipsch 4.1's, but I'm happy with how it is. I'm running the game at 1920x1080 and I haven't noticed any slowdown. I have AA set at 2x and the rest set to Auto. I set everything to Extra high manually and it was choking so I put it back to Auto. I didn't notice a difference between the two visually anyway.

 

[gwhitta]

After a couple of days living with mine I'm convinced that this is the most beautiful computer ever designed. The display is so incredible it's practically hypnotic.

 

[nando2323]

My 27" Core 2 Duo 3.06 Ghz used approximately 30 minutes to encode a 1:44 hour movie.
From Divx (avi) to H264 (mp4) with Xilisoft Video Converter.

The movie I tested it on was Karate Kid part 1. Which is 126 minutes so that's pretty good.

 

[mrsir2009]

LOL the screen looks amazing even when its off...

 

[wesleyh]

Not a fan of the glossy at all... Have a window 2.5 meters behind me AND an aquarium... Gonna get some thicker curtains to cover up the window..

 

[DoFoT9]

The movie I tested it on was Karate Kid part 1. Which is 126 minutes so that's pretty good.

what a great movie!

 

[PupnTaco]

Holy crap, Handbrake encoding an HD MKV to M4V for the Apple TV dropped from 6 hours (2007 MacBook) to 45 minutes (iMac 27" i7).

hahahahahahahahahha

 

[wesleyh]

Is anyone else's HD making alot of noise? Ticking sounds that last for a second or two like every 10 seconds? How about when you're downloading something?

 

[DoFoT9]

Holy crap, Handbrake encoding an HD MKV to M4V for the Apple TV dropped from 6 hours (2007 MacBook) to 45 minutes (iMac 27" i7).

hahahahahahahahahha

wooooow thats very impressive! great to hear those results!

Is anyone else's HD making alot of noise? Ticking sounds that last for a second or two like every 10 seconds? How about when you're downloading something?

well when downloading it would make sense that the HDD would be seeking a lot! maybe the case acts as some sort of sound increaser lol!

 

[Uncle Pinny]

All in all I'm very happy with my i7 (upgraded to 12gb using 8gb Hynix memory bought off ebay).

The screen is just awesome - really crisp and nice colours. Very impressed.

Loving the Magic Mouse after dreading what it would be like. It's the ideal size and I love the fact you can get your fingers under it around the side as that's the sort of mouse I like. The two finger browser swipe forwards and back pages is a bit hit and miss though. Maybe some more 'practice' is needed or maybe it's just not a great feature - it certainly doesn't feel as natural a movement as it does on a track pad.

Hard drive noise - yes you can hear it seeking/clicking a bit. Most likely cause it's seated directly in front of your face behind the centre of the screen. Whilst I don't personally like the noise, it sounds perfectly normal to me and is perhaps characteristic of that model (Caviar Black I think). I'm planning to swap out the DVD drive with a SSD once a 500gb one get's cheap enough - will use as the system disk.

Boot time on first or second boot took a while. Not sure why. Seems to have speeded up now though (oddly enough after I changed it to boot into 64bit kernel and extensions).

Speed wise it seems nice and responsive. Will get into Handbrake later in the week. CS4 apps start nice and quickly which is all good - going to bring some After Effects projects home this weekend and test render times - really hoping for some muscle with this machine.

All in all I love it. Even from a plain aesthetic view, it's just a wonderful piece of design. Wasn't taken with the whole 'wireless' thing before but the simplicity of it is really something.

 

[NJRonbo]

The more I play with this new i7 the
happier I am.

This is the best Mac I have ever owned.

It's silent, it's fast, and the display must
be seen to be believed. I have never seen
as stunning a display as this.

 

[jettie1767]

The more I play with this new i7 the
happier I am.

This is the best Mac I have ever owned.

It's silent, it's fast, and the display must
be seen to be believed. I have never seen
as stunning a display as this.

Totally agree! I got mine all setup yesterday. It was well worth the wait for the i7!