27" i3 vs. i5 upgrade?

[mm63204]

Is $180 worth it to upgrade the base 27" iMac to the i5 processor? This is not the quad core. I thought the turbo charge might help me -- I am going to be commuting to a school for engineering and would like to work on projects using AutoCAD for Mac when I am at home -- but I am also on a budget.

It would be ~$1700 vs ~$1900...the quad core is ~$2000 but with tax might be more.

Thanks!

 

[Drewbie]

if it were up to me i don't think the i3 to i5 would be enough of an upgrade to justify 200 bucks

if it were from an i3 to i5 quad core i believe you would notice more a difference..

an basic i3 will be able to handle autoCAD just fine, its the graphics that will bottleneck before the processor on an application like that.

 

[mm63204]

Thanks for your input! Given what you said, would upgrading the video card be a better idea? It would be $150 to go from an ATI Radeon HD 5670 512MB GDDR3 SDRAM to ATI Radeon HD 5750 1GB GDDR5 SDRAM.

I will definitely buy RAM aftermarket, as I did for my 2007 MacBook that has 4GB and is still working pretty well. Up to 16 GB will be nice 😀

 

[Hellhammer]

Why not get a refurb? i7 goes for as low as 1699$ and will beat both of the Macs you listed.

 

[Spudracer]

Why not get a refurb? i7 goes for as low as 1699$ and will beat both of the Macs you listed.

Uh, no!

The Quad Core i5 is $1,699 in the Refurb store. I just bought one. Delivered this past Monday.

The Quad Core i7 is $1,899 in the Refurb store.

 

[Hellhammer]

Uh, no!

The Quad Core i5 is $1,699 in the Refurb store. I just bought one. Delivered this past Monday.

The Quad Core i7 is $1,899 in the Refurb store.

The previous gen i7 used to be 1699$. Looks like it's not in stock at the moment

 

[SR2]

In about 3 weeks Intel is going to release Sandy bridge and the Core series will be slow in comparison. This is a bad time to spend money on any computer with a Core series CPU. Wait for the next imac update or you'll regret it.