27" iMac: Am I kidding myself with i7?

[kkr0nn0s]

Aside from hyper threading, the i7 also gives you a cycle bump. While many don't appreciate hyper threading (I do), the 20% cycle bump is also significant.

Exactly, running at a flat 4GHz before Turbo can help with more than gaming. But, definitely not 'necessary'. The i5 is plenty fast, as well.

 

[Jack Burton]

I can't imagine being annoyed by the noise in an iMac. My old franken-PC at home is pretty darn loud because of all the large high RPM fans I have going in it. I learned to ignore it quickly because I either have sound going, headphones on, or I'm simply concentrating.

Can't wait to replace this thing with an iMac. Windows 10 has been solid so far, but it just gives me the creeps.

 

[kødskjold]

I'm trying to figure this out myself. I have a tendency to spec out in most categories b/c I want to futureproof (My last home-built rig has been my primary for the past 8 years). I'm in a similar boat for usage, with maybe a different landscape: work (many SSH/terminal windows, RDP, coding/IDE, VMs), a million browser tabs open, and the occasional game. To give you an idea of how much I keep open at a time... I currently have 16GB of RAM and it's @ 92% utilization.

The Barefeats bench for the i5 & i7 are close enough for single core usage, but the latter crushes multi-core. Still unsure...

 

[makrom]

I'm trying to figure this out myself. I have a tendency to spec out in most categories b/c I want to futureproof (My last home-built rig has been my primary for the past 8 years). I'm in a similar boat for usage, with maybe a different landscape: work (many SSH/terminal windows, RDP, coding/IDE, VMs), a million browser tabs open, and the occasional game. To give you an idea of how much I keep open at a time... I currently have 16GB of RAM and it's @ 92% utilization.

The Barefeats bench for the i5 & i7 are close enough for single core usage, but the latter crushes multi-core. Still unsure...

Well, are you planning to do a lot of multi threaded things that could take a significant amount of time to finish?
If you can't tell now, you can take the i7 just to be sure or go with the option to upgrade the CPU somewhen down the road.
Of the things you listed, only VMs have the potential of benefitting greatly from multithreading, but it depends largely of what you are doing within these VMs. Compiling can benefit as well, but it also depends very much on what kind of coding you are doing. Since we use dedicated regression test servers for integration tests and upwards, I never compile huge projects locally.
Other common reasons to get big multithreaded performance are rendering and compressing/decompressing or encoding/decoding. If you don't do these things on a relevant scale, I'd rather go with the i5.

 

[kødskjold]

Well, are you planning to do a lot of multi threaded things that could take a significant amount of time to finish?
If you can't tell now, you can take the i7 just to be sure or go with the option to upgrade the CPU somewhen down the road.
Of the things you listed, only VMs have the potential of benefitting greatly from multithreading, but it depends largely of what you are doing within these VMs. Compiling can benefit as well, but it also depends very much on what kind of coding you are doing. Since we use dedicated regression test servers for integration tests and upwards, I never compile huge projects locally.
Other common reasons to get big multithreaded performance are rendering and compressing/decompressing or encoding/decoding. If you don't do these things on a relevant scale, I'd rather go with the i5.

I do the occasional handbrake encoding from ISO, but I don't expect that to finish in a timely manner (usually a scripted night job). Coding is iOS & RoR, small scale though. I have an enterprise VM environment, but I like to have my own for a few uses. Some of my VM as of late are for: pentesting, threat sandbox, CM recipe targets, and various R&D.