27" iMac question (old v. new)

[kobi22]

OK, question . . .

I'm looking to get a 27" iMac. The "older" models are on sale and come equipped with a video card with twice as much ram. So I'm wondering, which of these will "appear" to be faster?

2.8GHz Core i5 Quad-Core
4GB (2x2GB) RAM
1TB 7200rpm Hard Drive
ATI Radeon HD 5750 1GB Graphics


2.7GHz Intel Core i5 Quad-Core
4GB (2x2GB) RAM
1TB 7200rpm Hard Drive
AMD Radeon HD 6770M 512MB GPU


I do mostly Photoshop work, compositing very LARGE files files. Am I going to notice any difference in performance between these two?

Thanks in advance.

k

 

[kevin2223]

The newer 2.7GHz i5 is going to be faster than last year's 2.8GHz due to more aggressive Turbo Boost (3.7GHz vs. 3.33GHz). Plus the new model is more energy efficient (65 Watts vs. 95 Watts).

The new GPU should be slightly better, but I am not the most knowledgeable person on this subject. Last year's 5750 (actually a 5850m) ranks 49 on Notebook Check while new 6770m ranks 44.

I believe you will want to upgrade RAM third-party (too expensive from Apple) as that will reduce time working with large Photoshop projects and the process of upgrading RAM can be done in a few minutes.

There are some Photoshop benchmarks here; which indicate that if you upgrade RAM to 12GB (~$100) or 16GB (~$200), you can cut time down from 9.6 minutes to right around 5 minutes.

Overall, I believe the new model is better and offers Thunderbolt (for fast external storage when they become available), plus a number of other improvements. I hope this helps.