Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

27" QC i7 iMac now or (painfully) wait?

N

nporteschaikin

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 23, 2009
21
0
My 15" MBP from almost two years ago was severely mistreated in it's short tenure as my primary computer. It fell out of my car a few days ago and it is now in two pieces.

I am typing this from my mother's ten year old Dell. As a Mac user for about five glorious years, this is nothing short of painful. Thankfully, I don't desperately need a computer right now.

I've decided that, while I need a portable machine eventually (I'm going back to school in a couple of months), I should probably purchase a machine that sits on my desk rather than one I can toss around.

My plan has been to buy a quad-core i7 iMac and doing an after-market RAM upgrade to get up to at least 12 GB.

I pose the following question: would you tolerate this machine until the Sandy Bridge-based processors are implemented, or would you just take the plunge? I know it's hard to have too much foresight into the plans of a company as secretive as Apple, but is the next upgrade going to be something I regret not having? Also know that I need this computer to last me at least two years -- hopefully three.

Bless me with your insight, MR.
 
I have a current generation i5 iMac with 8Gb RAM, and this thing is badass. The current iMac is an amazing piece of computer, and the quad core i7 will be even better than mine!

The new iMacs whenever they come out will be slightly faster, of course. However, the iMacs are that good that I doubt you'll care - I certainly won't!
 
I would get a refurb. The new iMacs of course will be faster but you could save $400-$500 right now. Thats almost enough to buy an iPad to compliment your iMac.
 
I wouldn't bother waiting, I have the i7, and for normal use I rarely see a spike in processor use in iStat.

Only when converting videos with Handbrake the iMac actually gets use of the processing power.

The current bottleneck on iMac speed is the hard disk. Whenever my iMac feels slow, I can hear the hard disk growling away. A faster processor would never make up for poor hard disk performance.

You'd be wise to choose a lot of RAM though, especially if using Virtual box or something. My 8GB RAM is in full use with Photoshop, iMovie, Safari, Word, Excel, iTunes and Virtual box (2GB assigned) as measured by iStat.
 
I had a Dell i7 of the same generation as the current Summer 2010 Macs and I sold it and got the iMac with the i5 baseline recently. I see no difference in performance yet the iMac is extremely quiet even when gaming and running Handbrake. I was a big left 4 dead gamer with my Dell and the iMac is actually even better with gaming than my Dell.

I wouldn't wait if I were you. Apple could easily take until August to refresh the iMacs this year. I am glad I bought mine and will have no regrets even if Sandy Bridge was released next week. You can save a lot by not getting today's i7 iMac.
 
I'm definitely buying an i7 now. I'm not waiting. The speed bump might be useful, but not at the expense of a new and unproven model. Granted, they will probably be ok, but like someone said above, the current i5 and i7 quad iMacs are badass. Don't be afraid to just get one. The new one won't exactly be smoking the old one. I doubt there would be a noticeable difference.

The higher up in the food chain you get (processor wise) the less you're going to notice a speed bump.
 
Don't forget that the new iMacs will probably be equipped with the newer operating system -- Lion. But, again, as the others have already noted above, even power users are satisfied with current models.
 
I'm waiting.

I want the new ipad 2, and the new imac with Lion on it.

I'm going to sell my macbook pro for close to what I paid for it...$1100 + upgraded hard drive, 8gb of ram...and I may purchase apple care for ease of selling to the next purchaser.

That will be of great use to me, when I buy my two items. I hate buying at an end of a cycle...when I should have purchased the imac back in august instead of the 13 inch macbook pro.

I'll be upgrading the 16gb with the imac, and putting an SSD in I previously purchased from intel.
 
I'm waiting for the new one too, I'm after one with an SSD and a 2TB normal HD. IMO I think they'll probably use the same SSD's as used in the MBA, and this may reduce the cost compared to the current version.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back