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6970M 3.1GHz i5 iMac 2011 or 2.9GHz i5 GT 660M 2012 iMac?

cinnabun93

cinnabun93

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 24, 2013
29
0
Hi! I'm in college and bought my first iMac a while ago and my parents fell in love with it and want to get one. I found a refurb in apple's store with a 6970m and compared it to the new one with a 660m. Which is the more powerful iMac. The 2011 model can be had for 1599 and the other 1799. Thanks.
 
The 2011 iMac with 6970M is more powerful than 2012 iMac with 660M. With that said, I had a bad experience with pre 2012 iMac, which kinda hot to touch when under heavy loads.
And this heat also leads to some hardware failures which makes Apple replace the whole unit instead.

That's not necessarily would apply to you, though. But it's a risk you need to consider when making the purchase
 
Warranty?

If they give you the proper warranty, i would go with the 2011 model it has a cd/dvd rom, it is faster, and it also supports 32 gig ram.
 
iSayuSay said:
The 2011 iMac with 6970M is more powerful than 2012 iMac with 660M. With that said, I had a bad experience with pre 2012 iMac, which kinda hot to touch when under heavy loads.
And this heat also leads to some hardware failures which makes Apple replace the whole unit instead.

That's not necessarily would apply to you, though. But it's a risk you need to consider when making the purchase
Click to expand...

If you use Adobe products, or do any photo/video editing you will probably get better performance from the 660M.
 
2011 model will be faster. CPU performance is comparable. The 6970m is about 20% faster than the 660m and has 1 GB vram vs 512 MB of the 660m (which is weak for the resolution).
 
Last edited:
cirus said:
2012 model will be faster. CPU performance is comparable. The 6970m is about 20% faster than the 660m and has 1 GB vram vs 512 MB of the 660m (which is weak for the resolution).
Click to expand...

So surely the 2011 model is better, no?
 
KimJongEun said:
So surely the 2011 model is better, no?
Click to expand...

Yep it's faster, but it also runs hotter. Oh yes I've been there so I know what 2011 iMac feels like when it under loads.

I got my 2011 replaced and get a 2012 iMac, it seems to be a better machine, better cooling, not as hot under heavy loads .. and as much as I hate myself being hypocrite, the slimmed down, redesigned iMac is growing on me.
 
I'm not sure if anyone is actually looking into the specific processors in these models. So, I thought I'd help.

2011 iMac 3.1GHz i5 (2400) Benchmark = 5838
2012 iMac 2.9GHz i5 (3470S) Benchmark = 6354

Looks like the 2012 will be faster when it comes to just CPU.

6970M is a little faster than the 660M when looking at benchmarks, but it depends on what apps you're using and if those apps utilize Nvidia's CUDA
 
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