Advice Buying a New iMac

[mrmarts]

Hey all

I finally broke and am going to change my late 2009 imac for a 2012 model, I'am planning on keeping the same i5 processor but upgrading the ram to 32gb, the hard drive to 3 tb fusion and the video card to 2gb. As I currently own a i7 2.8ghz, would i be downgrading by getting a i5 processor.

Also I am buying my first Apple TV with the computer. i understand that you can use airplay on newer machines, as I am not familiar with the concept how does it work?, can i use airplay for playing iTunes movies?, and what are the benefits of it?

 

[Bear]

I finally broke and am going to change my late 2009 imac for a 2012 model, I'am planning on keeping the same i5 processor but upgrading the ram to 32gb, the hard drive to 3 tb fusion and the video card to 2gb. As I currently own a i7 2.8ghz, would i be downgrading by getting a i5 processor.
...

To be clear you're talking about going from a 2.8GHz i7 2009 iMac to a 3.2GHz i5 2012 iMac? If you look at the Geekbench results for those 2 models, a 3.1GHz 2012 has a score of ~13600 and the 2.8GHz has 2009 has a score of ~10000.

In general what you are looking at is an upgrade. The fusion drive and the additional ram will help even more. And if it helps, if I needed a new iMac today I would be looking at going between the same models you have listed, with minor changes in the 2012 config.

 

[SMDBill]

Hey all

I finally broke and am going to change my late 2009 imac for a 2012 model, I'am planning on keeping the same i5 processor but upgrading the ram to 32gb, the hard drive to 3 tb fusion and the video card to 2gb. As I currently own a i7 2.8ghz, would i be downgrading by getting a i5 processor.

Also I am buying my first Apple TV with the computer. i understand that you can use airplay on newer machines, as I am not familiar with the concept how does it work?, can i use airplay for playing iTunes movies?, and what are the benefits of it?

I would imagine the new one with the i5 will feel like it's screaming in comparison due to the processor improvement, GPU improvement (if you push it), additional RAM and especially the fusion drive.

/envious

 

[Red Fuji]

Also I am buying my first Apple TV with the computer. i understand that you can use airplay on newer machines, as I am not familiar with the concept how does it work?, can i use airplay for playing iTunes movies?, and what are the benefits of it?

One of my favorite Airplay benefits is you can have better audio; Imac - AppleTv - A/V receiver - TV.

 

[n-i-k-k-o]

Hey all

I finally broke and am going to change my late 2009 imac for a 2012 model, I'am planning on keeping the same i5 processor but upgrading the ram to 32gb, the hard drive to 3 tb fusion and the video card to 2gb. As I currently own a i7 2.8ghz, would i be downgrading by getting a i5 processor.

Also I am buying my first Apple TV with the computer. i understand that you can use airplay on newer machines, as I am not familiar with the concept how does it work?, can i use airplay for playing iTunes movies?, and what are the benefits of it?

Frankly, I bought the 32gig memory upgrade from Crucial and I've yet to see more than 10gig used on Activity Monitor. So adding an 8 gig stick pack to the 8 gig that comes with should be more than enough!

 

[mrmarts]

So a smarter move would be to customise my new iMac like below:

3.4Ghz I7 Processor
16 GB RAM
3 TB Fusion Drive
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 680MX

From
2.8GHz I7
8GB RAM
1 TB HDD
512MB ATI RADEON

however the speed of the CPU and RAM seems like a minor upgrade, also those the new motherboards come with onboard graphics like the macbook retina .