Analyst: iMac and MacBook Updates Coming Within Weeks?

[Bag of Hurt]

Blue ray? probably still a Bag of Hurt!

Would be great to see matte options and LED on the iMac. It's definitely time for a new matte 30" ACD!! Seems like the original came out ages ago.

 

[Vidd]

I got the first aluminum 24" iMac (late 2007) and it suits my needs but this has caught my interest.
How do the current iMacs compare speed-wise and in terms of graphics performance to the old 2.4Ghz 24"?

I wouldn't mind a few more FPS in TF2.

 

[Eidorian]

Haha I'm not saying I wouldn't buy a tricked out machine myself. I guess it's often our geek equivalent of that 20th pair of shoes my girlfriend buys even though I try to convince her she doesn't need them . The fun is in the having, not the utility.

I don't get it.

I need it for the utility. Why would I be buying it then?

 

[MorphingDragon]

I don't get it.

I need it for the utility. Why would I be buying it then?

Spend a few days on the nvidia forums. Then come back.

 

[Eidorian]

Spend a few days on the nvidia forums. Then come back.

Lately with the wonderful links to SemiAccurate, which I regard as highly as RoughlyDrafted, I don't think I would need to.

What are you trying to tell me again?

 

[neoelectronaut]

Excellent to hear. My sister has been in the market for a top 'o the line iMac for a few months now and I told her to wait for a refresh.

I'm glad I did.

 

[Tyr.]

I don't get it.

I need it for the utility. Why would I be buying it then?

I could probably convince myself I need a 4 core cpu, but a quick glance at Activity Monitor shows me my system is hardly saturated as it is. The same is true for GPU's: getting one that makes your games run at 100fps instead of 60fps isn't really useful. Diminishing returns, hence the bad shoe analogy .

I don't particularly care about architecture changes on new iMacs for this reason I just want them to deal with real problems I have seen with the thing, like the bad screens.

 

[Eidorian]

I could probably convince myself I need a 4 core cpu, but a quick glance at Activity Monitor shows me my system is hardly saturated as it is. The same is true for GPU's: getting one that makes your games run at 100fps instead of 60fps isn't really useful. Diminishing returns, hence the bad shoe analogy .

I don't particularly care about architecture changes on new iMacs for this reason I just want them to deal with real problems I have seen with the thing, like the bad screens.

That's nice for your situation but I need the hardware. I don't cry about idle states when there are plenty of ways to conserve power on hardware. If you're concerned about money, I'm sure the $158 Core i5 750 I bought left me out on the street.

There are plenty of affordable options that are a significant improvement. I'm not spending outrageous amounts on the bleeding edge with diminishing returns. (e.g. GTX 295, Core i7 975)

I'll just enjoy my hardware.

 

[AidenShaw]

It's about "snappier"

I could probably convince myself I need a 4 core cpu, but a quick glance at Activity Monitor shows me my system is hardly saturated as it is.

Activity Monitor shows averages over time.

On the other hand, when you click on something you might wake up several threads at once. A quad will be able to work on more things at once, and get the result back to you faster.

With more cores, the system will feel snappier even though long term averages say that the system is mostly idle in both cases.

And, being the impatient beings that we humans are, "snappier" is better.

Excellent to hear. My sister has been in the market for a top 'o the line iMac for a few months now and I told her to wait for a refresh.

You might want to warn her to check Apple every day. The recent track record has been for Apple to add two features and remove one.

Your sister might find that the current Imac is better for her than the new model - so she'll want to hit "buy" in the refurb store as soon as possible after the announcement.

 

[Eidorian]

Activity Monitor shows averages over time.

On the other hand, when you click on something you might wake up several threads at once. A quad will be able to work on more things at once, and get the result back to you faster.

With more cores, the system will feel snappier even though long term averages say that the system is mostly idle in both cases.

And, being the impatient beings that we are, "snappier" is better.

Nehalem takes this into account with good scheduling as well. Park a window opening on a single core or two for 3.2 GHz Turbo clock and watch the snappiness. Move to 2.66 GHz across all cores when you're transcoding.

This caught my eye on Anandtech's review of Lynnfield.

The turbo mode transitions happen fast enough to accelerate even simple actions like opening a new window. OS and application responsiveness is significantly improved as a result and it's something that you can actually feel when using a Lynnfield machine. It all works so seamlessly, you just always get the best performance you need. It's like Intel crammed the best single, dual and quad-core processors all into one package.

There's no longer the juggling between a fast dual core or a slower quad core when your quad core processor can do both on the fly depending on the situation.

This came to mind after my earlier posts, Snow Leopard, once the applications catch up, is getting ready to leverage Nehalem and beyond and Turbo Boost is just the start of the fun. It's just depressing that Apple plays the crippled, overpriced hardware game on anything short of the Mac Pro dual socket.

 

[AidenShaw]

Nehalem takes this into account with good scheduling as well. Park a window opening on a single core or two for 3.2 GHz Turbo clock and watch the snappiness.

OK, but...

Apple doesn't use Nehalem in any laptop or desktop. Only the Mac Pro workstation has Turbo. (But a good argument for making a less-anorexic Imac with a Core i5 or Core i7 CPU...)

In the case I describe (a GUI event activating several threads) - the quad core will be far better than the dual core if three or more threads wake up.

 

[Eidorian]

OK, but...

Apple doesn't use Nehalem in any laptop or desktop. Only the Mac Pro workstation has Turbo. (But a good argument for making a less-anorexic Imac with a Core i5 or Core i7 CPU...)

In the case I describe (a GUI event activating several threads) - the quad core will be far better than the dual core if three or more threads wake up.

It's annoying to play the waiting game on any fun hardware unless you're getting the Mac Pro. Snow Leopard is out now with only a few machines to play with Nehalem on and even fewer applications.

Penryn mobile processors came with a Turbo Stack that would allow a one clock multiplier jump on a single core while sleeping the other if you were under TDP limits. This should be implemented in hardware somewhat like Nehalem's Turbo Boost. The only application I know of where you can observe the Turbos would be the TMonitor beta under Windows.

Mainstream Lynnfield just came out and Clarksfield should be out later this month. Clarksfield (4C/8T) is our only real hope until Arrandale (2C/4T).

 

[MorphingDragon]

Lately with the wonderful links to SemiAccurate, which I regard as highly as RoughlyDrafted, I don't think I would need to.

What are you trying to tell me again?

Why you would want something if its not a utility.

Just visit there and all will become clear.

 

[Tyr.]

Activity Monitor shows averages over time.

On the other hand, when you click on something you might wake up several threads at once. A quad will be able to work on more things at once, and get the result back to you faster.

With more cores, the system will feel snappier even though long term averages say that the system is mostly idle in both cases.

And, being the impatient beings that we humans are, "snappier" is better.

I think for most current application that's bunk, the cpu time we're talking about is so small any perceived advantage could just as easily be a placebo effect. Applications are more likely to be io-bound than cpu-bound these days.

 

[polaris20]

IMac needs to be able to employ desktop chipsets to help lower the price and incease performance. A thinner machine really isn't desirable.


Dave

I agree. An iMac twice the thickness with a desktop chop would be fine with me, if it's possible. And I really don't see why not, seeing as how I've got two Asus 1U pizza boxes running Core 2 quad desktop chips day in, day out at work.

It'd be worth the performance, especially seeing as how the space behind an iMac IMO is wasted; my desk is about 3 feet deep. What's a few more inches in thickness?

 

[AidenShaw]

I think for most current application that's bunk, the cpu time we're talking about is so small any perceived advantage could just as easily be a placebo effect. Applications are more likely to be io-bound than cpu-bound these days.

Is your "everyday" system a quad or octo-core?

I suspect not, if you make an intellectual argument that more cores aren't better.

In human perception, an "instant" is commonly taken to be 30 milliseconds. We can't distinguish any difference between 10 msec and 20 msec, but most people perceive that a 50 msec response time is slower than 25 msec.

That's the elusive "snappiness". If you click, and it happens within 30 msec - it's "instantaneous", AKA "snappy". If it takes 100 msec, you notice that there's a lag.

So - the uber-geek with the stopwatch will calculate that the quad core saved the user 2.8 seconds during the day. The naïve user, however, will think that the dual core is "slow" and the quad is "snappy".

 

[polaris20]

Is your "everyday" system a quad or octo-core?

I suspect not, if you make an intellectual argument that more cores aren't better.

In human perception, an "instant" is commonly taken to be 30 milliseconds. We can't distinguish any difference between 10 msec and 20 msec, but most people perceive that a 50 msec response time is slower than 25 msec.

That's the elusive "snappiness". If you click, and it happens within 30 msec - it's "instantaneous", AKA "snappy". If it takes 100 msec, you notice that there's a lag.

So - the uber-geek with the stopwatch will calculate that the quad core saved the user 2.8 seconds during the day. The naïve user, however, will think that the dual core is "slow" and the quad is "snappy".

Using a quad core workstation and C2D MBP daily, and an Octo MP about every other day, I'd say the difference in speed and "snappiness" is more noticeable with the dual to quad jump. However quad to octo is only noticeable with stuff like FCP, engineering apps, and Fusion with a lot of VM's open.

I think in a lot of ways for the average person an SSD drive would make a more substantial difference in performance, as disk io is a definite bottleneck. The laptops we have with SSD are very "snappy" in regards to application launch and overall GUI performance.

I'd love to toss a couple X-25's in a RAID 0 into the Octo. That would be crazy.

 

[Tyr.]

That's the elusive "snappiness". If you click, and it happens within 30 msec - it's "instantaneous", AKA "snappy". If it takes 100 msec, you notice that there's a lag.

The problem as I tried to point out isn't the CPU though. It's the data being ferried over the system bus, disk i/o, ram i/o and pushing all the display data to the GPU are the real bottlenecks these days.

I'll refer to "Quad Core Desktops and Diminishing Returns" http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000655.html

 

[automan98]

Low end Mac....bring it on!

 

[LagunaSol]

I got the first aluminum 24" iMac (late 2007) and it suits my needs but this has caught my interest.
How do the current iMacs compare speed-wise and in terms of graphics performance to the old 2.4Ghz 24"?

I wouldn't mind a few more FPS in TF2.

My 24" iMac with the Radeon 4850 does a mighty fine job at TF2 and Left4Dead.

 

[LagunaSol]

I think in a lot of ways for the average person an SSD drive would make a more substantial difference in performance, as disk io is a definite bottleneck. The laptops we have with SSD are very "snappy" in regards to application launch and overall GUI performance.

You know what drags my system down? Waiting for my stupid external HD to wake from sleep and spin up every time I do something elementary, like, say, launch the Dictionary app.

 

[jmcguckin]

while I don't plan to be in the market for a new computer for quite some time, it'll still be nice to have a fresh set of eye-candy from the folks at Apple come October (assuming there's some weight to this rumor)... and although I've had a couple hiccups hardware-wise with my Aluminum MacBook, I'm definitely more than satisfied with its performance overall.

on the other hand, I'll have debit card ready the day Apple announce a 13" MacBook Pro with high-resolution (1440x900) matte screen, USB 3, 802.11n final, and/or a quad-core processor... and considering the rate that Apple are revising their notebooks' hardware, I don't see this happening any time soon- though I wouldn't complain if I was proven wrong .

 

[Eidorian]

You know what drags my system down? Waiting for my stupid external HD to wake from sleep and spin up every time I do something elementary, like, say, launch the Dictionary app.

Sleeping drives are annoying.

I have the same problem reading files off of the WD Green drive on my desktop. I'll select the file(s) in Explorer and it just has to spin up before the application goes anywhere.

The problem as I tried to point out isn't the CPU though. It's the data being ferried over the system bus, disk i/o, ram i/o and pushing all the display data to the GPU are the real bottlenecks these days.

I'll refer to "Quad Core Desktops and Diminishing Returns" http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000655.html

Welcome to 2006. I hope you're not staying there.

I remember back in 2005 when people would ask me what would you do with an extra core? The same thing came around with idle cores on the Q6600.

 

[LagunaSol]

and considering the rate that Apple are revising their notebooks' hardware, I don't see this happening any time soon- though I wouldn't complain if I was proven wrong .

Remember the days, not too long ago, when Apple would be the first in the industry to incorporate Intel's newest cutting-edge chips?

I miss those days...

 

[Drag'nGT]

iMac redesign with rounded corners... I'm staring at mine and thinking how much rounder does it get? A ball? I'm honestly stumped on the redesign for the iMac... I think it's gorgeous already. The MacBook however... please give us back the black one and take that damned white one away! Oh, $799 price point too.

Even though I doubt it happens, which is beginning to piss me off, I hope they up the standard ram and hdd sizes across the board. They pulled it off for the iMac last year so why not update the laptops too? All the Windows Vista/7 64-bit models will sport 4gb ram.

Why no quad iMac yet again?