Apple Releases Core 2 Duo iMac, Adds 24" Model

[Erasmus]

Indeed, the new iMac is a lovely machine. Doesn't it make you a little excited that by using Merom in it they have left room for the Conroe mini-tower we've all been dreaming of?

Yes.
I want my Kentsfield minitower with R600!!!
So 7600 is a doubling over X1600, and X1900 is a doubling over 7600 (from various reviews). What is going to be the performance increase of R600 over X1600?

Something like 2 or 3? Orders of magnitude?

Yep, Merom MBP's tomorrow. Or today, I suppose, for u Americans. New iPods on Tuesday.

With Mini Mac Pro also on the 12th. Completely user upgradeable, available with upgradeable Conroe (2.4, 2.67), or Conroe Extreme (2.93), four RAM slots, awesome cooling, and at least one double wide (Or maybe even triple?) PCI slot for any available (or future) graphics card. Including the ever closer X2900 (possible name for R600? probably not). And a little light on the front that reads "Apple Loves nVIDIA" whenever an nVidia card is detected. Which is a problem for the R600. Maybe room for 2 500Gb HD's also.

It's 1 inch bigger, but has the EXACT same resolution, so no extra 20 pixels here

For some reason I was expecting 1900x1200. I thought that's what the 23" ACDs used. Never mind.

 

[mac-er]

It is interesting that Steve Jobs is not quoted at all in the press release.

 

[javierbds]

Let me give you a lesson on how CPUs are made.

Intel makes some dies. Then they go through a process called "binning". In this process the dies to test for maximum performance at a certain voltage.

Mobile C2D chips are Conroes that are binned to do the same speed at a lower voltage. So the performance is not going to be immensely different.

Depending on how you look at it, the Mobile chips are actually the cream of the crop.

Sorry, I hate it when someone starts with "Let me give you a lesson ..."

Guess you forgot your lesson about mainboards (logic boards) and how overall system performance is not just in the chip ... Take a trip around anandtech

A 1.83 Conroe System is almost on par with a 2.33 Merom System (and probably cheaper), so Intel do INDEED know their segments ... The Merom System will be really 64-bit when they release Santa Rosa (ask AidenShaw), probably Santa Rosa iMacs by Leopard release ... (I have to cheat myself into not buying a new Mac until Leopard ...).

iMacs are some kind of hybrid 'cause they use laptop chips and boards and desktop GPUs and drives ... Whether or not they can put Conroes on an iMac or if Apple has the ??? to release a Mac mini Pro ('Barebones' Conroe) is another story ...


EDIT
bare 17'' should make a good volume machine for offices
17'' for people on a budget
20'' very nice, and the most bang for your buck probably
The 24'' is a sweet prosumer machine (so I guess no Mac Mini Pro)
/EDIT

 

[50548]

I work there too and I have to say I find the beige G3 very quaint! Amazing how people here are grinding their teeth over how awful and substandard various changes to the iMac/Mini are and yet our business manages just fine on a slew of 233Mhz G3s...

Worry not, there are also people here saying that Vista-Shortsight will be an immediate and resounding success in corporations...as if mass adoption of the newest and greatest were a necessary thing for companies...

And my good ol' iBook G3 500 is doing fine with Tiger...

It is interesting that Steve Jobs is not quoted at all in the press release.

Should we vote for Schiller as CEO and Ballmer as CTO, then..?

 

[joemama]

large order return?

So our school system ordered over 20 iMacs in the middle of August. it appears that not only have the processors changed, but the price of the 20" in less too.

What is Apple's return policy? I am ready to send them all back.

 

[QCassidy352]

Sorry, but maximum power consumption of Conroe is 65W, whereas "average" power consumption of a 2.1 GHz G5 is 25W. I realize that these are not comparing the same thing, since G5 power consumption is generally reported as average instead of maximum.

uh, what?
even single CPUs...

And the G5 could have been put into a laptop, just not the elegant, thin, lightweight kind that Apple likes to produce. It would have been more comparable to the heavy, thick, high-performance Windows laptops that Windows fanboys used to compare to the PowerBook to show how poorly it performed.

Missing the point, which is that the iMac was able to accomodate the G5 with no problem. Even if some behemoth laptop could have accomodated the G5 in theory, that doesn't invalidate the fact that the iMac is a whole different (and much more heat-capable) beast.

I'm not sure what NVIDIA card you are thinking of that outperforms the X1600 AND uses less power.

nvidea 7xxx series, as someone else said. Excellent performance per watt.

Finally, I was never suggesting that there was not a gap in Apple's product offerings, I was only saying that the Conroe is the right choice for the iMac. If you read my posts on recent threads, you will see that I agree with AidenShaw that a Conroe-based minitower may be in the works.

I assume you mean merom was the right choice? And if you read some of my posts over the past month you'll see why I strongly believe that no matter how much you and I both want a conroe minitower, it's never going to happen (too small a market and too thin a margin).

Quiet to some is not quiet to others.

From what I know, the rev. C iMac G5 was basically "whisper-quiet." As in, not heard at all. So I'm sure it could be done with Conroe.

Ofcourse it could, I've seen 3ghz P4's in notebooks.

See above. Missing the point, which is that the iMac didn't need to be 2-2.5x thicker to accomodate a G5 (they just had to bulge the back of the case a bit, as on the rev. C).

When Apple was using G5's in the iMac, what speed where they at? What speed models where they using in the PowerMac at the time? What videocard did the iMac have? Is it possible they actually (like now) opted for using a slower processor and videocard to keep the heat levels down?

Depends on exactly when you're talking about, but looking at the final generation, iMacs were 1.9 and 2.1 Ghz, powermacs were 2.0, 2.3, and 2.5 (quad). The iMac had an x600(XT on the 20"). Doesn't seem they radically slowed down the imac.

 

[Alex Duggan]

Couldn't resist!!

 

[jesteraver]

Is able anytime soon, going to change the size of the 500GB hard drives to the 750GB?

One thing hopefully able does something about the cost in the MacBook, and sort of makes the 80GB hard drive standard.

 

[wjordan]

Out of interest I looked at the Dell site just to compare specs. I saw this desktop for £1425, excluding delivery.

My question is, why the huge price descrepancy with the new 20" iMac that is only £999 with free delivery?

I know the Dell will be more easily upgradable, but there must be some other huge technical differences that I do not understand.


Dell Pecision 390 £1425 + Delivery
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E6400 2.13Ghz, 1066Mhz FSB, 2MB L2 cache
Genuine Windows® XP Professional English
1.0GB (2 x 512MB DIMM) 667MHz DDR2 ECC SDRAM Memory
128MB nVidia Quadro FX550 Graphics Card
250GB (7,200 rpm) Serial ATA II Hard Drive with NCQ
48x DVD-ROM/CD-RW Combo Drive
Dell UltraSharp™ 2007WFP 20" Wide Black LCD Monitor
Info, no Soundcard
Dell Quietkey USB Black Keyboard
Dell Black 2 Button USB Scroll Entry Mouse
20" widescreen Monitor

 

[grouse]

mini towers

YOU ARE ALL BONKERS!

movie itunes thing in the launch and maybe some home entertainment device for streaming etc, and if you're lucky new iPods.

there have been no rumors/half rumors etc regarding a new plain/tower etc computer except on these boards!

To be honest, the most likely thing would be for them to slot in a lower end Pro tower in the same case.

Anyway, my thought is that next week won't see any such thing. I'm just trying to save you from your own disappointment.

 

[Evangelion]

Oh boy, do I love this or what? In order to make the disciples of Thurrott happy

Wanna guess how many Windows-installations I have at home? Zero. That's rght, I have no Windows at home. True, I use it at work, but that's because I can't choose the OS I use there. But when I do have that choice, the choice is not Windows.

Shocking, isn't it?

No, it isn't the most powerful, as this status is held by the MacPro

I bet that there are machines that are as powerful, if not even more powerful than Mac Pro .

 

[Evangelion]

Why is the 24" iMac 24", and not 23"? I mean, Apple would have a panel ready for just such a machine, why give it a bigger panel (with same resolution even)?

 

[jemmX]

I´m still awating the MBPro 20"

 

[minnesotamacman]

Why is the 24" iMac 24", and not 23"? I mean, Apple would have a panel ready for just such a machine, why give it a bigger panel (with same resolution even)?

Probably and indication that the 23" ACD will soon give way to a 24" ACD... If you look around, you don't find many, if any, companies selling a 23" display for computer. Dell has the 24" as does Samsung, so I think for cost Apple went for the common panel.

 

[AidenShaw]

Don't open your eyes, you might learn something

Oh boy, do I love this or what? In order to make the disciples of Thurrott happy, I will, for the first time in my life, admit a mistake...

But you couldn't do it without an ad hominem crack about the people who argued against you...

No, it isn't the most powerful (desktop), as this status is held by the MacPro...

Actually, even this statement is pretty obviously false.

The Dell Precision Workstation 690 uses the same Xeon 5160 CPUs as the ProMac, the same 5000X chipset, and the same 667 MHz FB-DIMM memory. Unless you have some benchmarks that you can quote - we'd have to call this one a tie for simple CPU speed.

Update:

The Dell PW490 has official SPECint_rate_base2000 scores of 122, the ProMac is only 115.3. The Dell has SPECfp_rate_base2000 scores of 81.2, the ProMac only 76.4.

Even on CPU speed, the Dell using the identical chips is faster!​

But wait, the Dell PW490 can be ordered with 64 GiB of RAM, whereas the ProMac can only handle a paltry 16 GiB. For jobs that need a lot of RAM, the Dell would be more powerful.

But wait, the Dell PW490 can be ordered with a true 64-bit operating system installed. The ProMac doesn't support 64-bit applications at all (64-bit support in 10.4 is for G5 only). The Dell PW490 is infinitely faster than the ProMac on 64-bit applications.

But wait, the Dell PW490 can be ordered with dual Quadro FX4500 with 512 MiB each - in an SLI configuration. The ProMac can only be ordered with a single FX4500. The Dell easily beats the ProMac at intensive 3D graphics tasks.

But wait, the Dell PW490 can be ordered with 2.5 TB of disk space (2*750 and 2*500). The ProMac, only 2 TB (4*500) is available. The Dell beats the ProMac by a half TB in disk capacity.

But wait, the Dell PW490 can be ordered with 15,000 RPM SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) disks, the ProMac only has 7200 RPM SATA disks. The Dell PW490 would crush the ProMac in applications that needed high I/O rates.

So, Mr. Lawyer, I don't even think that you can support your claim that the Mac Pro is the most powerful desktop.

I rest my case.

 

[sbarton]

I'm not sure if it has been mentioned in this thread but the 24"er has upgradable GPU. I mean it is an actual card that slots in like some PC laptops. Can we now please stop hearing the Whine of non upgradable GPU's? That is all I ever hear on MR these days! New most upgradable iMac ever. No tower coming. Media Centre maybe, but more likely to be advanced mini at some later stage. I'll still hold my breath for those wanting a mid range tower but it aint happening.

Just because it's removeable (so Apple can do BTO), doesn't mean that it's upgradable. Unless it's somehow slotted into a PCI-e slot, it's not upgradeable - at least you can't consider it such.

Which brings us to another issue, not necessarily for this thread, but somewhere - Video Cards. I thought the switch to Intel was going to end, once and for all the outragous prices we Mac users had to pay for GPU cards. Often times we were paying twice the cost of the exact same card for the PC, but with a differnent ROM. From what I see of the Mac Pro's, this same BS is being carried over becuase of some nonsense with the new EFI Bios that handles the video setup before the OS drivers take over.

 

[CyberB0b]

I'll wait for the 30 inch model.

 

[dropadrop]

A 1.83 Conroe System is almost on par with a 2.33 Merom System (and probably cheaper),
/EDIT

Nonsence. In most apps a Merom and Conroe based system will perform within 3% of each other. In memory intensive benchmarks Conroe can gain a 10% lead, but this will hardly show in any real world apps.

Please supply a link if you really think the differance is as big as you stated.

 

[johnmcboston]

Well, I'll at least wait for Leopard to come out - would hate to get a new machine and then go through the hassle of upgrading the OS in a few months. Also would like some more apps to be Universal.


But looking at the shopping page - For only $250 (such a bargain) you can go form the standard 2.16GHz machine to a 2.33GHz. Curious if such a small bump would be worth the $$. Or might this be another apple-ism in charging more for add-ons than they really cose (check out memory and HD price add-ons. ouch.)

- J

 

[BenRoethig]

Why is the 24" iMac 24", and not 23"? I mean, Apple would have a panel ready for just such a machine, why give it a bigger panel (with same resolution even)?

I'm guessing Apple bought quite a few 23" panels and their insane display prices led to some pretty slow sales. They need to clear out inventory before moving to a 24" ACD. The iMac is using the newer, more popular 24" panel.

 

[sbarton]

Well, I'll at least wait for Leopard to come out - would hate to get a new machine and then go through the hassle of upgrading the OS in a few months. Also would like some more apps to be Universal.


But looking at the shopping page - For only $250 (such a bargain) you can go form the standard 2.16GHz machine to a 2.33GHz. Curious if such a small bump would be worth the $$. Or might this be another apple-ism in charging more for add-ons than they really cose (check out memory and HD price add-ons. ouch.)

- J

Hard to say. Unless there is more CPU cache on the 2.33, I would personally go for the 2.16. It's a pitty you can't order a single 1gb stick. Apple forces you with 2x512 simply so you will be more likely to buy thier 2gb config.

 

[Evangelion]

Hard to say. Unless there is more CPU cache on the 2.33, I would personally go for the 2.16. It's a pitty you can't order a single 1gb stick. Apple forces you with 2x512 simply so you will be more likely to buy thier 2gb config.

They sell it with with 2x512MB because the system uses dual-channel RAM. You COULD use it with just one stick of RAM, but that would be un-optimal. With two sticks you get 128bit memory-bus, as opposed to 64bits with single stick.

 

[Sped]

YOU ARE ALL BONKERS!

movie itunes thing in the launch and maybe some home entertainment device for streaming etc, and if you're lucky new iPods.

I couldn' agree more. Every time a new iMac gets released, the performance zealots hijack the thread to discuss the latest version of the headless mac. I thought the mini would quash the hijackings, but apparently I was mistaken. The bottom line is folks want Mac Pro's at cheaper prices which leads me to believe they aren't pros at all because the Mac Pro is a very competitive machine regarding its marketing (performance too).

 

[Eidorian]

*sigh*

Conroe COULD work in the iMac. We've beaten this theory to death after digging up all the specs on the PowerPC 970/970FX.​

Please tell me what we have to wait for after Santa Rosa. I don't see a big leap in mobile processing for some time in Intel's roadmap.

 

[jesteraver]

I'll wait for the 30 inch model.

I am hoping they will have one like Q2-Q3 2007, probably wont have one anytime soon. Would be nice.