Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Blown Away: 27" iMac i7 16GB RAM
- Thread starter S.B.G
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
That is something I have considered. We'll see though. Before I decided on a refurb, I was going to go new and get the SSD + HDD setup. But the refurb I saw had all that I wanted minus the SSD. Not having the SSD wasn't a deal breaker so I scooped it up. I think I got the only 27" i7 in the refurb store because as soon as I bought this one, it disappeared from the web listing.
It's rough isn't it? Watching others get the thing you want most and having to wait! Sorry...
Yes it came in a white box, no markings though except for shipping labels. As I mentioned in earlier posts, I thought about waiting for SB too, but it really won't bring significant performance differences from the current line of Core i.x CPU's which is why I purchased now.The bus is what carries data between the RAM and CPU and it does have a significant impact on the overall speed of a computer. For instance, my older 24" iMac has an 800MHz bus while this new 27" has a 1333MHz bus speed. I notice the difference quite well. The 24" has a slightly higher clock speed at 3.06GHz and the 27" comes in at 2.93GHz. So since the 27" has a slower (barely) CPU clock speed but a much higher bus speed than the 24", it can process data at a noticeably faster rate. Of course it is still skewed a bit because the 27" has the quad core i7 CPU and the 24" has the older C2D CPU. But all things being equal and the bus speed alone being different, you would probably still notice it.
Every little bit helps overall in performance.
EDIT:
I made up a funny little story (funny to me anyway) to tell the folks at my office today about how powerful my new iMac was. I told them that I was paid a visit by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission because they had concerns over how I planned on using this thing. This iMac was so powerful that it can split the atom!
Last edited:
LOL. You made me almost spit my drink all over my iMac. Congrats.
LOL... sorry about that, don't want you to ruin your iMac for the sake of mine!
I'm just so happy about this purchase that I had to find a funny way to explain how powerful it was to people who don't know computers like I do.
I just bought 5 new Dell Dimension PC's with the same i7 CPU and 8GB RAM (maxed) for the office and they're very nice for Windows 7, but they just don't compare to this iMac.
Uh... no, but they did laugh. But there are one or two girls who aren't quite as bright as the others and I suspect that when I tell them, they will believe me for a few seconds before they figure it out.
Last edited:
PGP Key Generation and CPU Blip
I made a new PGP key using the RSA algorithm with a bit length of 4096 bits today. While generating the key with my name and email address you're supposed to try and do a bunch of stuff like type and move the mouse around a lot or open applications so as to make the HDD move and work so that it can create the key with maximum entropy. This is usually a CPU intensive process and depending on the CPU and bit length selected it can take longer or shorter amounts of time to complete.
When I did it today with this quad core i7 2.93GHz CPU it took maybe 15-20 seconds and I kept an eye on the menu bar with iStat Pro and only two cores were briefly maxed out during the key generation.
I remember generating a key on my other iMac with an older email address and the C2D maxed both cores for a short while longer.
These CPU's are just getting so much more powerful, it's simply amazing!
I made a new PGP key using the RSA algorithm with a bit length of 4096 bits today. While generating the key with my name and email address you're supposed to try and do a bunch of stuff like type and move the mouse around a lot or open applications so as to make the HDD move and work so that it can create the key with maximum entropy. This is usually a CPU intensive process and depending on the CPU and bit length selected it can take longer or shorter amounts of time to complete.
When I did it today with this quad core i7 2.93GHz CPU it took maybe 15-20 seconds and I kept an eye on the menu bar with iStat Pro and only two cores were briefly maxed out during the key generation.
I remember generating a key on my other iMac with an older email address and the C2D maxed both cores for a short while longer.
These CPU's are just getting so much more powerful, it's simply amazing!
Enjoy
Congratulations. I too am blown away (along with knowledgable friends) by the speed of my 27 in iMac i5. Apple has done a great job matching the CPU/GPU
speeds and associated on board memory with a fast bus. Anyone have any experience with the SSD?
Congratulations. I too am blown away (along with knowledgable friends) by the speed of my 27 in iMac i5. Apple has done a great job matching the CPU/GPUspeeds and associated on board memory with a fast bus. Anyone have any experience with the SSD?
Run more programs at once, or process extremely large files. But yeah, the average user doesn't need that much.
Can't imagine how many programs you would need to run to need anything more than 8GB. I did a test recently with a ton of browsers, vpn client, pandora, a few terminals, four separate VMs using VirtualBox (3 x Ubuntu, 1 x Win7) and handbrake encoding in the background. Total memory usage = 6GB.
As for processing extremely large files, that's a good point. But such work usually requires a lot of processing power which the iMac doesn't quite have -- people use a Mac Pro with many cores for that.
That's why I doubt 16GB on an iMac is necessary, unless it's about the same price as 8GB which would make it "a nice thing to have".
This isn't correct. The new iMac's memory runs at 1333MHz, but Nehalem processor-based systems don't have a traditional front-side bus at all. They use something called a Quick-Path Interconnect which is a faster, more direct link between the system components and the CPU. Read more about it here.
Well for example. I'm a games developer. When I'm in Windows 7 64Bit Pro I use all of the 4 GB that I have in my new i7 iMac. I'm hoping that my girlfriend will be bumping me up to 8GB for Valentines Day so that is why I haven't upgraded.
I use Visual Studio, Office, 3DStudio Max and a few other programs simultaneously.
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Why do men climb mountains? Because it's there.
Why does Steve Jobs not put Flash on iOS? Because he can.
Why do I have 16GB RAM in my iMac? Because I can.
Depending on the RAM allocated to your VM's they will directly correlate to the total RAM used. If you had 4 VM's running simultaneously that tells me you probably had around 512MB RAM for each VM to be using no more than 6GB with all that other stuff going. All those other things aren't RAM intensive at all- collectively, maybe a little.
Try rendering a lot of video or doing some heavy 3D modeling and see if 8GB RAM is enough.
Hmmm..... What to you constitutes many cores? My i7 here has 8 cores which I consider many. I beg to differ that my particular iMac isn't very powerful. In fact this iMac is as powerful as they are made, minus the SSD. Some people compare this model to a base Mac Pro. Also, why do you think Apple made this iMac capable of handling 16GB of RAM anyway? There must be a good reason other than just to make some money.
Regardless of all that, why does is bother you that I have 16GB of RAM in here? It only cost $233, a drop in the well.
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Why do men climb mountains? Because it's there.
Why does Steve Jobs not put Flash on iOS? Because he can.
Why do I have 16GB RAM in my iMac? Because I can.
Depending on the RAM allocated to your VM's they will directly correlate to the total RAM used. If you had 4 VM's running simultaneously that tells me you probably had around 512MB RAM for each VM to be using no more than 6GB with all that other stuff going. All those other things aren't RAM intensive at all- collectively, maybe a little.
Try rendering a lot of video or doing some heavy 3D modeling and see if 8GB RAM is enough.
Hmmm..... What to you constitutes many cores? My i7 here has 8 cores which I consider many. I beg to differ that my particular iMac isn't very powerful. In fact this iMac is as powerful as they are made, minus the SSD. Some people compare this model to a base Mac Pro. Also, why do you think Apple made this iMac capable of handling 16GB of RAM anyway? There must be a good reason other than just to make some money.
Regardless of all that, why does is bother you that I have 16GB of RAM in here? It only cost $233, a drop in the well.
That's interesting. I wasn't aware of the architecture change in the i5 and i7 CPU's. Thank you, learning has occurred. So then, the i3 and older C2D's still run with a FSB then right?
How does the 1333MHz clock speed of the RAM play a role in the i5 and i7 CPU's with the new QPI?