Core i7-Based 27" iMac Benchmarks Show Significant Improvements

[benjamoon]

Apple now has two competing products. The iMac 27" Core i7 and the Mac Pro Quad-Core.
iMac - $3849
27" Screen
Radeon HD 4850
16 GB DDR3 RAM
2 TB Hard Drive
2.8 GHz Core i7

Mac Pro - $4949
No Screen
NVIDIA GT 120
16 GB DDR3 RAM
1 TB Hard Drive
2.93 GHz Nehalem Xeon Processor

I think this supports the rumor that Gulftown Processors are coming to the Mac Pro next year, or the Mac Pro will have a price drop. Maybe both, in my dreams.

 

[DMann]

Indeed. Very impressive performance. Well done Apple.

I'm going to pick one up as soon as there is an ATI 5700 and matte screen option. Hopefully in the next few months.

Core i7 + ATI 5700 = instant purchase here.

If you lay it on its back and fill it with water, it will make a good flounder aquarium.

Two thumbs One eye up

I want an i7 Mac Mini, Apple...

Add that to the list....

 

[mingletron]

Some people need to grow up

A quick message to those people who are bitching about the price of iMacs / a PC cost less etc etc. You don't have to buy them. If you are happy with a cheaper PC that's great. It's nice to have the option of buying a well designed premium quality piece of technology that the iMac is. Nobody is forcing you to buy one so keep your pointless comments out of this forum.

Cheers.

 

[ntrigue]

I'll be dead before that happens... and I'm still a teenager.

...and you're appropriately naive and sarcastic.

 

[Bryan Bowler]

what are the chances of the i7 coming to the mbp in the next update which i assume would be after the holidays?

There's practically no chance. There's not enough room in the MBP to cool the current i7 processor.

Bryan

 

[ntrigue]

So my MacPro 1.1 scores 4950 and the new iMac i7 = 9600 ?

Seriously didn't think there would be that much (if any) difference but wow.



However... What does this mean in 'real world' peformance test ? I guess I'm not going to see 2 X difference in the real world or am I ?

Did you run 64-bit Geekbench? It's good for 1000 points.

 

[DMann]

A quick message to those people who are bitching about the price of iMacs / a PC cost less etc etc. You don't have to buy them. If you are happy with a cheaper PC that's great. It's nice to have the option of buying a well designed premium quality piece of technology that the iMac is. Nobody is forcing you to buy one so keep your pointless comments out of this forum.

Cheers.

I just built my own iMac, for half the cost. It runs W7 and Word faster than any iMac I've ever used,

and looks way cooler. If you're interested, I can send you a schematic, free of charge.

After all, I won't charge you extra for my innovative design, or customer service, the way some companies do.

 

[Heilage]

I'd use a plunger (2 to evenly distribute the weight of the larger screen). Might need some torx bits if they kept the design/architecture the same. I haven't had a chance to look at the service source guides yet to see what they changed under the hood.

Not much has changed. You still need some torx screwdrivers, but the internal layout has become a bit better. More of a flat and side-by-side design, most components can be taken out without having to take out something else (except the motherboard and graphics card, they are a bit more complicated to deal with).

Also, wear some gloves if you are messing with it. The display panel and glass offers quite a few new challenges. I don't recommend anyone doing any of this, since your warranty is out the window if you do.

 

[farmboy]

Nonsense! I just built a computer for a friend for £600. It has a Core i5 2.6GHz, 1GB ATi 5770 graphics card, 4GB RAM and a 500GB hard drive. Let's assume a decent monitor is another £200 on top (he had one already).

For the same level of performance from Apple, it costs me £1600. You end up paying double the price and get no better performance, an inability to upgrade, a significantly worse graphics card and in my opinion a worse operating system.

Remind me again why these systems are "very good value"?

Remind me again exactly how many people build their own computers. Irrelevant in extremis.

 

[ntrigue]

Something is horribly, horribly wrong with your mac or your SL installation. I've had it on my imac for a few months now and on my mini for a few weeks. Neither has ever had a kernel panic, and the iMac had an application (mail) crash exactly once.

I must agree. I have a Quad 2.66 Mac - 2.26 Mini - 2.4 MBP - 1.86 MBA and not one are exhibiting any bugs or issues on Snow Leopard 10.6.2.

 

[snberk103]

Originally Posted by neiltc13
Nonsense! I just built a computer for a friend for £600. It has a Core i5 2.6GHz, 1GB ATi 5770 graphics card, 4GB RAM and a 500GB hard drive. Let's assume a decent monitor is another £200 on top (he had one already).

For the same level of performance from Apple, it costs me £1600. You end up paying double the price and get no better performance, an inability to upgrade, a significantly worse graphics card and in my opinion a worse operating system.

Remind me again why these systems are "very good value"?

To Neiltc13 and all the other "I can build it cheaper" crowd.

I remember a few years ago George Ou at ZDNet, who frequently criticized Apple for the cost of their systems started building his own "equivalents". He started with the Mini, and his system looked OK, and it ran the same and it was cheaper.... OK so far. Then he built an "iMac" using parts he ordered, and parts he had around the house. It was cheaper, and it ran the same... but I've never made up my mind whether he was serious or not. He attached it to the back of a monitor using its wall-mount system and his box was made from plywood. To say he is a techy and not a wood-worker would be understating the overall visual impression considerably. But it worked.

He also tried to homebuild a Mac Pro Octo, the 2008 version. He couldn't do it for cheaper. When he sources out the same quality parts, he could not match Apple's price - so I bought one knowing it was a really good deal.

That was one of the things I liked about his projects.... he didn't just source an equivalent part, but an equivalent quality part.

Too much emphasis is placed on buying the "cheapest" products, with no thought given to the price/quality connection. I'm not saying that Apple products are necessarily the best quality because they cost more... just that the quality of a product needs to be looked at if you are comparing things.

If you want cheap, don't buy Apple. We all know that. But then don't complain if the cheap product causes problems. Or eats more of your time.

I used to build my own systems, and used to prolong the usefulness of same by selectively upgrading the components every few years. I used to move all the cards etc from one MB to a newer/faster one every 3 years or so... I saved a ton of money, though finding a MB that was backwardly compatible with some of bits and bobs I wanted to keep could be a challenge. But there was almost always someone I could sell an old expansion card to offset the price of buying a new one. I don't miss those days anymore. I actually like to use my time doing useful stuff.... family, work, posting to MR forums. etc etc

 

[*LTD*]

I just built my own iMac, for half the cost. It runs W7 and Word faster than any iMac I've ever used,

and looks way cooler. If you're interested, I can send you a schematic, free of charge.

After all, I won't charge you extra for my innovative design, or customer service, the way some companies do.

Well done!

 

[mingletron]

To Neiltc13 and all the other "I can build it cheaper" crowd.

I remember a few years ago George Ou at ZDNet, who frequently criticized Apple for the cost of their systems started building his own "equivalents". He started with the Mini, and his system looked OK, and it ran the same and it was cheaper.... OK so far. Then he built an "iMac" using parts he ordered, and parts he had around the house. It was cheaper, and it ran the same... but I've never made up my mind whether he was serious or not. He attached it to the back of a monitor using its wall-mount system and his box was made from plywood. To say he is a techy and not a wood-worker would be understating the overall visual impression considerably. But it worked.

He also tried to homebuild a Mac Pro Octo, the 2008 version. He couldn't do it for cheaper. When he sources out the same quality parts, he could not match Apple's price - so I bought one knowing it was a really good deal.

That was one of the things I liked about his projects.... he didn't just source an equivalent part, but an equivalent quality part.

Too much emphasis is placed on buying the "cheapest" products, with no thought given to the price/quality connection. I'm not saying that Apple products are necessarily the best quality because they cost more... just that the quality of a product needs to be looked at if you are comparing things.

If you want cheap, don't buy Apple. We all know that. But then don't complain if the cheap product causes problems. Or eats more of your time.

I used to build my own systems, and used to prolong the usefulness of same by selectively upgrading the components every few years. I used to move all the cards etc from one MB to a newer/faster one every 3 years or so... I saved a ton of money, though finding a MB that was backwardly compatible with some of bits and bobs I wanted to keep could be a challenge. But there was almost always someone I could sell an old expansion card to offset the price of buying a new one. I don't miss those days anymore. I actually like to use my time doing useful stuff.... family, work, posting to MR forums. etc etc

I agree. I used to do the same (build my own PCs) and got great satisfaction buying all the components and building a great system but these I have better things to do. Plus where can you buy a 27" 16:9 LED backlit monitor that is 2560 x 1440? and how much will that cost?

 

[nicroma]

I just started posting here, and now I have a thread that is in a link on the front page of MacRumors. I am quite proud of myself.

 

[J Radical]

Those are impressive numbers for the i7, but the mediocre graphics performance still puts me off. Honestly I was hoping for at least a 4870 (which would still be pretty meh compared to PC that cost less than half as much).

Obviously Apple's hands are tied because of the iMac form factor, but that was their decision. At this stage I wonder if it might be in their best interests to partner with nvidia or AMD in creating a highish performance, low heat variant of their current cards.

As is, my 4890 hackintosh will eat an i7 iMac for breakfast when it comes to gaming.

 

[willmtaylor]

I'm reading quite a few posts concerning the "real world" differences between the i5's & i7's in the benchmarks. Here's my question: is there any way to know--or have an approximated guess--of the actual difference that it will make to someone sitting there using them side-by-side. Does anyone have any info, like, "The i5 takes xx secs to render this while the i7 takes xx secs,"? etc. etc. Has anyone seen that type of comparison yet?

 

[kjs862]

very nice, but i think if i was going put out the extra money for an i7 i would just get a mac pro

 

[HLdan]

As is, my 4890 hackintosh will eat an i7 iMac for breakfast when it comes to gaming.

Good thing gaming isn't the only thing we CAN do with our computers.

Ha ha, the iMac will kick your hackincrap's ass when it comes to driver support and software updates without finger crossing. I like a when my real Mac doesn't get bricked after a software update.

 

[bajee]

It's the mobile variant of the 4850, unfortunately.

any article you can link? I know the mid-2009 iMac have mobile 4850 gpu.

Its just that the new 27" quadcore iMacs uses desktop class cpu, just maybe they're using desktop class gpu as well

 

[annk]

Please stay on topic, according to the thread title and OP.

Thank you, and carry on...

 

[cxc]

I'm reading quite a few posts concerning the "real world" differences between the i5's & i7's in the benchmarks. Here's my question: is there any way to know--or have an approximated guess--of the actual difference that it will make to someone sitting there using them side-by-side. Does anyone have any info, like, "The i5 takes xx secs to render this while the i7 takes xx secs,"? etc. etc. Has anyone seen that type of comparison yet?

Well sure, Lynnfield CPUs have been available for some time in the PC World and real world benefits for an i5-i7 upgrade are pretty low for 200$
Take a look at
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/...e_i7-860_core_i7-870/14/#abschnitt_winrar_380

The site is in German but results are presented graphically.
Navigate the right hand TOC for assorted benchmarks.
Across the board we are looking at +5-8%, not enough to be truly noticed.
If on a budget I´d rather opt for the i5 now and unload it come the next iMac revision which should include USB 3.0, ATI 5x50 and so forth.
There are programs out there that really do benefit from hyperthreading but those are few and far between.
X264 on the windows side is roughly 20% faster (2nd pass at least).
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3641&p=4

Still not worth it IMO. I´d rather see some OpenCL support in these coders.
BTW, great question. It kind of pains me to see meaningless charts being spewed forth and propagated across the net from continent to continent. Very telling of IT proficiency in the Mac audience...

 

[Gasu E.]

Nonsense! I just built a computer for a friend for £600. It has a Core i5 2.6GHz, 1GB ATi 5770 graphics card, 4GB RAM and a 500GB hard drive. Let's assume a decent monitor is another £200 on top (he had one already).

For the same level of performance from Apple, it costs me £1600. You end up paying double the price and get no better performance, an inability to upgrade, a significantly worse graphics card and in my opinion a worse operating system.

Remind me again why these systems are "very good value"?

£600! Ha! I happen to own my own machine shop, silicon wafer factory, chip foundry, iron mine, steel mill, circuit board fab and a few other manufacturing facilities. I built my own wafers, chips, boards, cases, did all the assembly myself, and supplied most of the raw materials. Then I wrote the OS. The only only out-of-pocket expense was $3.27 for a plastic bucket to collect the beach sand to make the silicon wafers.

 

[*LTD*]

£600! Ha! I happen to own my own machine shop, silicon wafer factory, chip foundry, iron mine, steel mill, circuit board fab and a few other manufacturing facilities. I built my own wafers, chips, boards, cases, did all the assembly myself, and supplied most of the raw materials. Then I wrote the OS. The only only out-of-pocket expense was $3.27 for a plastic bucket to collect the beach sand to make the silicon wafers.

Well played.

 

[chedda]

Bomb Disposal

Nonsense! I just built a computer for a friend for £600. It has a Core i5 2.6GHz, 1GB ATi 5770 graphics card, 4GB RAM and a 500GB hard drive. Let's assume a decent monitor is another £200 on top (he had one already).

For the same level of performance from Apple, it costs me £1600. You end up paying double the price and get no better performance, an inability to upgrade, a significantly worse graphics card and in my opinion a worse operating system.

Remind me again why these systems are "very good value"?

Your system has a registry and DLL ?

 

[Gasu E.]

Posting the results of a survey from a foreign country doesn't mean that your opinion is any more valid than mine.

Yes, it does. You started your post with the word "Nonsense!". By this, you meant the precious respondent was wrong within the context of his statement. You didn't just say something like "well, I had a different personal experience". You indicated that pretty much everyone who disagreed with you was wrong. Then you described your own experience, which was highly idiosyncratic (home built, student copy of windows, no service support need or desire) and willfully oblivious to the value of an all-in-one system. The response to your post was exactly what you should have expected; and given the number of posts you have offered on this forum previously, I think you did expect it. Therefore, by starting the post with "nonsense", you were willfully instigating controversy. Enjoy it.