So Apple didn't announce any speed bumps. And its time to stop waiting and just buy already. Other than .2 in speed- is there any difference between the 1.8 and 1.6 singles? I know the 1.8 has been discontinued- which worries me a bit. I guess the question is- has the 1.6 been updated anymore than the 1.8 would be? Is the 1.8 that much faster to warrant a $300 price difference? (although the 1.8 comes with 160gb HD - the 1.6 has a 80 GB HD) Thoughts?
first, new ones are fairly likely in the next few weeks. Happened last year... order if you want to, but don't say I didn't warn you... anyway. The 1.8 can support up to 8 gigs of RAM (4 gigs for the 1.6), has PCI-X (PCI for the 1.6)... probably things I'm forgetting too. And the 1.6 has not seen any updates since the 1.8 was discontinued. The 1.8 is faster and does not have scaled down tech like the 1.6. Hopefully someone else can help you more.
Right around the 20th if I remember correctly. Apple does a lot of updates that aren't at Macworld Expos in fact after last year it really is the norm for updates to not be done at the Macworlds. Don't get a Single processor the dual is worth every penny. Even if you don't think you need it you do. Everyone on OSX has a use for Dual processors. When you have two programs running at once you are utilizing both processors. Guess what the system OS is a collection of apps so that means even without using anything the system will run faster because it's spreading the load between two processors instead of one.
Good to know- I never really saw the need for dual- since I dont use Photoshop or anything like that- so I never knew if Dual would help me out or not. I guess I'll wait a few more weeks.
It most definitely will help you out. OSX is really good about load balancing so it spreads the load whenever it can. This works especially great when you are running more then one app as I mentioned. Also more and more apps are multithreaded. Multithreading is pretty much a part of good programing these days. If people wanted to benchmark a single and a dual processor machine fairly they would run all the tests at once instead of one at a time. This gets rid of the question if a program is multithreaded. In this case where all tests are done at once a dual would destroy a single processor machine.
if they dont update em after jan 20 pick up a dual 1.8 same price as the old 1.8 right unless u can get a single 1.8 cheap of some place
Best 599 you'll ever spend. All the systems I use (Windows and Macs, minus laptops) are dual processors. They are just better to use. I cant really explain it, but they seem to "recover" from processor intensive tasks faster than any single processor machine. Read some specs and you'll end up realizing this too.
Something else I have noticed is a lot less system hangs on a dual. I don't know if this is because it doesn't hang both processors or what but they for me are certainly less prone.