How does the 17" i7 compare to i7 iMac?

[The General]

I have an i7 iMac right now and I'm kind of tired of having this giant ass computer and not being able to take it with me places. I'm just trying to figure out how the 330M 512MB compares to the ATI 4850 512MB and how big of a difference I'll see in performance going from 2.8ghz to 2.66Ghz.

all of the normal places i would go for this kind of information are way more complicated to navigate than i remember.

 

[J the Ninja]

The i7 620M in the MBP and i7 860 in the iMac share the "i7" name because they occupy a similar place in their respective lines (specifically, the upper end). They are actually rather different internally, although based on the same basic design. You can look up "Lynnfield" and "Arrandale" on Wikipedia for the nitty-gritty, but for starters, your iMac has a quad core, the MBP has a dual core.

Also, the GT 330M is considerably slower than the 4850. I don't know what kind of stuff you run (you didn't say) but the performance hit would be significant. Probably 70-100% slower in heavily-threaded, CPU-intensive stuff. The drop in gaming performance will probably be bigger. Not to mention the howling of tiny fans and the fear that your machine might suddenly blow up or melt, since it's a laptop and no one ever feels safe doing heavy stuff for hours or days on end with laptops. I'd say the same thing about the iMac, but the thing has gotten so damn big it actually has a desktop-sized heatsink in there now. Lastly, there is the lost screen real-estate, going from 2560x1440 to either 1920x1200.

If you want portability, think about a MacBook, iPad, or netbook, and hang on to your iMac. The MacBook is the most expensive, but it has the advantages of doing everything your iMac does, only slower, plus it can use your iMac as a second display if you don't feel like moving files over to work on something you have on the MB.

 

[Peace]

The iMac i7 has hyper threading and shows 8 cpu's not 4. Even though it's a quad core.

[edit] I see you edited out the hyperthreading part [/edit]

 

[J the Ninja]

The iMac i7 has hyper threading and shows 8 cpu's not 4. Even though it's a quad core.

[edit] I see you edited out the hyperthreading part [/edit]

My brain decided he had the i5 iMac for some reason...I have no idea why. Must be too much studying for finals.

EDIT: You know, those performance percentages were done thinking the iMac lacked hyperthreading, I should fix that....

 

[Lokrado]

cant delete..

 

[Hellhammer]

MBP i7 scores ~5400 in GeekBench while iMac i7 scores ~9900, so iMac is ~83% faster. Of course this is only in applications that can fully take the advantage of iMac's power.

ATI 4850 is about twice as fast as 330M (~5200 in 3DMark Vantage and ~2400, ~45FPS in BF:BC2 and 20FPS)

ATI 4850
NVidia GT 330M

 

[The General]

Oh, I didn't realize that the i5 and i7 MacBook Pros werent quad cores. I am so disappointed. Will definitely stick with the iMac, then.

Thanks