Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

i3= core 2 duo?

krewelement394

krewelement394

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 14, 2008
196
0
I do not know so much about computers, so this is why i ask if the i3 the same as core 2duo, or is it something different?

Today i went to the local bestbuy, i was messing with the iMacs before actually ordering one from apple.com, anyhow, i clicked on "about this mac" and i saw that it said core 2 duo 3.06 GHZ. I was not sure those where the new "turbo" iMacs, but if they were why does it still have a core 2 duo? shouldn't it say 3 core duo? or is that something different?

i also noticed that the iMacs are only "turbo charged" if it they have i5 in them, should i get an i5 instead of an i3? is it worth it?
 
jav6454

jav6454

macrumors Core
Nov 14, 2007
22,303
6,257
1 Geostationary Tower Plaza
Core 2 Duo uses ancient LGA 775 technology. Core i3 uses the new LGA 1156 technology and a much smaller production process.

Best Buy as a natural ability to confuse buyers and hence be able to sell them unneeded services which are *very* expensive or sell them a computer with processing power they don't need (albeit it's much more, yes you guessed it, expensive).

All iMacs that carry i3 CPUs don't have a feature called "Turbo Boost". Basically what that does is if you have an application that only uses one core, then the CPU will overclock that core and shut down the other core/s and thus give you better performance.

Turbo Boost is only available on certain i5 CPUs and all i7 CPUs. Core 2 Duos do not have hyperthreading nor do they have Turbo. Also, they are much slower even compared to similarly clocked ix CPUs.
 
alust2013

alust2013

macrumors 601
Feb 6, 2010
4,779
2
On the fence
The model you looked at was old stock from the previous generation. Likely they didn't want to spend the money to put a new one out as a floor model if they look the same and will just be messed around with. But in most situations, the Core 2 Duo and i3 will have roughly the same performance. I doubt though that the i5 would be a big enough bump in performance to warrant getting that, unless you are talking quad core i5. It all really just depends on what you are doing with it.
 
xraydoc

xraydoc

Contributor
Oct 9, 2005
10,791
5,248
192.168.1.1
Agreed with the above.

Core 2 Duo ≠ Core i3

The store you went to had an older machine on display (i.e., a Core 2 Duo).

While the clock speeds are similar, the i3 machines will be moderately faster than last generation's Core 2 Duos.
 
krewelement394

krewelement394

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 14, 2008
196
0
jav6454 said:
Core 2 Duo uses ancient LGA 775 technology. Core i3 uses the new LGA 1156 technology and a much smaller production process.

Best Buy as a natural ability to confuse buyers and hence be able to sell them unneeded services which are *very* expensive or sell them a computer with processing power they don't need (albeit it's much more, yes you guessed it, expensive).
Click to expand...

Ahh yes! today when i was looking at their macs, this sales person was telling this older guy that he needed mobile Me....because of it's features and stuff. i am not new to Macs to know that Mobile Me is NOT need, it is a nice feature but, on the trieal they gave me i hardly ever used it, i may get it this time but not sure... anyhow that poor man walked out the door with Mobile Me, iWork and Microsoft word, the new magic pad (because the salesman told him it would make a great pair up)....poor him.

Ok so will Intel Core i5 make a huge difference?
i mainly use my macbook for photo editing, video editing and School of course! The performance is great, it is 2 years old and got it in the mid 2008. it's specs are

2.4 GHZ intel 2 core duo
RAM 3GB

i also run Photoshop cs4, itunes, iphoto and surf the net all at once, and sometimes even Illustrator and After effects. i find my macbook still running smoothly, not as fast as when only photoshop and a couple of apps are opened but fair.

from this, will the 3.06 Ghz, 4GB ram, and i3 core work for me? or should i bump it to a 3.60GHz Intel Core i5, for 250$ more....?

Oh and i forgot about the HDD 500GB more when i get the i5=1TB.

PS: Do the newer iMacs have a different design? from what ive seen on the apple site, the back of the iMacs looke more arched, the older models semm a bit more flat....is this just me or did they get a new look?
 
S

swajames

macrumors regular
Jan 29, 2003
163
257
My local Best Buy hasn't upgraded its floor models yet, the demo units are still C2D, but they are indeed selling the new models and if you buy an iMac you'll get an i3 machine.
 
jav6454

jav6454

macrumors Core
Nov 14, 2007
22,303
6,257
1 Geostationary Tower Plaza
krewelement394 said:
Ahh yes! today when i was looking at their macs, this sales person was telling this older guy that he needed mobile Me....because of it's features and stuff. i am not new to Macs to know that Mobile Me is NOT need, it is a nice feature but, on the trieal they gave me i hardly ever used it, i may get it this time but not sure... anyhow that poor man walked out the door with Mobile Me, iWork and Microsoft word, the new magic pad (because the salesman told him it would make a great pair up)....poor him.

Ok so will Intel Core i5 make a huge difference?
i mainly use my macbook for photo editing, video editing and School of course! The performance is great, it is 2 years old and got it in the mid 2008. it's specs are

2.4 GHZ intel 2 core duo
RAM 3GB

i also run Photoshop cs4, itunes, iphoto and surf the net all at once, and sometimes even Illustrator and After effects. i find my macbook still running smoothly, not as fast as when only photoshop and a couple of apps are opened but fair.

from this, will the 3.06 Ghz, 4GB ram, and i3 core work for me? or should i bump it to a 3.60GHz Intel Core i5, for 250$ more....?

Oh and i forgot about the HDD 500GB more when i get the i5=1TB.

PS: Do the newer iMacs have a different design? from what ive seen on the apple site, the back of the iMacs looke more arched, the older models semm a bit more flat....is this just me or did they get a new look?
Click to expand...

To the first part of the post, yes, it's a sad thing. If I see something of that sort I would barge in because I would feel terrible letting people get shafted that bad. I have done if before and I always get the nasty rep stare and the what do you know sir, which I respond as majoring in EE (computer field) and IEEE member card;). That's when I use their own demo units as portals to show them what they really need and what they are getting. I love undoing the harm a stupid rep/schill does to people.

As per your actual issue. I don't think you would even notice the difference in CPUs. Photoshop isn't CPU intensive, it's RAM intensive. iPhoto is the same deal. As per movie editing, then yes that would make a difference when encoding, but that's it. Now, what would really bump up performance would be an SSD or more RAM. Although SSDs from Apple susually suck. So I'd advice you to get a newer MacBook Pro with which ever CPU you want (all of them are good) and purchase a third party SSD and put it in and upgrade the RAM if possible to 8GB. You will get a much faster performing machine this way.
 
krewelement394

krewelement394

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 14, 2008
196
0
jav6454 said:
To the first part of the post, yes, it's a sad thing. If I see something of that sort I would barge in because I would feel terrible letting people get shafted that bad. I have done if before and I always get the nasty rep stare and the what do you know sir, which I respond as majoring in EE (computer field) and IEEE member card;). That's when I use their own demo units as portals to show them what they really need and what they are getting. I love undoing the harm a stupid rep/schill does to people.

As per your actual issue. I don't think you would even notice the difference in CPUs. Photoshop isn't CPU intensive, it's RAM intensive. iPhoto is the same deal. As per movie editing, then yes that would make a difference when encoding, but that's it. Now, what would really bump up performance would be an SSD or more RAM. Although SSDs from Apple susually suck. So I'd advice you to get a newer MacBook Pro with which ever CPU you want (all of them are good) and purchase a third party SSD and put it in and upgrade the RAM if possible to 8GB. You will get a much faster performing machine this way.
Click to expand...


Ok, im getting the 3.06 Ghz i3 :). well does the imac have a new design? the one i use at work is a 27 inch, previous generation and it is black from the back. the new ones seem to be all aluminum... and to me they seem more arched :) not sure if it just me though.

hmm, should i get a full keyboard or the wireless? it bugs me that the wireless one does not have a USB hub, the wired one does and i love that :/
 
4

416049

macrumors 68000
Mar 14, 2010
1,844
2
Hi, I did feel like starting a new thread but what would be the optimal iMac to use with aperture 3? I5 vs i3? Or should the money be spend on upgrading the ram to 8Gb? also is there a huge difference between the 1Gb graphics card vs 512Mb?

Cheers

Maril
 
TMRaven

TMRaven

macrumors 68020
Nov 5, 2009
2,099
1
Hopefully some online site will post real-world benchmarks of vram intensive apps and how much of a difference 512mb vram pits against 1gig of vram.
 
cherry su

cherry su

macrumors 65816
Feb 28, 2008
1,217
1
The i3s that Apple ships with iMacs have an integrated memory controller and hyperthreading. In other words, it's supposed to be faster, theoretically speaking.
 
S

selfdisplaced

macrumors member
Jun 22, 2009
31
0
I am pretty sure only the i5 and above support "turboboost". Reading online seems like that's one of the features of the i5 vs i3

From Apple's site:

Turbo Boost.

Many iMac models now benefit from Turbo Boost technology built into the Intel Core series processors. If you’re using a processor-intensive application such as Aperture 3 or Final Cut Pro that benefits from extra performance, Turbo Boost dynamically increases the speed of available cores.
 
Anonymous Freak

Anonymous Freak

macrumors 603
Dec 12, 2002
5,561
1,252
Cascadia
If you're going to be doing video editing and photo editing, then, if you can afford it, you want one of the quad-core models.

Those two extra physical cores (and four extra total virtual cores if you get the i7,) really help out when doing video compression.

The better video card that comes standard with the quad-core models also helps out a bit in appropriate apps.
 
Alonzo84

Alonzo84

macrumors 6502a
Dec 18, 2009
845
26
North Carolina
selfdisplaced said:
I am pretty sure only the i5 and above support "turboboost". Reading online seems like that's one of the features of the i5 vs i3

From Apple's site:

Turbo Boost.

Many iMac models now benefit from Turbo Boost technology built into the Intel Core series processors. If you’re using a processor-intensive application such as Aperture 3 or Final Cut Pro that benefits from extra performance, Turbo Boost dynamically increases the speed of available cores.
Click to expand...

Can anyone confirm whether or not the previous gen quad core i5's support turbo boost and hyper threading? All of my search results fail to specify this.
 
D

dagomike

macrumors 65816
Jun 22, 2007
1,451
1
The i3 iMacs have HT, the quad i5 have TB. Only the dual i5 and quad i7 has both HP and TP.
 
W

Will : Hi !

macrumors member
Apr 1, 2006
35
0
krewelement394 said:
well does the imac have a new design? the one i use at work is a 27 inch, previous generation and it is black from the back. the new ones seem to be all aluminum... and to me they seem more arched :) not sure if it just me though.
Click to expand...

The iMac was redesigned a bit in October 2009 (all aluminum instead of black plastic back, glass now reaches the edges of the computer - no thin alu band on thew top/left/right sides, improved speakers, 16:9 displays instead of 16:10). The 27" model was introduced in Oct. '09 too; yours must be a 24".

krewelement394 said:
hmm, should i get a full keyboard or the wireless? it bugs me that the wireless one does not have a USB hub, the wired one does and i love that :/
Click to expand...

Fullsize keyboard has a number pad, too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom