Imac i7 (2009) vs New Imac i5

[crowsNest]

Sorry you guys are sick of these type of questions but it is important to me and each comparison is rather unique.

which one?
consider:
- I have the option to get a brand new 2009 i7 for almost exactly the same price as the new i5.

- I understand the i5 is now the same speed as the old i7 (does the old i7 still have an advantage here?).

- I dont care about SSD for now.

- Do the ram clockspeed changes trump the i7 'advantage' (if one exists)?

- Graphics cards are basically equal as far as i can tell.

thoughts?

 

[alust2013]

The i7 would be slightly faster, as it has hyperthreading and the i5 does not. The new ram may have a small influence, but I don't think it would be much

 

[easepease]

correct me if i am wrong, but since i7 is triple channel and i5 is double channel and the imac has only 4 slots, the i7's triple channel is not really fully utilized. So I like the i5 quad, it seems to be a sweet spot between performance and cost. My opinion...

 

[crowsNest]

And now that the new GPU is considered a slight upgrade i am leaning that way. Just have to wait (doh) for the shipment. The i7 is waiting for me!

 

[Will : Hi !]

correct me if i am wrong, but since i7 is triple channel and i5 is double channel and the imac has only 4 slots, the i7's triple channel is not really fully utilized. So I like the i5 quad, it seems to be a sweet spot between performance and cost. My opinion...

The Lynnfield quad-core i7 processors used in the iMac are dual-channel. Only the Bloomfield i7s are triple-channel.

 

[cmellis]

I'm in this position as well. 2009 quad i5 for £1269, 2009 quad i7 for £1399 or 2010 i5 for £1400. Which is the best option? I'd much rather go for the 2009 i5 if I won't see any significant performance upgrade on the others, likely to be doing some gaming and no real video editing or other hugely CPU intensive work.

 

[moomog]

I'm in this position as well. 2009 quad i5 for £1269, 2009 quad i7 for £1399 or 2010 i5 for £1400. Which is the best option? I'd much rather go for the 2009 i5 if I won't see any significant performance upgrade on the others, likely to be doing some gaming and no real video editing or other hugely CPU intensive work.

Can I ask where you can get those great prices?

 

[cmellis]

Can I ask where you can get those great prices?

Refurb for the older models, edu disc for the new.

 

[cmellis]

Basically, given average day to day use (nothing particularly intensive) and playing the odd game (anything will play SC2 to acceptable level I guess) am I going to see more benefit from the quad i7 over the quad i5 or the new graphics card in an quad i5 vs an i7 with the old one?

 

[dwd3885]

Basically, given average day to day use (nothing particularly intensive) and playing the odd game (anything will play SC2 to acceptable level I guess) am I going to see more benefit from the quad i7 over the quad i5 or the new graphics card in an quad i5 vs an i7 with the old one?

I got the new i5 but with the return price drop I'm considering getting the i7 refurb. However, if you look at macworld benchmarks from last year, the i7 is barely faster than i5. If you add faster ram and faster gpu, the new i5 may well be faster than the old i7

 

[jmpage2]

The big advantage of an i7 chip is hyper threading and it comes down to whether or not any software you use can take advantage of it.

The i7 appears to the OS as 8 virtual cpu cores. As time goes on more applications can take advantage of this, giving as much as a 20-30% speed boost at the same clock speed over a non hyper threading chip.

If you don't plan to do any photo or video editing on your Mac then it is very likely that you won't notice much (if any) performance difference between the quad core i5 and the i7.