Hello, sorry if this discussion has been had already, but I searched this forum for it, looked for info on barefeats.com and came up empty.
I'm going in for a 3G iPhone on monday (hopefully!), and I'm also in the market for an iMac, barring a Mac Tower release on Monday (probably not).
So I'm looking at iMacs. The discrete graphics is important to me, and I definitely want the Radeon 256MB. However, I'm on a budget.
I get an educator discount, so the new 2.66 is $1399, pushing the limits of my budget. Now, with the 2.66 right now I'd get an iPod Touch (which I have no use for and could sell), but it's a buy-now and get-rebate deal, which just further extends my budget.
The Refurb 20" with the 2600 graphics is 1099, and at that price I can afford to up the ram to 4GB.
So my question is, will I regret not getting the faster FSB and Ram bus? Is the performance bump of the new models enough to warrant waiting and saving, or will I be satisfied with the performance of the refurb one?
And now to answer the slew of "depends what you do with it" questions. I intend on running VMWare, with Paint Shop Pro X, in tandem with Pixelmator, and text editor for web design. I also do a lot with large photos in Aperture. Also, a planned project is to *FINALLY* edit and compose our wedding video in iMovie and iDVD.
So would I see huge performance jump with the FSB? Enough to push my budget to the limit?
Thanks for any info you can give me!
I'm going in for a 3G iPhone on monday (hopefully!), and I'm also in the market for an iMac, barring a Mac Tower release on Monday (probably not).
So I'm looking at iMacs. The discrete graphics is important to me, and I definitely want the Radeon 256MB. However, I'm on a budget.
I get an educator discount, so the new 2.66 is $1399, pushing the limits of my budget. Now, with the 2.66 right now I'd get an iPod Touch (which I have no use for and could sell), but it's a buy-now and get-rebate deal, which just further extends my budget.
The Refurb 20" with the 2600 graphics is 1099, and at that price I can afford to up the ram to 4GB.
So my question is, will I regret not getting the faster FSB and Ram bus? Is the performance bump of the new models enough to warrant waiting and saving, or will I be satisfied with the performance of the refurb one?
And now to answer the slew of "depends what you do with it" questions. I intend on running VMWare, with Paint Shop Pro X, in tandem with Pixelmator, and text editor for web design. I also do a lot with large photos in Aperture. Also, a planned project is to *FINALLY* edit and compose our wedding video in iMovie and iDVD.
So would I see huge performance jump with the FSB? Enough to push my budget to the limit?
Thanks for any info you can give me!
2.4 it is!