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IshDisturber

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 2, 2007
10
0
Hello All,

This is on the Apple Canada refurb store site:

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APP.../RSLID?sf=wYTKD9KU7DD7KYK7A&nclm=CertifiedMac

What's the better deal? The 2nd one with Wxtreme chip and larger HD seems to be better. I'm confused as to why they are the same prices. Is the Extreme chip better than the Duo chip?


Refurbished iMac 24-inch 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
24-inch glossy widescreen display
2GB memory
320GB hard drive
8x SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB memory
Built-in iSight Camera
Price: $1,649.00


Refurbished iMac 24-inch 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme
24-inch glossy widescreen display
2GB memory
500GB hard drive
8x SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB memory
Built-in iSight Camera
Price: $1,649.00
 
The model with the Core 2 Extreme is the previous model and the other one is the current model. I'm not sure off the top of my head if there was any difference in the motherboard or memory specs between these models. Might the new one have a faster FSB?

EDIT: Ah Yes, here we go:

Apple Store website said:
Refurbished iMac 24-inch 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
L2 Cache 6MB Shared
Frontside bus 1066MHz
Memory 2GB (two 1GB SO-DIMM) of 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM; supports up to 4GB


Refurbished iMac 24-inch 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme
Processor 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme
L2 Cache 4MB Shared
System bus 800MHz
Memory 2GB (two SO-DIMMs) 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-5300), supports up to 4GB

If it were me, I'd go with the non-Extreme model due to the faster motherboard and RAM.
 
In one of the Macworld reviews, there are benchmark results comparing one to the other. I think the results were very similar, but the current model, the non-extreme one, was slightly faster. If you find that article and see the speed results are indeed similar, the bigger harddisk seems like a better deal.
 
I took a look at the performance tests at the Primate Labs Blog and here is how they stack up:

Primate Labs Blog said:
iMac (Early 2008)
Intel Core 2 Duo E8235 2.8 GHz (2 cores) 3714
iMac (Mid 2007)
Intel Core 2 Extreme X7900 2.8 GHz (2 cores) 3634

The "newer" one is approx 2% faster - aka not a whole lot! :p I guess they are a toss-up and then the hard drive would be the way to go. I didn't dig into the rest of the bundled accessories to see if there were any differences...
 
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