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Apple fanboy

macrumors Ivy Bridge
Original poster
Feb 21, 2012
59,460
60,263
Behind the Lens, UK
I (like a lot of people) am waiting for the new iMac to switch from windows. Can anybody tell me how much of a difference I will see in speed when I upgrade from my current system? I'm probably going to just go for the basic 21.5" unless the SSD drive comes way down (or hopefully becomes standard).
I will be looking to do some gaming (bootcamp) and photo editing (not pro work).
Current specs
Intel (R) Core(TM)2 Duo E4600 2.4 Ghz
3GB Ram
232 GB hard drive
Windows Vista 32 bit
I appreciate no one knows the 2012 iMac specs but lets assume its as the 2011 but with the Sandy bridge CPU.
 
I (like a lot of people) am waiting for the new iMac to switch from windows. Can anybody tell me how much of a difference I will see in speed when I upgrade from my current system? I'm probably going to just go for the basic 21.5" unless the SSD drive comes way down (or hopefully becomes standard).
I will be looking to do some gaming (bootcamp) and photo editing (not pro work).
Current specs
Intel (R) Core(TM)2 Duo E4600 2.4 Ghz
3GB Ram
232 GB hard drive
Windows Vista 32 bit
I appreciate no one knows the 2012 iMac specs but lets assume its as the 2011 but with the Sandy bridge CPU.

I can tell you now that the difference will be incredibly noticeable. I say this because when I switched from Windows to Mac, it was in 2009. I bought a Gateway tower that I customized so that it should have given me optimal performance for Vista. And it was great for a while, and then my desktop icons started disappearing, the WMP was no longer recognizing certain file types, an I was advised to reinstall the OS. After dealing with the problems a few times, I decided that I was finally going to switch.

My 2009 20" iMac was noticeably faster than the "more powerful" gateway desktop that I ordered even though the hardware was just about to be refreshed and there was less RAM in the new iMac. That performance boost that I noticed was due to the hardware software integration/optimization and I can only imagine that the newish iMac that you decide to buy will be awesome in comparison to your current setup.
 
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