New iMac Benchmarks Show 10-25% Improvement Over Previous Generation

[ctdonath]

I agree, mostly, except it used to be true that computers gained 50% a year.

Then we hit about 3GHz, and physics pretty much hit a brick wall. Speed improvements are now about parallelism and pipelining, with those going only so far for most uses.

Think about it for a minute. We're talking about machines that execute multiple instructions in the time it takes light to travel 3 inches. The CPU isn't much smaller than 1 inch, has a ridiculous number of wires tangled therein, and needs a little time for signal changes to settle down from transition to the next.

Yes, if we throw out the standard chemistry which the entire industry is built on, we can make some improvements. That still leaves us not far from the theoretical limits of switch physics (but still room for some pretty awesome reductions in power consumption).

To make the same kind of computing progress I've seen over 30+ years, we'll have to throw out not just silicon, but deterministic electrical physics.

 

[theSeb]

It is extremely naive to take the results of a sprint and then try to extrapolate them to how these computers will perform in a marathon. Geekbench does not consider factors like CPU throttling due to overheating. I hope people understand that these results are not suggesting that an iMac is as quick as nearly all pros in truly CPU intensive real world tasks or that the mini can keep up with an iMac.

 

[thekev]

You post in ignorance my friend. They have already done tear downs of the new iMac and it is very user upgradable... Hard drive, ram, and even the fact that the CPU is not soldered. The screen is held on by magnets like the previous model but since the LCD is laminated to the glass it is easier to get in to.

That's the amusing part. It looks easier to upgrade than the previous version. I doubt this is for the end user. It's likely that it helps facilitate repairs by alleviating smudge/dust issues.

Or even an inch thicker.
You know, so that form doesn't cripple function for twice the price.
It's a freakin' desktop. Limp wristed pansies doen't have to carry it around.

What components?

The fastest desktop CPU and GPUs available instead of gimped mobile junk
that gets too hot and throttles down 50% under heavy loads.
2-3X faster and less expensive.

That was easy. Magic.

Even HP stuck with mobile gpus in the Z1, and they certainly aren't cost effective. I wonder if it really is difficult to dissipate heat in such an enclosure. I'm more curious how it handles the cpu heat. Like you I question their design priorities.

It is extremely naive to take the results of a sprint and then try to extrapolate them to how these computers will perform in a marathon. Geekbench does not consider factors like CPU throttling due to overheating. I hope people understand that these results are not suggesting that an iMac is as quick as nearly all pros in truly CPU intensive real world tasks or that the mini can keep up with an iMac.

Geekbench is kind of horrible in this regard. I always wished they had a separate test that begins measurements after a couple minutes of stress testing.

 

[IzzyJG99]

I think the iMac has a bad case of Anorexia Nervosa....

As for the speeds. I wonder if we're at a point where the laws of physics (Electromagnetic speed, Lightspeed..etc) have caused CPU's to hit a wall. It's possible that we cannot make a processor any faster when those things are constant, or so the Theory of Relativity says.

 

[cheesyappleuser]

Or even an inch thicker.
You know, so that form doesn't cripple function for twice the price.
It's a freakin' desktop. Limp wristed pansies doen't have to carry it around.

What components?

The fastest desktop CPU and GPUs available instead of gimped mobile junk
that gets too hot and throttles down 50% under heavy loads.
2-3X faster and less expensive.

That was easy. Magic.

Yeah, it doesn't seem to make sense.

First of all, we love Apple. But, just imagine getting a new desktop which is freaking thin for minimal reasons. Then, it's on pair with a laptop. Then, it is more expensive than the last model because it is thin.

It is a goddamn desktop! It should be made to run like hell, and they decided to make it slower than it could be and **** up the entire production line because they wanted to make it thin!

Do not misinterpret me, I was stunned by the thinness of the new iMac, but damn, I preferred it was still fat but that it ran like 40% faster

 

[theBB]

When you work in an area that requires both wired ethernet and burning discs to transfer data, the loss of the optical drive and the price increase, combined with a performance increase that will be invisible to the overwhelming majority of buyers, the new iMac is a step backwards.

What does wired ethernet have anything to do with the need to use an external optical drive on this machine? Are you looking into optical drives with ethernet ports?

Evaluating cons for features you need, but pros for features that majority will not need in your opinion. Why shift the goal posts? Evaluate pros and cons based on your needs or based on general populace.

 

[laurim]

Like many people, I've been waiting and waiting for a replacement for my 2008 Mac Pro. I do motion graphics for a living and need a high-power machine that I can upgrade the graphics card on because my Motion projects render on the gpu, not the cpu. Why don't they make a iMacPro? Have the all-in-one design but add the ability to easily upgrade the main hard drive/graphics card/ram and the ability to add more ram than the standard iMac. A pro-level cpu. With thunderbolt, I don't need the extra internal hard drive bays so the form factor can stay slim. An esata port would be awesome. I just need a way to upgrade basic things as better ones become available. If Apple did this, I could probably say goodbye to the MacPro line.

 

[Macboy Pro]

Did you see all the empty space in the tear down? I would assume that would help with cooling.

Hope you are right. The 2011 is borderline dangerous

 

[7enderbender]

My four Core i7 Mini is approx. 20% faster than the 21.5" iMac, and the Dell U2412M is approx. 11% larger and with a 1920x1200 resolution, I feel it's a better screen than on the iMac.

The Mini is really small, totally quiet, and doesn't get hot. And it is so small that I don't notice any wires. The only thing that uses extra space is the very nice external speakers that I'm using.

What I really liked is that next time I want to upgrade, I don't need to buy a new monitor, just the Mini.
This combo works for me, I do understand the appeal of the iMac...I had one for the last three years.

That makes a lot of sense. I'm leaning in that same direction with two 24" screens and some kind of hard drive/SSD upgrade at some point later. And if this all works out I may later go for a Mac Pro without having to buy all new peripherals again immediately.

 

[tann]

Oh wow!! A very nice update (in my opinion!!).

Wasn't the jump from 1st gen ix processors to sandy bridge about 15%??

And that upgrade cycle all we got was new gpu/cpu with the other specs staying the same!! This time we have that lovely design, apparently better screen and holy sheeet did I mention that design?!

Most don't upgrade a DESKTOP every year so if you upgraded after 4 years and there was on average a 15% increase each year thats a BIG increase each upgrade !!!!

C'mon people! Also, remember Apple doesn't build the CPUs, they don't purposefully only make their year on year performance increase by 15%

 

[Wokis]

The things said in that quotation regarding hyper threading is kind of messed up.

To my understanding, HT allows for simultaneous execution of integer and fp instructions at once, given the right circumstances. However, most software do not utilize both at the same time, making that advantage much less relevant than what Intel would have you to believe.

In short it's good for heavy math and can especially be taken in advantage of in a say video encoding, niche multitasking or a benchmarking program but in many other tasks it is of no real benefit.

 

[7enderbender]

What does wired ethernet have anything to do with the need to use an external optical drive on this machine? Are you looking into optical drives with ethernet ports?

Evaluating cons for features you need, but pros for features that majority will not need in your opinion. Why shift the goal posts? Evaluate pros and cons based on your needs or based on general populace.

My guess is that this is a (very valid) complaint about Apple's obsession with declaring every standard obsolete every few years while professionals are still relying on certain things. Like CD and DVD drives. Like ethernet ports (missing on the new retina Macbook "pro"). The push (again) to drop FireWire (still essential in the audio recording world with no reasonable replacement on the horizon). Etc.

 

[dashiel]

Well if it's fast enough for Louis C.K. to edit his TV show on, then it must be good enough for anyone!

Pretty much. I doubt more than a handful of people on MacRumors bitching about specs have jobs that require half what is required to edit 4K video files from a Red One.

Future-proofing.

USB3 right now is relevant to some users and not most. Three years from now, all USB peripherals or nearly all will be USB3 and any computer that has only USB2 ports will be left out in the cold. It can make the difference between getting 3 years or 5 years out of a pricey iMac purchase.

Don’t understand your point. These iMacs have 4 USB3 ports.

Benchmark whores like to brag and jerk off! And when they're done with that, play World of Warcraft at 800fps.

Unless you're folding proteins or predicting weather patterns, today's computers are basically more powerful than what most need - which is why the iPad has become so popular, back to basics and simplicity.

Honestly though, it's more about multitasking than anything else. I can have a dozen or so applications open at once when programming or doing web work. The most taxing is running virtual machines with VMWare. OS X programming I like to have a vmachine running Snow Leopard to test against. And web development I like to have a vmachine running Windows to test various versions of IE. I also have a vmachine running OpenBSD as my web server.

I've honestly never benchmarked my machine... What do I have to gain from it? Nothing. I may eventually when I start thinking of getting a new machine, but that's at least a few years down the road.

That’s about the same as me. Usually have 2-4 VMs running (Windows XP, 7) and Snow Leopard (occasionally), usually along with a couple of SSH sessions, one IDE or another and Photoshop and I rarely tax the CPU and that’s on 2009 iMac. Memory is what kills me 16GB just isn’t enough with 64bit apps.

Just seems the people complaining the most have don’t have much justification for their complaints other than spec-envy.

 

[trip1ex]

....shows how powerful a mid-range Mini is despite its size?

The iMac is smaller. It takes up no space.

 

[Gfive]

Nice speeds and design.

If intel would work a bit harder, speeds would be way better.
(not only for the imac, but sure for the mac pro)

 

[Naimfan]

The iMac is smaller. It takes up no space.

These aren't the droids you're looking for . . .

 

[frjonah]

Agreed...

Not that impressed.

Sorry to say, but in thinking this through, my response today was to pick up the Previous Generation 27" iMac from the Apple Refurb Store ($1359), which I will proceed to max out through OWC... My reasons included the following:

• I would have basically been happy with a Thunderbolt Display... buying the iMac gives me that plus a decent Mac for an extra $400
• The new iMac design isn't for me... You can sort-of even see how Apple is embarrassed of the "bump in the back" by the way they basically only show it from the front, or angle-front... It makes me uncomfortable for some reason too.
• Desktops have always been your "old faithful" machines... making a desktop this "self-contained" seems a departure from the whole point of desktops... if the hard drive crashes, buy a new machine or pay an exorbitant fee to have it exchanged?? This has really gone too far. I get it for laptops (esp. the MB Air), but not at all for desktops.
• Really don't like the low configs on non BTO machines... for what I do, 8gb of RAM is nothing... I don't want to have to specify my ultimate need at the time of ordering since that puts me in the position of all or nothing... I guess it's nothing then.
• 5400rpm drives standard on the 21.5" machine... really? Clunky slow drives which are crash prone on a non-accessible machine? What are you thinking???

So, well, that's it for now... and, in case you're wondering, as of the writing of this post, there are still a few more Previous Model 27" machines available on the Refurb Store

 

[bretm]

So in exchange for more money, we get slightly faster performance which will be invisible to almost EVERY user of an iMac, no optical drive, a non-user upgradable machine, and a new design that values form over function.

In short, the new iMac joins the Macbook Air and the retina Macbook Pro as a disposable computer.

Apple, in my view, needs to get over its obsession with thinness.

And why, given the weight reduction and the elimination of the optical drive, does it cost MORE?

Well, if you spec it out exactly the same, it's the same price. MAYBE $70 more. You can't spec it with a fusion drive, cuz there wasn't one before. And the nVidia graphics are so much better its ridiculous. Reduced glare screen a plus too. 10% faster top of line after only a little over a year is decent. What you want? If intel made better then it'd be better. A retina display would be nice, but it sure as hell would cost an extra grand. Do you see any 27" retina displays out there? They don't exist yet.

Ill agree on DVD. It's silly to remove. Ill duct tape one to the back.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

I’m always curious what people who say this do with their computers. I look at people like Louis C.K. who edited the first two seasons his show on a 13" MacBook Pro and then come here and see people moaning about benchmarks … so I’m curious what do you actually do that you need such power?

I use my Mac for H.264 encoding with the x264 encoder (HandBrake/MeGUI & others), video editing (VirtualDub & others), software development (GCC/LLVM/Clang), data analysis (my own programs), VMs (VMware & Oracle), Adobe Flash (Plugin) and so on.

 

[Shanpdx]

Well, sure. I wish Ferrari Makes 2013 GTO for may be $300 too.

/sorry to be the bearer of bad news for ya

are you high? I am not talking about the 27" for $300. yes you can find 21.5" good IPS monitor under $300. only you will miss out on integrated setup like 27" apple thunder bolt display.

 

[Sjhonny]

Then we hit about 3GHz, and physics pretty much hit a brick wall. Speed improvements are now about parallelism and pipelining, with those going only so far for most uses.

Think about it for a minute. We're talking about machines that execute multiple instructions in the time it takes light to travel 3 inches. The CPU isn't much smaller than 1 inch, has a ridiculous number of wires tangled therein, and needs a little time for signal changes to settle down from transition to the next.

Yes, if we throw out the standard chemistry which the entire industry is built on, we can make some improvements. That still leaves us not far from the theoretical limits of switch physics (but still room for some pretty awesome reductions in power consumption).

To make the same kind of computing progress I've seen over 30+ years, we'll have to throw out not just silicon, but deterministic electrical physics.

Fine. All you say is true. But just think about what your brain can do at room temperature... I believer there's plenty of room for improvement. It might (not) be in organic structures, it might be in carbon nanotubes, but It's just not in silicon. And as I said, I didn't disagree with your 10-15% performance increases (and why they are to be expected). I just pointed out that there are a lot of people that are still expecting 50% a year.

 

[bretm]

Interestingly enough the entry point is higher, however compared to a maxed out 27-Inch iMac 2011 vs 2012, the 2012 is cheaper.

I believe it was roughly ~$3479 for a 3.4 i7 4GB stock Ram, 2GB GPU, 2TB+256GB SSD

2012 27-inch maxed ~$2749 3.4 i7, 8GB stock ram, 2GB GPU, 3TB Fusion, add $29~ for Thunderbolt to FireWire adapter, ~$79 for SuperDrive if necessary. and still cheaper for the maxed out model.

not bad.

Also for me, more piece of mind when getting it repaired or service or even upgrading as the glass/lcd are one piece and chance of dust or smudges between glass & lcd are a nonissue...though i wonder how tough and strong the bond between the glass/lcd fused on the new imac really is.

What? No, a maxed out 2011 i7 27" 3.4 6970m 2GB, 4gig RAM 1tb HD was $2500. The same speced 2012 plus DVD is $2500. Except you do get 8 GB ram instead of 4. In either case you can get your extra RAM on Amazon for $80 or so. Do not buy RAM from Apple of course.

 

[laurim]

Pretty much. I doubt more than a handful of people on MacRumors bitching about specs have jobs that require half what is required to edit 4K video files from a Red One.

I guess I'm in that handful of people because while I'm designing motion graphics using particle emitters or replicators, it takes no time at all for my 2008 Octo MacPro with 24 gigs of RAM and an upgraded graphics card to reach the point where it can no long let me view an animation project in real time. So in order to check my work, I have to render it out to a movie, basically a walk-away task. Lord help me if I want to add motion blur. Doesn't help that I often build animations larger than 1920x1080.There ARE professions that need a pro-level machine.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Booyah! My new Mac Mini Server Quad-Core i7 kicks some serious arse...until I go to run a game on it. It's a good thing that's not what I bought it for.

One Generation further and the iMacs get 2010 Mac Pro 8 Core Speed. I really thought they would manage this this time around though.

It's all a bit misleading since some applications don't make good use of multiple cores (e.g. older Final Cut Pro). I'd rather have a 4-core that equals an older 8-core in this test since it will do MUCH better in single threads.

 

[theBB]

My guess is that this is a (very valid) complaint about Apple's obsession with declaring every standard obsolete every few years while professionals are still relying on certain things. Like CD and DVD drives. Like ethernet ports (missing on the new retina Macbook "pro"). The push (again) to drop FireWire (still essential in the audio recording world with no reasonable replacement on the horizon). Etc.

Which part of the complaint is valid? Missing optical drive is valid for his profession sure, but then he denigrates the speed improvement because most people will not notice it. He also ignores the screen improvement, even though everyone will notice it. Why evaluate one shortcoming for a narrow set of users, but denigrate an improvement for the general populace, while forgetting another completely? Adding a complaint about ethernet does not make any sense, either, as his argument was this gen iMac was step back from the last year's model and iMac has not lost ethernet.

If a port that you rely on is missing from a new model, don't buy the new model, especially if you don't think you'll notice a 25% improvement and yes, it sounds right on the edge of being noticeable for most uses. As for myself, I am thinking about upgrading from a 2006 iMac, so I hope to notice some improvement.