New iMac photo editing questions

[stevo8]

So the wait is finally over and I have a birthday in a couple weeks so I'll be picking up a new 24" iMac but not sure which graphics card to get. My main use is photo editing in CS4 and LightRoom and regularly edit 21mb/mp images but I also watch a lot of videos/tv on it as well since I don't have a tv in my room. I do zero gaming though, so I'm not sure if I'll notice a upgrade....?? If I'm to upgrade from the 9400m I would most likely just go to the ATI Radeon... What do you guys think? It's an investment for the next few years so the price isn't too much of a concern I just want to make sure that it's something I'll notice the difference in, otherwise it's not at all justified. TIA

 

[RemarkabLee]

So the wait is finally over and I have a birthday in a couple weeks so I'll be picking up a new 24" iMac but not sure which graphics card to get. My main use is photo editing in CS4 and LightRoom and regularly edit 21mb/mp images but I also watch a lot of videos/tv on it as well since I don't have a tv in my room. I do zero gaming though, so I'm not sure if I'll notice a upgrade....?? If I'm to upgrade from the 9400m I would most likely just go to the ATI Radeon... What do you guys think? It's an investment for the next few years so the price isn't too much of a concern I just want to make sure that it's something I'll notice the difference in, otherwise it's not at all justified. TIA

In the short term, you will not notice a difference if you upgrade to a more powerful GPU. However in the long term, if you upgrade to Snow Leopard, the OS and other applications can take advantage of the GPU for other tasks, not just gaming or 3D graphics, such as video encoding or other serious number crunching tasks.

If you can afford it now and will be using the machine for a good few years (especially in todays financial climate), it would be worth the extra bucks. That's my opinion, I'm in a similar situation to yourself.