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refurb imac

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dbwrobel

Guest
Original poster
May 11, 2010
63
0
hello there, I'm looking at the imacs in the refurb store and can't decide which to get; I've read through so many benchmarks and opinions that I figured I'd try to get a direct line of communication from a group :p

I'm currently in grad school and will be using it mainly for coding, browsing, playing music, e-mail, and probably video conferencing/skype. I also plan on using it though for the occasional game (some of my favourites are gta 4, cod, xplane) video editing, and maybe running a vm. I've pretty much got myself set on the 27" model but can't decide between i3, i5, or i7.

I definitely can afford up to the i7 but for games will it make a difference of many fps between say i3 i5 and i7? From some things I've read it seems like the i7 is technically more powerful on paper but many program don't take advantage of it? Would it maybe be a better idea cost wise to just get the i3 and max out the ram? Help! Please!!!
 
It really depends in my opinion... Core i7 is a quad core processor while the other two are dual core. They are all multithreading though so they offer twice as many threads as cores.
 
I bought a refurbed i5 and yes, it IS a quad core. the 3.6ghz version is a dual core, the 2.8 is quad.

As far as games go you won't notice much if any difference between the i5 and i7. I would only opt for the i7 if I really needed CPU power. In this day and age unless your doing heavy heavy video editing/encoding the difference between the i5 and i7 is negligible.

At the end of the day they both share the same GPU so gameplay wise the difference will be next to nil.
 
Ok I'm not leaning then towards the either the i5 or i7; do you know if there are any plans for anything to use the capabilities of the i7? I've read in a few places that say a lot of its power is wasted because the programs now can't/don't take advantage of the extra virtual cores.
 
dbwrobel said:
Ok I'm not leaning then towards the either the i5 or i7; do you know if there are any plans for anything to use the capabilities of the i7? I've read in a few places that say a lot of its power is wasted because the programs now can't/don't take advantage of the extra virtual cores.
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I think you are right here for the most part... also good catch on the Core i5... don't know how I missed that.
 
sorry lol made a mistake; meant to say I AM leaning towards core i5 or i7.
 
I bought the i5 because the info I read said there was not much performance difference between it and the i7 and they had it in the apple store. I figured if I have a problem I can try to exchange it in the store instead of the build-to-order i7s.
 
I'm only considering the i7 because in the refurb store they cost the same as the new i5s. If I was to buy new I wouldn't be getting the i7.
 
dbwrobel said:
I'm only considering the i7 because in the refurb store they cost the same as the new i5s. If I was to buy new I wouldn't be getting the i7.
Click to expand...

Ask yourself if 300$ is worth having a machine that for your uses will likely not make a difference. The i5 is a quad core also, remember that.

Up to you. i7 is a better processor, but there are very very few tasks in which that added benefit is used.
 
damnit just went to order the i5 from the refurb store and it now says sold out :-(
 
also not sure if its a good deal, but the i7 is 1999 in the refurb store...maybe I should just go with that for the price?
 
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