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Scary Fast Imac Intel

maclamb

maclamb

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 28, 2002
432
0
Northern California
Purchased a 17" imac Intel and have been running it under 512M and perfromance was good - ok - poor at times.
Today I slapped an extra Gig of ram into it and i was just BLOWN AWAY
Super fast - even rosetta - basically instantaneous response - as good or better than XP (mac os has always had a perceived delay or lag in basic desktop UI for me, even on G5 systems).
I just love it - worht every penny
and, I actually just upgraded to the 20" and will take the 17" back for a refund - LOVE the screen - awesome.
 
maclamb said:
Purchased a 17" imac Intel and have been running it under 512M and perfromance was good - ok - poor at times.
Today I slapped an extra Gig of ram into it and i was just BLOWN AWAY
Super fast - even rosetta - basically instantaneous response - as good or better than XP (mac os has always had a perceived delay or lag in basic desktop UI for me, even on G5 systems).
I just love it - worht every penny
and, I actually just upgraded to the 20" and will take the 17" back for a refund - LOVE the screen - awesome.
Click to expand...

I too am impressed with the performance even w/ only 512 in there. Eventually I'll max it out to 2gb, and I'm sure I'll be blown away just like you were.

I've been running Finale and Reason (Music Programs) under Rosetta just fine with the standard Ram. I can only imagine if I maxed it out!
 
I still have the previous G5 iMac, and it's pretty fast with 2GB. Good to hear that the new Intel Macs aren't as bad as everyone seems to think though. As soon as they get more apps with Universal Binaries out there, I suspect it will be even better.

Of course, by then, I'm hoping to have a nice dual dual Intel PowerMac (or whatever they call it).
 
Thanks for the update on that. I started to wonder about the speed of these things. The more apps are written in universal bi. the more performance we will get out of those machines.
 
solvs said:
. Good to hear that the new Intel Macs aren't as bad as everyone seems to think though..
Click to expand...

Ive not heard anyone say its bad - i have heard a few reports that did unfair tests with 512mb.

One MR poster reduced his photoshop times from 7mins to 2 mins (for an action) just by adding 1gb ram.


These intel macs are insane - not quad insane but dual 2.3 insane
 
SiliconAddict said:
I'm 100% certain that Rosetta is going to benefit the most from 2GB of RAM. Rosetta is going to be a memory hog
Click to expand...

I bought an extra 1GB ram, so I have 1.5. Should I go ahead and order another GB so that I have 2GB, and sell the original apple 512 on ebay? I could probably get 50 bucks out of the 512, and pay about 120 for the 1GB. 70 bucks worth the extra RAM?
 
ontheuptick said:
I bought an extra 1GB ram, so I have 1.5. Should I go ahead and order another GB so that I have 2GB, and sell the original apple 512 on ebay? I could probably get 50 bucks out of the 512, and pay about 120 for the 1GB. 70 bucks worth the extra RAM?
Click to expand...

Until someone really benchmarks Rosetta and gives us real world stats (Come on www.barefeats.com ! Where are you?!) on the difference between 512MB, 1.5GB, and 2GB I wouldn't. If you are already above 1GB I'd have to imagine you are probably getting pretty close to the best performance you can in Rosetta. I think the key point is don't be on 512MB if you are using Rosetta. 1GB is probably "good enough" 1.5 is probably close to "topping out". But again that's a guess. If you have the money to burn upgrade. If you don't you should be fine with what you have.

What I would like to see is someone open up Activity Monitor and then start up something that is intensive like Photoshop. See how much ram is hit by just opening the app.
 
ontheuptick said:
I bought an extra 1GB ram, so I have 1.5. Should I go ahead and order another GB so that I have 2GB, and sell the original apple 512 on ebay? I could probably get 50 bucks out of the 512, and pay about 120 for the 1GB. 70 bucks worth the extra RAM?
Click to expand...

Once this memory becomes more common, the prices might come down a little? Or at least we might see some cheaper deals out there. Right now it is so hard to fine.

I think your 1.5 GB is plenty for now.
 
maclamb said:
Purchased a 17" imac Intel and have been running it under 512M and ....
Click to expand...

Thanks for reporting in, maclamb. I'd been wondering if there really was a usable and noticeable speed increase.
 
berkleeboy210 said:
I too am impressed with the performance even w/ only 512 in there. Eventually I'll max it out to 2gb, and I'm sure I'll be blown away just like you were.

I've been running Finale and Reason (Music Programs) under Rosetta just fine with the standard Ram. I can only imagine if I maxed it out!
Click to expand...

Can you PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell me how much CPU the demo song takes up in Reason? If its at least decent, I'm going to sleep MUCH easier tonight!
 
BakedBeans said:
Ive not heard anyone say its bad
Click to expand...
You must not have read the same threads and articles I have. ;) I think people may just be having a problem with the 2-3x faster claims. Me thinks thy doth expect too much.
 
I'm amazed that people have complained about the Intel iMacs being slow! I'm pretty impressed with just the 512 MB of memory and can't wait for my 1 GB stick to come in. That should be completely amazing.
 
tartsquid said:
I'm amazed that people have complained about the Intel iMacs being slow! I'm pretty impressed with just the 512 MB of memory and can't wait for my 1 GB stick to come in. That should be completely amazing.
Click to expand...

I think their saying that performance is slow while running apps via Rosetta unless you have lots of RAM. 1-2GB.
 
I know most of the complaints have been about Rosetta (I keep getting beachballed by Photoshop myself) but I've heard plenty of complaints about slowness in general. Maybe it's just because this is my first new Mac in three years that I think this one is so fast even in emulation. :p
 
Everyone has their pet peeves ...

solvs said:
Me thinks thy doth expect too much.
Click to expand...

"Thy" is the possessive form of "thou" and doesn't make any sense in this context. For future reference you might want to stick with "thou doest" instead ...

As to the topic at hand? I've only experimented with an Intel iMac in my local Apple retail store and I was really impressed with the 1GB 17" iMac on display. (Yes there was a 20" on display as well but I was trying to get a feel for the performance of the MacBook Pro I'm waiting for ...)

Tasks that would bring my 1.25Ghz PowerBook to its knees (GarageBand with lots of tracks and effects, playing HD movie trailers, etc.) not only ran smoothly but could be left running in the background and still leave foreground applications very, very responsive.

I was floored, and can't wait for my MacBook to ship.
 
solvs said:
You must not have read the same threads and articles I have. ;) I think people may just be having a problem with the 2-3x faster claims. Me thinks thy doth expect too much.
Click to expand...
Us Mac users are spoiled as hell.

We get an amazing machine and we whine because it's not quite as fast as the salesmen people said it was.

:p
 
I think what people are failing to take into account is that all the tests I've seen so far were not taking advantage of the second core. If one core on the Core Duo iMac is 1 - 1.5x the performance of the G5 iMac, then Jobsian math states that the other core brings you to 2-3x. It's actually a reasonable argument despite the fact that adding processors does not scale performance linearly.

I'd like to see some tests that we KNOW benefit from a second processor. I t hink we'll find that the new iMac is indeed much more performant when talking about heavy multitasking.
 
solvs said:
You must not have read the same threads and articles I have. ;) I think people may just be having a problem with the 2-3x faster claims. Me thinks thy doth expect too much.
Click to expand...


Sounds to me like you're a little upset at having purchased the prior rev iMac ;)

TM
 
Someone was asking about scanners..Not sure if it was this topic or not but..
I did some scanning yesterday.I have an Epson 1670 USB and used the image capture app.
It ran native ( Intel ) and I noticed no difference between my iMac and my Dual G5.
 
Lord Blackadder said:
It's hard to overemphasize how important RAM is for performance.

you can't have too much RAM. Ever.
Click to expand...
True, but you can end up spending more due to fears that might be unfounded.

My 17" arrived two days ago (base model, part of the Developer Transition Kit exchange program), and it worked pretty well (from an "average user" point of view, even with 512MB RAM). Of course, that average user is probably going to stick with iLife and other Intel apps.

I was able to run WarCraft III/Frozen Throne, even with the 512MB. Didn't try any "big" games, but it at least ran.

However, after adding a 1GB stick (from OWC), it - the iMac in general and WCIII specifically - runs much better when using Rosetta.

I would imagine that two matched 1GB sticks would be faster, but I strongly suspect, after watching Activity Monitor, that even 1 GB (two matched 512MB sticks) would work well for most iMac users.

Basically, if you can afford it, you will of course be best served by two 1GB sticks. Obviously. But... for those on a tighter budget, purchasing a stock, base 17" iMac and spending $60 on an extra half-gig will probably be just fine.
 
DarkAdept said:
"Thy" is the possessive form of "thou" and doesn't make any sense in this context. For future reference you might want to stick with "thou doest" instead ...
Click to expand...
Or I meant "they" and forgot the e. ;)

anthonymoody said:
Sounds to me like you're a little upset at having purchased the prior rev iMac ;)
Click to expand...
Quite the opposite really. I knew what I was doing, and while there are some down sides, I think I made the right purchase. My point was that if I'm not complaining, others shouldn't be. I'm sure the Intel iMacs are very fast.

Maybe just not as fast as people think they should be, which is to be expected, which I why I don't understand what some people are complaining about.
 
drumpat01 said:
and this is just the first version of the Intel iMac. Imagine what the revisions will look like??:D
Click to expand...

Forget the revision. Wait for the software updates, Leopard, and iLife '07, and Intel's compiler addin for X-Code that should do some SERIOUS tweaking for Intel apps. Hardware smardware. While I don't doubt that Merom that will be out this fall will blow away the Core Duos software updates are going to keep the Duos from slacking as more apps are not only ported to x86 but start being ported using Intel's wares.
 
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