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The great iMac buying debate: Rev. H or Rev. I?

wrldwzrd89

wrldwzrd89

macrumors G5
Original poster
Jun 6, 2003
12,110
77
Solon, OH
I know, I know - neither Intel iMac revision is available right now (as of this posting, in the USA). However... I have a Rev. D iMac, purchased on August 23, 2008. It has served me very well over that time. I'm trying to decide on what to do as far as replacing it goes. What are your thoughts? I've upgraded this thing to a 1TB HDD and 4GB RAM, so I can afford to wait for Rev. I to come out - at least I hope so ;)
 
Is this for real?

You replace it when you can afford it AND need to, because of limitations of performance or application relevant specification of your current set up.

You can either get last year's version at a big discount or the current one, or sit it out until the next if not urgent, as per your requirements.

Simple?
 
I ended up getting a Rev. H iMac, because of my 4x3 rule: If 3 or more components are 4 times better or more than my previous Mac, I pounce.
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
I ended up getting a Rev. H iMac, because of my 4x3 rule: If 3 or more components are 4 times better or more than my previous Mac, I pounce.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry but that rule is obsolete. It is now replaced by a much broader minded 16x9 vision for replacing products.
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
I ended up getting a Rev. H iMac, because of my 4x3 rule: If 3 or more components are 4 times better or more than my previous Mac, I pounce.

iMac Intel (Rev D, 24"), 1TB HDD, 4GB RAM
Click to expand...

OK, I'll bite. I'll give you that Thunderbolt is at least 4 times better than FW800 (at least as soon as there is something to connect it to). But what other two things are 4x better?

I try to get a 2x speed improvement between systems, and it takes several years to achieve that.
 
I am waiting for Revision Q version 3.1.288 build A7 revision B. I heard it's going to have a screen and computer built into one unit.
 
talmy said:
OK, I'll bite. I'll give you that Thunderbolt is at least 4 times better than FW800 (at least as soon as there is something to connect it to). But what other two things are 4x better?

I try to get a 2x speed improvement between systems, and it takes several years to achieve that.
Click to expand...
Max RAM (16GB instead of 4GB) - well, actually 32GB but Apple won't admit it :p
Graphics RAM (1GB instead of 256MB)
 
I also have a 2008 iMac. While the recent update is pretty nice, I'm going to skip it because my iMac, with 4 GB of RAM that I stuck into it, works pretty damn good. I'm waiting until the Ivy Bridge iMac comes out, mainly because of USB 3.0, before I evaluate upgrading.

Whether I actually upgrade or not depends on how well Lion performs.
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
Max RAM (16GB instead of 4GB) - well, actually 32GB but Apple won't admit it :p
Graphics RAM (1GB instead of 256MB)
Click to expand...

I guess my questioning 4x3 would hang more on are the three items actually 4 times better or just 4 times larger :)

When I compare the latest high-end iMac with my 18 month old high-end model I see only a 50% improvement in a synthetic benchmark, which isn't even a 2x performance boost.

Just like Thunderbolt can be viewed as massively faster than FW800 for external devices, there isn't any improvement if nothing is available to connect to it that uses the improvement. Likewise, 16GB of RAM rather than 4GB is only a 4x improvement if you've bought the extra RAM and are actually using it. I just checked and I'm using 3GB on my 8GB machine, I have gone occasionally above 4GB but never reached 8. And I know I haven't used anywhere near the RAM in my graphics processor.
 
i5 vs i7

talmy said:
I guess my questioning 4x3 would hang more on are the three items actually 4 times better or just 4 times larger :)

When I compare the latest high-end iMac with my 18 month old high-end model I see only a 50% improvement in a synthetic benchmark, which isn't even a 2x performance boost.

Just like Thunderbolt can be viewed as massively faster than FW800 for external devices, there isn't any improvement if nothing is available to connect to it that uses the improvement. Likewise, 16GB of RAM rather than 4GB is only a 4x improvement if you've bought the extra RAM and are actually using it. I just checked and I'm using 3GB on my 8GB machine, I have gone occasionally above 4GB but never reached 8. And I know I haven't used anywhere near the RAM in my graphics processor.
Click to expand...


My question is i5 vs i7. For the average user which I primarily am I wonder if I would notice the difference? Besides the extra $200 that is.

Glennsan
 
You won't notice the difference except for heavy computationally intensive operations that can take advantage of the hyperthreaded additional cores. Handbrake video processing would be noticeably faster, for instance.
 
talmy said:
You won't notice the difference except for heavy computationally intensive operations that can take advantage of the hyperthreaded additional cores. Handbrake video processing would be noticeably faster, for instance.
Click to expand...

Handbrake is the only thing I do that is intensive, at least a couple a week usually. That would be wonderful if it was that much faster. Thank you.

Glennsan
 
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