What to prefer? Core I7 <> 1TB FD <> Graphic

[Xeleon]

Hi everyone,

I'm just about to purchase the new iMac 27', however I'm having some doubts to what components to choose for my specific needs.

I will mainly be surfing the web, downloading, playing games + movies etc.

I can only choose 1 of the following upgrades.

Core I5 -> I7
1TB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm -> 1TB Fusion Drive
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M 2GB GDDR5 -> NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB GDDR5

Which of these upgrades will provide the greatest increase in speed/fps at high graphics. I will be the way be running with 32GB Ram.

Any advice/suggestions to alternatives will be greately appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Mike

PS: It's perhaps important to mention that the games I'm primarily running is world of warcraft, league of legends, GW2 - most likely some 1st person shooting soon etc.

 

[elithrar]

Hi everyone,
Core I5 -> I7
1TB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm -> 1TB Fusion Drive
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M 2GB GDDR5 -> NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB GDDR5

The Fusion drive. There are tons of threads on this. It is worth it.

Which of these upgrades will provide the greatest increase in speed/fps at high graphics. I will be the way be running with 32GB Ram.

It seems silly to get 32GB of RAM—what do you do that doesn't require a Fusion drive (fast I/O) or top of the life graphics (the 780M) but just lots of RAM? 32GB is overkill—more than half will sit idle. Games won't use it (many can't address it!), browsers won't use that much and even working on large RAW files in Lightroom is unlikely to utilise it.

PS: It's perhaps important to mention that the games I'm primarily running is world of warcraft, league of legends, GW2 - most likely some 1st person shooting soon etc.

Given these games, I'd get the Fusion drive, 16GB of RAM and use the money saved to get the 780M. It's about ~20% better than the 775M: those extra frames are useful in busy scenes (i.e. when you're getting rolled in WvW)

 

[Xeleon]

The Fusion drive. There are tons of threads on this. It is worth it.



It seems silly to get 32GB of RAM—what do you do that doesn't require a Fusion drive (fast I/O) or top of the life graphics (the 780M) but just lots of RAM? 32GB is overkill—more than half will sit idle. Games won't use it (many can't address it!), browsers won't use that much and even working on large RAW files in Lightroom is unlikely to utilise it.




Given these games, I'd get the Fusion drive, 16GB of RAM and use the money saved to get the 780M. It's about ~20% better than the 775M: those extra frames are useful in busy scenes (i.e. when you're getting rolled in WvW)

Thanks man.
I appreciate you taking the time to reply.
I'll follow this advice.
Have a great day!
- Mike

 

[yjchua95]

Thanks man.
I appreciate you taking the time to reply.
I'll follow this advice.
Have a great day!
- Mike

If you don't do heavy stuff such as video encoding et al, you don't need the extra threads of the i7.
Don't bother with RAM upgrades, you can upgrade it yourself post-purchase.
I don't advocate the Fusion drive. It's much slower than a pure SSD. A Fusion drive has approximately read/write of 410/320 MB/s respectively. A pure SSD setup has a read/write of around 650/750 MB/s respectively.

If you're not going to play something like BF4, the GTX 775M should do you fine.

 

[Serban]

so you decided to go with 780M?

 

[Xeleon]

so you decided to go with 780M?

Yes. I'm yet to place my order, but it's my plan to go with the 780M.

 

[Serban]

Nice

 

[Xeleon]

If you don't do heavy stuff such as video encoding et al, you don't need the extra threads of the i7.
Don't bother with RAM upgrades, you can upgrade it yourself post-purchase.
I don't advocate the Fusion drive. It's much slower than a pure SSD. A Fusion drive has approximately read/write of 410/320 MB/s respectively. A pure SSD setup has a read/write of around 650/750 MB/s respectively.

If you're not going to play something like BF4, the GTX 775M should do you fine.

Is it an option to post-purchase a SSD later on and run it externally?

EDIT: Nevermind, I found my answer in another thread

 

[luffytubby]

The problem with iMac is that you can't upgrade it later(besides ram).

It's not going to feel very fast without the SSD which is priced unreasonable, and at the same time both the i7 and a 780m are upgrades that will prolong the machines life.

I would save up more and get base SSD, followed by 780 and i7. I would buy an external later for movies/music/pictures. It's just a hard advice to follow if you're in a position where you need a new computer now. They are very expensive machines after all. Particularly the SSD upgrade hurts.

 

[yjchua95]

By the way, why don't you consider purchasing from the Apple Education store online?

This way, you can get upgrades at a lower price.