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Which iMac 21.5 inch? Graphics card related - Please help!

L

LGShepherd

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 27, 2007
220
12
Teesside, United Kingdom
Hi MacRumors!!

I am going to upgrade to the new iMac in the next week from my 3 year old 2.0Ghz Macbook.

I am looking at the 21.5 inch model, but unsure which configuration to go for.

The base model looks to suit my needs as the only difference is the graphics card and smaller hard drive. I can easily pick up a 1TB external for less than £100 (the price difference is £250).

The main question is, would I be best spending the extra £250 and getting the Raedeon graphics card over the NVIDIA one.

I don't do any video editing (I would love to, but only as a daft hobby), any strenuous photoshop. All I really do is rip DVDs to .avi's as I am trying to digitalize my collection, but I do this when I am not on my computer or I set one off when I hop into bed.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Liam
 
If you don't plan on doing anything with heavy graphics (working with 15MP+ RAW footage or effects editing with video or gaming) the 9400m will more than suffice.

I run it most of the time with my 17" MBP and its 1920x1200 resolution, which is 230400 more pixels than the 21.5" iMac and do some light video editing (Media Composer) and Photoshhopping and it handles it well.
Even playing 720p and 1080p content is no problem.
 
Thanks for your reply!

I think the heaviest thing that I will do when it comes to video is ripping my DVD collection.

I think I will have to make the upgrade tomorrow at my local PC World
 
Ripping doesn't rely on the graphics card, more on the speed of the DVD drive and the decoding mechanism used to remove the copy protection, which means my 12" iBook G4 1GHz was as fast as my MBP with 2.8GHz.
 
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