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Which would be faster overall?

D

Drew1204

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 6, 2009
39
0
Hello,

I just purchased the following but am having second guesses and wondering which is faster the following or the iMac I have listed below:

ASUS P8Z77-I DELUXE (USB 3.0, SATA 6GB/s, WiFi)
ORIGIN FROSTBYTE 120 Sealed Liquid Cooling Systems
ORIGIN High-Performance Ultra Silent Fans - Black
Overclocked Intel Core i5 3570K 4.2GHz - 4.7GHz LGA 1155 Quad-Core Processor (6MB L3 Cache)
750 Watt Corsair TX750M PSU
Single 2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GTX 670
16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600Mhz (2x8GB) Memory
Genuine MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Edition
128GB Samsung 830 Series - Solid State Drive
1TB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA 6.0Gb/s, 7200RPM, 64MB Cache HDD


Is the above faster than: http://store.apple.com/us/product/FD063LL/A

The iMac is $100 more...

Thanks!
 
Drew1204 said:
Hello,

I just purchased the following but am having second guesses and wondering which is faster the following or the iMac I have listed below:

ASUS P8Z77-I DELUXE (USB 3.0, SATA 6GB/s, WiFi)
ORIGIN FROSTBYTE 120 Sealed Liquid Cooling Systems
ORIGIN High-Performance Ultra Silent Fans - Black
Overclocked Intel Core i5 3570K 4.2GHz - 4.7GHz LGA 1155 Quad-Core Processor (6MB L3 Cache)
750 Watt Corsair TX750M PSU
Single 2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GTX 670
16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600Mhz (2x8GB) Memory
Genuine MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Edition
128GB Samsung 830 Series - Solid State Drive
1TB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA 6.0Gb/s, 7200RPM, 64MB Cache HDD


Is the above faster than: http://store.apple.com/us/product/FD063LL/A

The iMac is $100 more...

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Hi,

The parts that you've mentioned will combine to make a computer that is faster than the iMac in the link, mainly because it's using 2012 components and the iMac has not been refreshed. But, even if a 2012 iMac comes along, your computer will still be faster.

Despite the fact that you CPU is an Ivy Bridge i5, it's basically about the same speed as the Sandy Bridge CPU in the iMac. But your overclock will make it faster. Even if the top 2012 iMac gets a faster i7 Ivy Bridge CPU, yours will still be faster due to the overclock.

The 670 desktop graphics card is very quick and can easily be overclocked as well to make it even faster. The iMac has a mobile AMD 6970M GPU, which is quite a lot slower. The 2012 iMac may get an Nvidia 680M GPU, which is basically the same as the 670 desktop card that you have, but the 680M has reduced core and memory clocks to keep it within an acceptable thermal range for a GPU that is designed for high-end laptops. That's really the biggest issue with the iMac - the lack of a desktop GPU.

Unless you spend extra, the iMac that you've linked to comes with a mechanical hard drive. This will mean that it will be slower than your computer in general productivity software and for overall snappiness when opening and closing applications and files.

All in all, that is a very nice computer that will be great to use, especially for gaming.
 
theSeb said:
Hi,

The parts that you've mentioned will combine to make a computer that is faster than the iMac in the link, mainly because it's using 2012 components and the iMac has not been refreshed. But, even if a 2012 iMac comes along, your computer will still be faster.

Despite the fact that you CPU is an Ivy Bridge i5, it's basically about the same speed as the Sandy Bridge CPU in the iMac. But your overclock will make it faster. Even if the top 2012 iMac gets a faster i7 Ivy Bridge CPU, yours will still be faster due to the overclock.

The 670 desktop graphics card is very quick and can easily be overclocked as well to make it even faster. The iMac has a mobile AMD 6970M GPU, which is quite a lot slower. The 2012 iMac may get an Nvidia 680M GPU, which is basically the same as the 670 desktop card that you have, but the 680M has reduced core and memory clocks to keep it within an acceptable thermal range for a GPU that is designed for high-end laptops. That's really the biggest issue with the iMac - the lack of a desktop GPU.

Unless you spend extra, the iMac that you've linked to comes with a mechanical hard drive. This will mean that it will be slower than your computer in general productivity software and for overall snappiness when opening and closing applications and files.

All in all, that is a very nice computer that will be great to use, especially for gaming.
Click to expand...

Thanks very much for your help! I'm excited to see how fast it is, never had a computer like this :D.


You other guys are right it does not come with a monitor or keyboard or mouse. I was looking at getting:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236103

The computer I put together was 1,650 so adding a 27 inch monitor + keyboard will put me about $150 more than the iMac.

Adding a screen of similar quality like:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...N=B0039648BO&linkCode=as2&tag=beshaigropro-20

Would cost about 500 more than the iMac.
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
Drew1204 said:
Thanks very much for your help! I'm excited to see how fast it is, never had a computer like this :D.


You other guys are right it does not come with a monitor or keyboard or mouse. I was looking at getting:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236103

The computer I put together was 1,650 so adding a 27 inch monitor + keyboard will put me about $150 more than the iMac.

Adding a screen of similar quality like:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...N=B0039648BO&linkCode=as2&tag=beshaigropro-20

Would cost about 500 more than the iMac.
Click to expand...

That's a very relevant point to consider.

You're going to be staring at the screen, well, any time you use it, it's worth the money to get a good one. I've yet to find anything as good as the Apple displays in a reasonable price range.
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
If speed is a consideration over the screen, I would say an iMac is probably not what you need anyway.
 
I think it depends what you mean by "faster".

The specs for the PC you've listed are TECHNICALLY faster than iMac hardware components - but at the end of the day, in the real world, it all comes down to software.

If you will be running Windows only on the iMac anyway, then it's not really an issue - but otherwise OS X can be a real advantage when it comes to long-term speed. Windows 7 is pretty snappy when first installed, and will run really well on that hardware, but over time, any Windows install will slow down dramatically and need reinstalling, whereas OS X will stay faster for longer.

And then of course there's personal preference - for me personally, I'd even take a small performance hit if it meant I could keep OS X instead of Windows. But if you're happy with Windows, of course, then personal preference doesn't matter.
 
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