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DannyBres

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Oct 30, 2007
1,412
6
UK
Whats is the difference? (Any windows benchmark comparisons around?)

Does the i7 have special features that the i5 doesn't or it it just a faster clock speed?
 
Ok so if I am spending £1600 on a computer then £160 will take my processor intense performance from 100% to 130%, that sound like a bargain! :)
 
It really depends on what you are doing with your Mac as to whether the i7 is worth the extra or not. Apple hasn't put a huge premium on moving to the i7 so that should help any doubters unsure.

Personally I went with the i5 in the previous gen, and bought extra RAM instead. And I would do the same today.

Most people like the idea of future proofing their purchases. But as Apple fans, they go ahead and rush out to buy the latest products anyway each year. :)

Adding the SSD as your OS drive would make the biggest difference by a million miles in terms of performance.
 
It really depends on what you are doing with your Mac as to whether the i7 is worth the extra or not. Apple hasn't put a huge premium on moving to the i7 so that should help any doubters unsure.

Personally I went with the i5 in the previous gen, and bought extra RAM instead. And I would do the same today.

Most people like the idea of future proofing their purchases. But as Apple fans, they go ahead and rush out to buy the latest products anyway each year. :)

Adding the SSD as your OS drive would make the biggest difference by a million miles in terms of performance.

Oh yeah! never thought about that! :) Thanks!

I am the same! I run out a buy tech at every opurtunity! Except for Macs because they last for ever! I have had my laptop 2 years this october and I cannot see my replacing it before it dies! And I cannot see my needing to upgrade a 27" IPS iMac with a 2.93GHz Quad for iLife and Photoshop use any time soon! So I feel I should future proof! :)


EDIT:

$H!7 £600 for a SSD, think that might be a post purchase mod when the price of SSD's has dropped

i7 4GB 2TB I think, and buy an exta 4GB off crucial! :)

Adding memory doesnt void warranty does it?
 
Yeah if I was spending that much on a new system, I would definitely go for the i7!
signature_silverapple.jpg
 
Yeah if I was spending that much on a new system, I would definitely go for the i7!
signature_silverapple.jpg

I know I am :D

My last 27" iMac was the core 2 duo....and I regretted it (I only got it because the core 2 duo was coming out a month before and I was impatient)
 
It really depends on what you are doing with your Mac as to whether the i7 is worth the extra or not. Apple hasn't put a huge premium on moving to the i7 so that should help any doubters unsure.

Personally I went with the i5 in the previous gen, and bought extra RAM instead. And I would do the same today.

Most people like the idea of future proofing their purchases. But as Apple fans, they go ahead and rush out to buy the latest products anyway each year. :)

Adding the SSD as your OS drive would make the biggest difference by a million miles in terms of performance.

The only "heavy" stuff I do is encoding video files from Blu Ray rips with Handbrake. I understand that this isn't RAM-intensive, but it's processor-intensive and may be HDD-intensive.

Can anyone give me a steer as to whether it's better to get the i7 chip, the SSD (or both) to optimise performance for this? FYI, cost is not prohibitive, but I don't want to throw money at something that won't help.

TIA
 
i7 is a waste of money since it's still made on the 45nm process. the i5's Apple uses are low voltage models as well

i have an i5 lenovo laptop and it takes me 19 minutes to convert an avi to a mp4 file to watch on my iphone. file size is around 750MB or so
 
i7 is a waste of money since it's still made on the 45nm process. the i5's Apple uses are low voltage models as well

i have an i5 lenovo laptop and it takes me 19 minutes to convert an avi to a mp4 file to watch on my iphone. file size is around 750MB or so

The 2.8GHz i5 is 45nm as well. The i5s Apple uses are normal voltage models, not low voltage. You're comparing dual core laptop i5 to a quad core desktop i5? Are you serious?
 
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2832

Those are the CPUs used in previous gen but the difference between them is about same as between these new ones.

i7 has Hyper-Threading which can boost up to 30% in tasks that can utilize all threads

Thanks for this review! I had completely missed it, and have been switching back and forth as for my actual needs. And reviews like these are so much more valuable than synthetic benchmarks like Geekbench that only crunch numbers as fast as possible. I seriously dislike how prominent Geekbench seem to be in various iMac reviews that I've read. Sure, CPU's are being tested, and then raw CPU performance is interesting, but only as a footnote IMHO. People don't make a living running Geekbench.
 
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