About to buy my first mac, the iMac 27"

[nc26]

Hi i'm an interior design student, and i'm about to buy an iMac to replace my 2 year old Lenovo laptop. I use heavy memory based programs such as photoshop, after effects, maya et cetera, so the speed, memory and cpu is very important.

So here's my question: How much difference in power is there between the 3.2ghz i3 and the QC 2.8 i5?

 

[SpitUK]

Go for the i5 for that sort of work, you wont regret it, hell go for the i7 if you can afford it!!

 

[nc26]

Go for the i5 for that sort of work, you wont regret it, hell go for the i7 if you can afford it!!

the quad core i5 or the 360ghz i5?

 

[dwd3885]

get the quad. how much are you looking to spend? if you're going to get the quad i5, you might as well get the refurb quad i7. it's 1699 and is right now, the absolute best value iMac period.

 

[nc26]

get the quad. how much are you looking to spend? if you're going to get the quad i5, you might as well get the refurb quad i7. it's 1699 and is right now, the absolute best value iMac period.

upto £1700 cos i have student discount which will bring the price down by 15%

will every apple store have refurbished imacs and will they be available online?

 

[SpitUK]

I just got the 2010 i7 with student discount for £1591.

 

[nc26]

I just got the 2010 i7 with student discount for £1591.

do you mind posting up the full specs of your imac, cos that sounds very appealing.
and where it says on your sig, 120 ssd; i though apple only did the 256 ssd, how did you get this?

 

[SpitUK]

The £1591 was for the standard i7 spec with 2.93Ghz, 4Gb, 5750 1Tb hdd.

I then upgraded the machine myself to 16Gb ram, 120gb ssd and 2Tb hard drive.

Unbelievable machine!!

 

[dwd3885]

upto £1700 cos i have student discount which will bring the price down by 15%

will every apple store have refurbished imacs and will they be available online?

Refurbished machines are only available online. Go to the apple store and there's a link on the bottom left for refurbished Macs. I'd check that out first. Quality is impeccable.

 

[Racerman]

The £1591 was for the standard i7 spec with 2.93Ghz, 4Gb, 5750 1Tb hdd.

I then upgraded the machine myself to 16Gb ram, 120gb ssd and 2Tb hard drive.

Unbelievable machine!!

How is that running ? I'm looking at putting the 16GB in myself & maybe an SSD later on, this thing is pretty fast even with 4GB so how is 16 ?

 

[SpitUK]

It doesnt really make it any faster. But I can have parallels open with Windows 7, world of warcraft, office 2011 and photoshop at the same time and not notice any slow down.

Its amazing. I will post a mini review with benchmarks over the next week or so.

 

[nc26]

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The £1591 was for the standard i7 spec with 2.93Ghz, 4Gb, 5750 1Tb hdd.

I then upgraded the machine myself to 16Gb ram, 120gb ssd and 2Tb hard drive.

Unbelievable machine!!

Did you get your upgrades from a 3rd party company and how much cheaper is it?

 

[Racerman]

It doesnt really make it any faster. But I can have parallels open with Windows 7, world of warcraft, office 2011 and photoshop at the same time and not notice any slow down.

Its amazing. I will post a mini review with benchmarks over the next week or so.

ah yeah nice just with Photoshop, Bridge, Firefox & iTunes open I can be running at like 65% RAM depending what I'm editing so it's definitely on the shopping list haha !

 

[Pachang]

Hi i'm an interior design student, and i'm about to buy an iMac to replace my 2 year old Lenovo laptop. I use heavy memory based programs such as photoshop, after effects, maya et cetera, so the speed, memory and cpu is very important.

So here's my question: How much difference in power is there between the 3.2ghz i3 and the QC 2.8 i5?

I can't tell you the difference exactly. Go and have a look at benchmarks.
If I were you I would go for the dual core i5. It's newer, about the same price, and will be more suited to the kind of work you are doing. AFAIK most effects rendering things in photoshop are single thread processes.

Just make sure that you get either the ati 4850 or the 5770 because I guess you will be doing some 3d rendering which is always done with the graphics card rather than the processor.