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Any thoughts on Quad-Core iMac?

F

FlintAlt2

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 23, 2008
112
0
As the tittle says.

As the Mac Pro's have been moving towards 8 Cores and im guessing with this Nahalem thing next year 16 Cores will the iMacs get a 4 Core soon?

Im thinking about buying an 3.06 iMac but Im worried that a month later a Quad core will come out and take advantage of that Snow Leopard :(. Can you upgrade your CPU in your iMac ( im guessing strictly not ) ?

So yeah thoughts on Quad Core and when abouts they might get intro'd.
 
FlintAlt2 said:
As the tittle says.

As the Mac Pro's have been moving towards 8 Cores and im guessing with this Nahalem thing next year 16 Cores will the iMacs get a 4 Core soon?

Im thinking about buying an 3.06 iMac but Im worried that a month later a Quad core will come out and take advantage of that Snow Leopard :(. Can you upgrade your CPU in your iMac ( im guessing strictly not ) ?

So yeah thoughts on Quad Core and when abouts they might get intro'd.
Click to expand...


Post WWDC next year i'd reckon.

I'm not too worried - my new iMac is plentyyyy powerful as is.
 
With the way CPUs have been advancing lately, next year you'll be saying the same thing about the ~30nm shrink of Nehalem, which is of course a way of saying that there's always something better around the corner.

Strictly speaking, the CPU *IS* upgradable, in the sense that it lies in a socket and is removeable. However, I doubt you will have anything worth upgrading to stick in there, unless a new CPU that uses the same pin-out, voltage and FSB is released. Nehalem doesn't qualify, and I doubt we'll see Penryns faster than 3.06Ghz, unless a super-overpriced extreme edition comes out, and that probably won't present enough of an increase to justify the cost and trouble (and warranty voiding) of upgrading.

Just my $0.02 (after going through the same thing with a 1.8Ghz Dothan).
 
As if 8 cores isn't enough...

First the developers were too fast for their hardware. Now it's vice versa, who is going to write an app to take advantage of 16 cores. Although OSX can handle it, thank goodness!

I really doubt a quad core iMac is coming. That would persuade people to purchase it over the Mac Pro.

I just don't see the iMac being in that kind of market, the iMac is aimed towards normal/slightly power users, and four cores is more than necessary. I'm not saying it isn't happening, but I do doubt it...
 
The Imac is more of a consumer product, thus we wouldn't need that much power (At this time). If you really need the quad core just go for the Mac pro. You'll enjoy it.
 
Don't worry about a quad-core coming out next month.

The new Nehalem powered MP's aren't expected (I think) until the earliest of late this year. Then there will in all likelihood be at least a few months before the iMac gets a quad-core. You could very well be looking at summer next year before this happens.

If you want an iMac now, get one now.
 
edesignuk said:
Don't worry about a quad-core coming out next month.

The new Nehalem powered MP's aren't expected (I think) until the earliest of late this year. Then there will in all likelihood be at least a few months before the iMac gets a quad-core. You could very well be looking at summer next year before this happens.

If you want an iMac now, get one now.
Click to expand...

Agreed, they did just get a nice upgrade.
 
Thanks to all.

Im a PC user and I have no idea about the Mac upgrade/update cycles.. I come from a place were your computer is obselete in 4 monthd :eek:
 
Quad core iMacs probably will be available around the time Snow Leopard is released, if not earlier.

For the time being, build your own. That's my plan next week! :D Newegg here I come! LOL
 
I say a good year, and it will first be an option in the 24" before it is standard. As others have said, Snow Leopard will help Quad-Core performance, so it might get released around that time.
 
Would the current 3.06 count as multicore? So Snow Leopard improves its performance.

Im just very worried that there is a big CPU revamp. All this hyperthread talk.
 
FlintAlt2 said:
Would the current 3.06 count as multicore? So Snow Leopard improves its performance.

Im just very worried that there is a big CPU revamp. All this hyperthread talk.
Click to expand...

Yes, it is multi-core. The timing on Nehalem (the next generation processor from Intel) is likely what the guys above said - more than a year away at the soonest. If you need a new PC now, get your iMac now. If you don't really need one now, wait. That's all there is to it.
If you are nervous about switching to a Mac - don't be. I am a long-time PC user and builder who switched a year ago and I'm glad I did. I bought my iMac with a 750 Gb hard drive specifically for allowing 250 Gb as a Windows partition. I installed XP (Bootcamp) on the 250 Gb partition. I can't remember when I booted into Windows last.....;)

Rich :cool:
 
I installed Vista on Boot Camp and VMWare Fusion as well, but I rarely boot into it. Mostly it's nice to have in case I stumble across some PC software I just have to use, but even as a new Mac owner I haven't found much need for that outside of Starcraft :)
 
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