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Family Man Seeking Nice iMac with Good Personality
- Thread starter Blu-Ray
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To be honest, I'm on the fence between the new 27" i3 (with free iPod) and the refurb 27" i5 quad-core... you are guys are not making it easier either..
Just kidding... I really appreciate the feedback and will be making my decision by August 17th... yeah.. I decided to wait for more detail about the iLife '11 release so what is another two weeks after waiting two years.
I'm on the same boat , I'm not of reburish buyer (in general speaking) but... I'm starting to think about as people here really appreciate the apple's refurbishing quality control. I think they would look at possible yellow sign on the screen as they put again on selling.
When your wife watch a movie or serie on the iMac , she'll tell you a 27'' inch model it's what you needed haha
(I won't do any joke with "size" and "women" getting use to it ).As people say here , quadcore seems to have more life than dual core (for when the MAc OSX takes in advantage the 4 cores ...hopefully in future releases of the OS.).
I'd say definitely go for a 27". The larger screen is worth it and you'd get used to it fast. When I bought my Mac Pro back in 2006 I had the choice of either getting a 30" Cinema Display or an upgraded Mac Pro and a 23" Cinema Display (due to budget). I ended up going for the larger screen and that has been the best computer hardware purchase I've ever made. I've moved on from the Mac Pro now but I still have the screen. I had to struggle by with a poor graphics card and poor amounts of RAM for ages but it was worth it. In my opinion, having a larger and higher resolution screen is the best way to increase user experience enjoyment. Trust me, if you go for the big screen you'll thank yourself that you did.
As others have said, the i5 has more processing power than the i3. The i3 is locked at two physical cores and two virtual cores at 3.2GHz whereas the i5 has four physical cores at 2.66GHz which can turbo boost up to 3.2GHz.
In practice what this means is that the i5 and the i3 will both run at the same speed for single threaded tasks (3.2GHz) but the i5 will be faster at multicore tasks (4 physical cores @ 2.66GHz vs 2 physical + 2 virtual cores @ 3.2GHz). The virtual cores don't always give performance boosts, in fact in a lot of multicore applications they don't at all. In some they do (in stuff I do I get about 50% extra performance due to having hyperthreading). The i5 refurb also has better memory performance due to the different platform designs which will surely boost performance in some areas.
As others have said, the i5 has more processing power than the i3. The i3 is locked at two physical cores and two virtual cores at 3.2GHz whereas the i5 has four physical cores at 2.66GHz which can turbo boost up to 3.2GHz.
In practice what this means is that the i5 and the i3 will both run at the same speed for single threaded tasks (3.2GHz) but the i5 will be faster at multicore tasks (4 physical cores @ 2.66GHz vs 2 physical + 2 virtual cores @ 3.2GHz). The virtual cores don't always give performance boosts, in fact in a lot of multicore applications they don't at all. In some they do (in stuff I do I get about 50% extra performance due to having hyperthreading). The i5 refurb also has better memory performance due to the different platform designs which will surely boost performance in some areas.
Quad core as there is much hope for further optimization of software as time moves forward vs that i3... Also the 4850 gpu in the i5 will be more apt to future proof you