After much hemming and hawing I decided to swap my 9 day old 3.06ghz iMac for the new one. It dawned on me I'd be silly not to based on twice the hard drive and twice the RAM (which as we know is faster DDR3 and expandable to 8GB) alone.
The GT130 vs the 8800GS was my only point of contention. During a long hike with my dog this afternoon I realized I was getting caught up in speculations and unknown details that I'll never see or notice or even really care about. I also decided that Apple has never let me down before in that every time I buy a new product (imac, mbp, iphone you name it) it is always better and faster and bigger than the one I bought before. This is through "minor bump" product refreshes as well as more major updates.
So, in a man with his mutt moment of zen I decided for myself that the GT130 was most likely a very nice card, and at the very least comparable to the 8800GS in the older model, if not better. This also led me to thinking that if the ATI 4850 was so much better than the GT 130, Apple would be charging more than a mere $50 upgrade fee (although it is not relevant to my situation as waiting for the ATI is not an option for me, but worth questioning nonetheless).
So far I can simply but honestly say this is snappier than the beast of a machine I was using only this morning. Everything just seems quicker. Even the migration I did (only 90 GB's) took about half the time of the same info I migrated to my previous gen. Indeed the faster RAM helps such tasks out tremendously but it's nice to actually feel it and notice a "boost". I was afraid I may not notice any type of change in performance at all and that has not been the case.
I've only spent about an hour gaming thus far. 30 minutes in WoW and 30 minutes in Spore but can honestly say that the look and feel of both games are amazing and just seem crisper than they did on the earlier unit. An interesting note that in Spore the default video settings used to slide my previous iMac to all high settings except one setting which was medium. On this machine every single setting was "defaulted" to highest settings in game - for what that is worth. In WoW I had everything completely max'd (including screen and death glow effects) and 4x AA. I intentionally cap my FPS at 60 (keeps things running cooler) and they did not drop below 50 - 60 fps a single time. This is on a busy server and even in Dalaran (a major city in WoW with many many players which usually causes frames to massively drop)!
In short this new 3.06 GHz iMac is a noticeable upgrade over the previous 3.06 GHz iMac. From RAM to HDD to even the so far somewhat maligned GT130. Stay tuned as I will post more results and observations later tonight and tomorrow as well. I'm looking forward to testing/seeing how Vista x64 handles in Bootcamp as well as Parallels but that won't be until tomorrow sometime.
** Side Note - Another Pleasant Apple Store Experience **
The manager at the Apple store I go to (which is a 4 hour drive away total) was not going to waive the restocking fee for me - at first. After schmoozing her a bit and getting her to laugh at a few of my most horrendous jokes, I asked her if she would make a deal with me. I would spend $200 there in her store if she waived my RSF - and she said "deal"! Since I was going to pick up iWork and Parallels 4 anyway, I simply threw in some new headphones for my wife and pretty much called it an even swap - so that really made my day.
On top of that, they were out of the wired keyboards with num pad AND remote controls so she also swapped out my little num-padless keyboard with the current full board from the iMac I was returning. And get this she throws me the remote and says "keep this to we are all out of them so it's yours"!
You don't get that kind of service returning/buying a Dell from the Geek Squad!
The GT130 vs the 8800GS was my only point of contention. During a long hike with my dog this afternoon I realized I was getting caught up in speculations and unknown details that I'll never see or notice or even really care about. I also decided that Apple has never let me down before in that every time I buy a new product (imac, mbp, iphone you name it) it is always better and faster and bigger than the one I bought before. This is through "minor bump" product refreshes as well as more major updates.
So, in a man with his mutt moment of zen I decided for myself that the GT130 was most likely a very nice card, and at the very least comparable to the 8800GS in the older model, if not better. This also led me to thinking that if the ATI 4850 was so much better than the GT 130, Apple would be charging more than a mere $50 upgrade fee (although it is not relevant to my situation as waiting for the ATI is not an option for me, but worth questioning nonetheless).
So far I can simply but honestly say this is snappier than the beast of a machine I was using only this morning. Everything just seems quicker. Even the migration I did (only 90 GB's) took about half the time of the same info I migrated to my previous gen. Indeed the faster RAM helps such tasks out tremendously but it's nice to actually feel it and notice a "boost". I was afraid I may not notice any type of change in performance at all and that has not been the case.
I've only spent about an hour gaming thus far. 30 minutes in WoW and 30 minutes in Spore but can honestly say that the look and feel of both games are amazing and just seem crisper than they did on the earlier unit. An interesting note that in Spore the default video settings used to slide my previous iMac to all high settings except one setting which was medium. On this machine every single setting was "defaulted" to highest settings in game - for what that is worth. In WoW I had everything completely max'd (including screen and death glow effects) and 4x AA. I intentionally cap my FPS at 60 (keeps things running cooler) and they did not drop below 50 - 60 fps a single time. This is on a busy server and even in Dalaran (a major city in WoW with many many players which usually causes frames to massively drop)!
In short this new 3.06 GHz iMac is a noticeable upgrade over the previous 3.06 GHz iMac. From RAM to HDD to even the so far somewhat maligned GT130. Stay tuned as I will post more results and observations later tonight and tomorrow as well. I'm looking forward to testing/seeing how Vista x64 handles in Bootcamp as well as Parallels but that won't be until tomorrow sometime.
** Side Note - Another Pleasant Apple Store Experience **
The manager at the Apple store I go to (which is a 4 hour drive away total) was not going to waive the restocking fee for me - at first. After schmoozing her a bit and getting her to laugh at a few of my most horrendous jokes, I asked her if she would make a deal with me. I would spend $200 there in her store if she waived my RSF - and she said "deal"! Since I was going to pick up iWork and Parallels 4 anyway, I simply threw in some new headphones for my wife and pretty much called it an even swap - so that really made my day.
On top of that, they were out of the wired keyboards with num pad AND remote controls so she also swapped out my little num-padless keyboard with the current full board from the iMac I was returning. And get this she throws me the remote and says "keep this to we are all out of them so it's yours"!
You don't get that kind of service returning/buying a Dell from the Geek Squad! 
