I have a late 2009 iMac. Is it worth upgrading to a mid-2010 iMac with the 5670?

[WiseDuck]

Really love this thing, but I'm thinking of upgrading it or installing an SSD.

Now, would you say it's worth going from a late-2009 iMac (C2D, HD 4670) to a mid-2010 27" iMac with the Radeon 5670 and a Core i3? Will I see a huge increase in performance?

I'm also thinking about installing an SSD to increase performance, question is, will that void my warranty and how much work does it take?

 

[rkaufmann87]

Really love this thing, but I'm thinking of upgrading it or installing an SSD.

Now, would you say it's worth going from a late-2009 iMac (C2D, HD 4670) to a mid-2010 27" iMac with the Radeon 5670 and a Core i3? Will I see a huge increase in performance?

I'm also thinking about installing an SSD to increase performance, question is, will that void my warranty and how much work does it take?

I will say probably not however you don't say how you use your computer. If you do a lot of work where you are constantly opening apps and files then the SSD upgrade would benefit or if you like 3D gaming or 3D renderings then you would benefit by the upgraded graphics. However if most of your work doesn't involve either, save your money.

 

[TMRaven]

The only possible way to see an improvement in performance is if you game a ton, or if you encode movies/ render 3d graphics a ton.

Even with that being said, you'd only expect a modest 10% performance gain overall-- which isn't that great.


With modest computer use, and a decent amount of heavy work, I think that machine will last you through sandybridge, and you should consider upgrading it when ivybridge is released.

 

[JayX]

Well, the biggest difference would be the extra 6" of screen estate. I think it simply comes down to how much you can sell your 21" iMac for... if you can get close to what you paid for it, and can afford the extra cash the new model costs then go for it. If money isn't free flowing right now, maybe wait another model refresh and grab then... your 21" won't be worth quite as much, but it won't fall off the scale like an equivalent specced PC would have.

 

[WiseDuck]

Aye. I've given it some thought and had a look around. Seems like simply putting an SSD in my current machine is the better option at this point. Any idea when they will refresh the iMac next time? By the time they do I should be able to afford one even without selling this one.

 

[velocityg4]

If you wanted a significant upgrade you would need to get the Quad Core i5 model with an ATI Radeon 5750. Even then that would only be if you game, your apps can use more than two cores and you are maxing your current two cores, you regularly max out your CPU when multitasking on single threaded apps or you use GPU intensive apps.

As for the SSD installing. My understanding is they can not legally void your warranty, in the U.S.A., excepting parts damaged by you while upgrading. Though I would keep your original hard drive around to place back before sending in for warranty repairs.

The difficulty of installation is moderate. You will need suction cups (just the cheap clear plastic ones that you can hang a picture off of are fine), small torx wrenches, philips screwdrivers and a 2.5" to 3.5" hard drive bay adapter. The glass has to be removed from the front with the suction cups. Then the LCD has to be removed to get at the hard drive.

As for how great the performance boost is the few computers I have used with an SSD seemed quite a bit snappier. For the average computer user I would say the biggest bottle neck is the hard drive speed on newer computers. Pretty much any dual core CPU made since the Athlon 64 x2 and Pentium D (excepting very low power models such as the Atom) will not hit 100% CPU usage for most tasks and users rarely go over using 2GB RAM. However the slow hard drive gets accessed a lot.

If you look at the System Monitor when performing your daily tasks if you find there is a lot of free memory (inactive + free in this case) and low CPU usage. Yet the computer seems lagging a lot (besides slow web browsing and many other networking tasks). There is a good chase that you would benefit from a good SSD.

 

[WiseDuck]

Actually, I'm going to replace the optical drive so I can use a 1TB drive AND an SSD in this thing at the same time. Do I really need an optibay adapter thing that can take 12.7mm drives? Will any optibay adapter on eBay work? I've found a whole bunch of adapters that let you put an SSD inside something that looks like a superdrive.

And yes the computer does lag and give me beachballs from time to time. iMovie is also painfully slow right now. I know an SSD is going to make a huge difference. The plan is to put OSX, iLife and Steam games on the SSD and store my media files and other things on the regular HD and also keep a Time-Machine backup on the brand new external 1TB drive.

 

[raysfan81]

Actually, I'm going to replace the optical drive so I can use a 1TB drive AND an SSD in this thing at the same time. Do I really need an optibay adapter thing that can take 12.7mm drives? Will any optibay adapter on eBay work? I've found a whole bunch of adapters that let you put an SSD inside something that looks like a superdrive.

And yes the computer does lag and give me beachballs from time to time. iMovie is also painfully slow right now. I know an SSD is going to make a huge difference. The plan is to put OSX, iLife and Steam games on the SSD and store my media files and other things on the regular HD and also keep a Time-Machine backup on the brand new external 1TB drive.

You could also just use a FW 800 drive for media and keep your optical drive. Thats just another option.