i5 2.8 vs i7 2.93 iMac 27" (650$ difference)

[DjTomac]

Hi guys!

I'm a eletronic music producer! Im mostly making Trance music, so use a lot of VST and FX..i'm acutally working on the first PowerMac G5 generation, 2 x 2.0ghz, since 7 years now!

Time to change for me...i could have a deal for a brand new iMac sealed in box 2.8 ghz i5 for 1950$ (Canadian) or buying the i7 2.93ghz and will cost me like 2600$ Canadian with Taxes.


What you guys recommend...is the 650$ worth the i7 for Logic pro! I read a lot everywhere on internet, ...for 200$ difference i wil definetly go with the i7 if buy it new at apple store...but with the deal i have..i'm tempting to go with the i5, even if i will dont have the HyperTreading..

What do you guys think? Is it worth the extra 650$ for HypoerTreading in logic?

 

[CubeHacker]

Its not worth the price difference. The i5 will do you just fine. Hyperthreading might give you a 10% boost in performance at most.

 

[DjTomac]

Really!? I though that the i7 was like 20-30% faster than the i5...

If it's only 10%, i will maybe not see the difference!

I dont care if boucing is little slower or rendering movie from Final Cut..all i want, is faster computer than my actual 2003 G5...and be able to run Logic with a lot of VST without crashing and witout freezing all my soft synth track to be able to listen how its sound....

So i think i'll go with the i5 in this case..

 

[TMRaven]

The i7 can get up to 20-30% faster when doing cpu intensive tasks that scale up to 8 threads, which means all 8 logical cores of the i7 will be put to use. Other than that, though, there's only 5-10% difference.

As of right now, only 3d/movie stuff usually take 8threads or more (and even then most of them are only using up all 8 logical cores because they were programmed for generic multithreading, and probably not truly coded to the utmost of efficiency when working with lots of threads.)

 

[TheBritishBloke]

The only real argument is if you're going to do the same thing you've done with your G5 by keeping it for 7 years.. the i7 will more than definitely secure you more in the future.