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i5 or i7 - which one?

i5 or i7 - which one should I choose?

  • i5 - you save money and you will still not fully exploit i7!

    Votes: 72 36.9%

  • i7 - To be future-proof take i7 instead

    Votes: 123 63.1%
  • Total voters
    195
  • Poll closed .
Well, of course they have a "different" die, one has HT, the other one does not. Still, they are both based on the same architecture.........
 
If the system memory were Tri-Channel.... I would get an i7.... but it uses dual-channel.... that's kind of a bummer.... so i5 for me.
 
i5! Spend the $220 getting 8 GBs of RAM instead!

Remeber, Hyperthreading is like going from 4 buckets (CORES) to 8 buckets (2 VIRTUAL THREADS/CORE). There is around half of the water (POWER) in each of the 8 buckets vs. the original four. Yes, Grand Central Dispatch does know how to work 8 cores, but hyperthreading is an assinine system.
 
justaregularjoe said:
i5! Spend the $220 getting 8 GBs of RAM instead!
Click to expand...

You need 60-70$ to get 8gb.

The default ram on new iMacs is: 2gb+2gb+0+0

At home, you just need another 2x2gb kit (70$) to make: 2gb+2gb+2gb+2gb.

BTW, you can buy new ram whenever you want. Instead, you will never be able to change your mind about the CPU. I say, i7 FTW.
 
Wow, that was a pretty overwhelming victory for the i7. Despite my user area (which I wrote about in the first thread) and that it "only" costs $300 to upgrade from i5 to i7, you recommend me to do it?
 
this is only the very first generation of imac with i5 and i7 cores

meaning that we are paying the processor at its most expensive price (launch price negociated by apple of course)

but still

is it really worth spending a premium of $300

my opinion is no

unless you are a video professional and use the imac at its max capacity all the time, most of us won't see the difference between i5 and i7

more importantly, the HT is active only 1 core on the i7

and finally, only optimized applications will be able to use efficiently its characteristics

at the end, the i5 is the most cost efficient processor

save money to add more RAM if you want


and i suspect the i7 to need more juice, so to produce much more heat than the i5

heat = fan noise...
 
Glad someone already ask this question. I have ordered the i7 but was thinking last night should I have gone with the i5. Now I am glad I have gone with the i7 :D
 
macchiato2009 said:
more importantly, the HT is active only 1 core on the i7

and finally, only optimized applications will be able to use efficiently its characteristics
Click to expand...

You are confusing HT with turboboost. HT is active on all 4 cores. Many "home user" instances can benefit from 8 virtual cores. IE encoding an avi file to h.264 to watch on your iphone, ipod or apple tv in handbrake can use all 8 virtual cores, and would be much faster on the core i7. Also the max GHz speedup with turboboost (the other technology that is part of both i5 and i7 and you were confusing with hyperthreading) is faster on the i7 because of the higher clock etc.
 
Hj12345 said:
but the question is: is it worth paying 300 dollars extra for what I do? would you do it?
Click to expand...

Where is this $300 difference coming from?

It is only $200 more for the i7 ($180 if you get a discount)

For $300, probably wouldn't get it but for $180 I would.
 
From the reviews I read on the two processors, I decided to go with the i5. The performance is very close and I don't think I'll need HT. When I sell the computer in 3 to 4 years I don't think the i7 will get me any more money. If you have the money, you might as well get it since you can't upgrade it later. But the reviews I read said it wasn't worth the $85 price difference in chip cost, let alone $200.
 
feldhaus said:
This is a great article that talks about the differences.

http://gizmodo.com/5381760/giz-explains-intels-entire-confusing-armada-of-chips

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i5,2410.html

I plan on going with the i7. I have a friend that was converting music and the hyper treading was an amazing help.
Click to expand...
Tom's benchmarks are handy, but note the iMac is using the 860 (2.8 GHz), not the 870 (2.93 GHz), so the gap between the i5 and i7 will be smaller than shown. And it all comes down to developers' (including Apple) use of hyper-threading.
 
DipDog3 said:
Where is this $300 difference coming from?

It is only $200 more for the i7 ($180 if you get a discount)

For $300, probably wouldn't get it but for $180 I would.
Click to expand...
I live in Sweden, so 2000 Sweden crons (= 300 dollars) is what it cost here.
 
So for After effects and cinema 4D (at home not work) Which would you recommend?
The difference to me is bigger than $200 because you could use club mac for the i5 and get $100 + no tax. Where as apple you will pay sales tax and full retail.
 
Although the new iMac's are tempting in their current quad core incarnations I will personally wait till next year when the core i5 and i7's will be stock on all iMacs and Macbook Pro's. That and experience dictates that it is always better to wait for a Rev 2 product when new Apple hardware is rolled out.

Still, I am looking forward to the benchmarks for core i5 and i7 products.
 
I can't believe the amount of BS in this thread. If you don't know what you're talking about, don't pad out the thread for the sake of increasing your post count- just **** :cool:

Look, if you want to blow $300 for the sake of having the greatest, then go i7.

If you're not a hard-core encoder or whatever, go i5. The kind of people who would own a mac wouldn't need more than 4 cores anyway.

HT is no substitute for 8 physical cores. HT scales poorly in non-threaded apps (but it DOES scale quite well in heavily threaded apps), and it also consumes a considerable amount more watts than it's i5 counterpart.
 
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