Imac i3 3.06GHz or 3.2GHz?

[Danando1993]

Im buying a new imac i3 soon but unsure if it is worth paying the extra £250 for the 3.2GHz version. is it worth the money seeing as ill be using the mac for internet surfing, emails, photographs, photoshop now and then, occasional gaming and MS office also will need it for university work soon. Or would upgrading the ram be sufficient or would i need an i5?

 

[miles01110]

You won't notice any difference between the 3.06/3.2 for those tasks. RAM would be a better upgrade.

 

[mike.coulter]

Yeah, you wont notice a difference...

The 3.06 c2d is blazing fast as it is, the i3 must be amazing.

 

[Nuttydev]

Well I don't recall ever going over 40% or so processor usage with the sort of usage you described. With gaming I'm guessing it uses up most of it, but it's given me decent performance (Medal of Honor beta played nicely on high surprisingly). However, running programs such as aperture and having multiple photos open in photoshop has used up all my 4gb of ram at times so as already said, that'd be a better upgrade.

 

[bry223]

If you're going to be gaming the 3.2ghz model is a better choice. It has a faster GPU, more VRAM and is DX11 compatible if youre gaming in W7.

 

[Danando1993]

ah okay thanks for the help, also will photoshop run smoothy on the i3?

 

[spinnerlys]

ah okay thanks for the help, also will photoshop run smoothy on the i3?

Yep, unless you open several 30MP RAW images.

 

[raysfan81]

There isn't really any difference in the performance between the 3.06 ghz and 3.2 ghz processors. The other components like RAM, graphics, and hard drive performance make a difference though.

 

[Rodus]

If you aren't doing CPU intensive tasks then the C2D is still very quick, put the saved money into RAM

 

[Danando1993]

so basically i should just save my money for extra RAM?

 

[raysfan81]

so basically i should just save my money for extra RAM?

That would be my recommendation.

 

[Danando1993]

okay thanks for the help also are the graphics a lot better?

 

[Rodus]

The graphics are a bit better, not a massive amount. Technically the 5xxx Radeons are DirectX11 capable whilst the 4xxx are DX10 but DX11 on the 5670 will be pretty slow anyway.

 

[mpe]

The graphics are a bit better, not a massive amount. Technically the 5xxx Radeons are DirectX11 capable whilst the 4xxx are DX10 but DX11 on the 5670 will be pretty slow anyway.

I would rather say it is about OpenGL 3.3 vs OpenGL 4.1 support as there is no DirectX support at all on MacOS.

Theoretically the differences between 4xxx and 5xxx Radeon family can play a role in future when more application will be actually using GPU (not just games). The 5xxx architecture adds support for higher precisions and instructions that can improve the performance of some tasks, such as video encoding and transcoding. But at this moment the difference between 4670 and 5670 is really just subtle.