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iMac i5 or i7 - some questions

N

Naxul

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 11, 2010
12
0
Well, I recently bought a MacBook Pro after the last refresh and I love it for it mobility. But if at home I really like to work behind a desktop. Im thinking of buying an iMac but I do now know if I should buy the i5 or i7. When I ordered my MBP I choose the i7. Is the i5 in the iMac twice as fast as the MBP i7?

Will i5 do fine or is it smart to order a i7 for these tasks:
  • MSN (Almost every day)
  • Itunes (Every day)
  • Firefox and/or Chrome (Every day)
  • Photoshop CS5 and/or Illustrator CS5 (Almost everyday)
  • Textmate (Almost everyday)
  • FTP program (Almost everyday)
Im not planning to do some serious gaming but maby Ill try it for fun :p
Well im almost sure the answer will be i5 but isn't smart to order the i7 because it "only" 170€ more? or will it be better in my case to double the RAM and not update the chip?

Thanks for the information.
 
I had the same dilema and decided to go with the i7 since we plan on keeping this iMac for about 5 years. i7 has hyper threading so when more applications in the future take advantage of the multi-core processors it will be good to have. Plus, the extra cost for the i7 is minimal compared to what the i5 cost already.
 
4gb of RAM will be enough anyway for these jobs?

Thanks for answering guys.
 
Should be enough. However you can always pick up 4 GB of Crucial RAM pretty cheap if you find that you need more. That's what I plan on doing when the iMac arrives.
 
You could just get an external monitor, keyboard and mouse to make your MBP a desktop. Will cost a lot less plus all your files are in one computer (makes it a lot easier). If you really want an iMac, I give my vote for refurb i7, it's amazing value and the upgraded GPU won't make difference for you
 
should be fine

I'm running on a 2006 Mac Pro (4x2.66GHz) with 5GB of RAM and it's still running like a champ under MacOS X 10.6.4. I do much the same as the apps you listed (minus PhotoShop but plus video encoding and occasional editing in Final Cut Express). An i5 with 4GB of RAM is 2 or 3 revisions more refined than the processors in my Mac Pro so yeah, that should do nicely for the apps you mentioned.

Naxul said:
Well, I recently bought a MacBook Pro after the last refresh and I love it for it mobility. But if at home I really like to work behind a desktop. Im thinking of buying an iMac but I do now know if I should buy the i5 or i7. When I ordered my MBP I choose the i7. Is the i5 in the iMac twice as fast as the MBP i7?

Will i5 do fine or is it smart to order a i7 for these tasks:
  • MSN (Almost every day)
  • Itunes (Every day)
  • Firefox and/or Chrome (Every day)
  • Photoshop CS5 and/or Illustrator CS5 (Almost everyday)
  • Textmate (Almost everyday)
  • FTP program (Almost everyday)
Im not planning to do some serious gaming but maby Ill try it for fun :p
Well im almost sure the answer will be i5 but isn't smart to order the i7 because it "only" 170€ more? or will it be better in my case to double the RAM and not update the chip?

Thanks for the information.
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