imac purchase advice

[matt32079]

I'm planning on buying a new iMac within the next week. I'll be running Revit Architecture 2011, photoshop, and the like....I'd prefer the 21.5" screen as my place isn't very big, however I'm interested in the better performance of the quadcore i7 processor and better graphics card that is only available with the 27" model. Is the extra money worth the increase in performance that will be gained over the 21.5" i5 model. I realize this is hard to quanitfy. Any advice, opinions, or personal experiences are appreciated. Below are the specs of the models I'm torn between.

27" - 2.93 GHz Intel Core i7 (quad core), 8 GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD 5750 with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory
21.5" - 3.6 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD Radeon HD 5670 with 512 MB of GDDR3 memory

 

[Sammy Cat]

I've come to the conclusion that for this most recent update it is wise to go thrifty until Sandy Bridge, USB 3.0, Light Peak, and total revision to come next year.

Buying the 3.6mhz/i5 now will easily last you until the SECOND revision of the Sandy Bridge iMac. It will also save you $600+.

The look of the Sandy Bridge iMac will be the same, but the internals will better engineered. The Sandy Bridge iMac will not have heat problems. SSD will be more economically viable. The LCD screen will most likely feature touch capability, and possibly will have inputs for HDMI. Sandy Bridge will default to 4 cores, along with 6 & 8 cores as well. By that time, most software will be able to utilize the 4 cores. 18 months from now somebody will post the same thing about the next processor/setup. However, Apple is taking a play from other industries such and game consoles, and is limiting the number of revisions, and increasing the time between them. That is the overall trend in the consumer PC/MAC market.

In all honesty the time to buy the i7 was last year.