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It's been 3 days since 27" 3.06GHZ intel 2 DUO..mistake?

ajohnson253

ajohnson253

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jun 16, 2008
1,751
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So it has been 3 days since i have received this 27" 3.06 GHZ intel 2 duo. I like everything about it. The reasoning for me getting this was because my girl and I both have macbook pros. I have a unibody MBP 15" 2.4 ghz and she also has one. We haven't had a desktop in our new house so we figured it would be a nice addition for ourselves and guests if they feel like doing some browsing or something.
So mainly the only thing I do on this is browse, download and upload movies, music, pictures and iWork. I do some editing for photography also but not too often. I thought this would be more then enough for me to use, until I saw the 27" i7, i5 and what not.

Have I made a mistake by getting this or has this been the right move. I thought I had the top of the line iMac, until I made a closer look. I am not one of those have the latest and greatest kinds of guys but I am starting to feel left behind, or should I not have to feel that way?

Is there that much of a difference?

Appreciate the future opinions and what not.
 
Your iMac is still very fast compared to most computers out there. Unless you're going to get heavily into photo/video editing or that sort of thing I doubt you would notice much if any difference between the core2duo and the i5/i7.
 
for a little more the i5 or i7 makes more sense to me if you were planning on keeping it for the long run. ;)

The Benchmark comparisons for the C2D vs i5 i7 are significantly higher.:D
 
27" iMac issues

My wife bought me the iMac 27" for christmas and it looked really nice. We were very exited since this was our first attempt to make the switch from PC. 3 iMacs later and here I am replying to your post.
First iMac has display issues... there was something stuck between the screen. We exchanged it and the 2nd had bad pixels. We exchanged a 3rd time and once again anoher bad screen.

I email Steve Jobs to share our issues with the quality of the iMac screens. A couple of days later I received a call from Apple Executive offices. I explained my experience with the 3 iMac screens.

well, today I find myself without an iMac... I just did not get a warm fuzzy after speaking to the corporate office.... so I requested a full refund.

I felt that the iMac 27" has quality issues that need to be address specially around the screen. Today, I found out that Apple has a production hold on the 27" iMac for screen issues. I was not able to validate if what I heard was true, but based on my experience I believe the rumor.

I know Apple will fix the issues in their rev 2 or 3 of the iMac... but for now I am staying away from buying the 27" iMac.

I liked the look and feel of the iMac and was dissapoined it did not work out for us..... it's too much money to be simply content... I expected better quality.
 
If you want to find out if you need more power, run Activity Monitor and display the Floating CPU Window. It will show you how much CPU power you are using at any particular. Keep an eye on it and see how ofter you max out one or both bars. If it's rarely or never, you've got a good computer for your purposes. If it's fairly often, you might want to upgrade.

From how you described how you'll use the machine, I suspect you have plenty of power.
 
iSee said:
If you want to find out if you need more power, run Activity Monitor and display the Floating CPU Window. It will show you how much CPU power you are using at any particular. Keep an eye on it and see how ofter you max out one or both bars. If it's rarely or never, you've got a good computer for your purposes. If it's fairly often, you might want to upgrade.

From how you described how you'll use the machine, I suspect you have plenty of power.
Click to expand...

Thank you very much, I apprciate it.
 
After almost two years, I'm still in love with my 24" C2D 3.06GHz. It still easily handles everything I throw at it. Don't sweat your purchase. It's a good machine.
 
njvan said:
After almost two years, I'm still in love with my 24" C2D 3.06GHz. It still easily handles everything I throw at it. Don't sweat your purchase. It's a good machine.
Click to expand...

Cool I expect it to meet all my expectations I don't do anything real major.
 
ajohnson253 said:
Cool I expect it to meet all my expectations I don't do anything real major.
Click to expand...

As an i7 owner I agree that if the C2D handles everything you throw at it without any hiccups and all seems smooth and speedy you should not feel the slightest regret about not going for a more powerful processor since you didn't need one. ;)
 
appleslave said:
For your peace of mind and infinity utils of satisfaction, return this one and get an i7. It will be worth the wait!!!!
Click to expand...

I think you are OK with your CoreDuo. The only argument that could make you change to the i7 is longetivity. I myself went for the i7 even knowing that I will not for NOW take all the advantages of that upgrade. But i know that it is more futureproof (especially because of the quad core). And it is only 300€ for both processor and video card upgrade.

So, don't think that you will NOW really feel the difference, especially with what you said you do.. But getting an i5 or i7 will make it a reasonable desktop for 1/2 years more than the CoreDuo.. But I think you should not be worried about it, because that would only make a diference for you in 3-4 years. Then you probably will want an 32-core lol

All in All, if i were you, I woul stick to the CoreDuo. But if longetivity really matters to you then go and get it. The only problem is that I don't know if you can ask for a new one, even beeing in the 14days period. I know I said I went for the i7, but I will make lots of video enconding and other stuff.. not your case
 
It really depends what you do with it.

I needed something which would support 16 gigs of ram and that was as fast as possible (it takes about 10 minutes for my MBP to load 4 gigs of Kontakt samples in the ram - music studio stuff)

Now with my iMac it will take about twice less time to load twice more samples (8 gigs) and I'll still have another 8 gigs or ram to run Logic and other music softwares. It's night and day compared to my MBP.

The i7 Quad cores will at the same time be able to run room simulators properly, something that I could never dream to do on my dual core MBP.

The i7 will prove very useful when as I load that stuff almost every day.
 
pionata said:
It really depends what you do with it.

I needed something which would support 16 gigs of ram and that was as fast as possible (it takes about 10 minutes for my MBP to load 4 gigs of Kontakt samples in the ram - music studio stuff)

Now with my iMac it will take about twice less time to load twice more samples (8 gigs) and I'll still have another 8 gigs or ram to run Logic and other music softwares. It's night and day compared to my MBP.

The i7 Quad cores will at the same time be able to run room simulators properly, something that I could never dream to do on my dual core MBP.

The i7 will prove very useful when as I load that stuff almost every day.
Click to expand...

How much Ram is enough ram? I will be upgrading my i7 from 4 to 6 or 8 gb total.
 
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