Questioning iMac i5 speed

[downingp]

I previously owned an Intel Core 2 Duo 24" iMac and upgraded to the iMac i5 in April 2010. Ever since upgrading, I have not been all that impressed with the speed and response of the i5. I am pretty certain my previous Core 2 Duo was faster at processing. My sister just bought a new 13" Macbook Pro 2.4 Ghz and when I played around with that, it was very responsive. It seems like if I have two programs open at once (not even RAM intensive programs), the i5 is almost at a crawl with lots of waiting and beach balls. I have repaired permissions and verified the disk and that checks out fine. Is there a program or an internet test I could use to benchmark the i5 to verify whether it is functioning as it should? Any other suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[Ubuntu]

I previously owned a Intel Core 2 Duo 24" iMac and upgraded to the iMac i5 in April 2010. Ever since upgrading, I have not been all that impressed with the speed and response of the i5. I am pretty certain my previous Core 2 Duo was faster at processing. My sister just bought a new 13" Macbook Pro 2.4 Ghz and when I played around with that, it was very responsive. It seems like if I have two programs open at once (not even RAM intensive programs), the i5 is almost at a crawl with lots of waiting and beach balls. I have repaired permissions and verified the disk and that checks out fine. Is there a program or an internet test I could use to benchmark the i5 to verify whether it is functioning as it should? Any other suggestions?

Thanks.

I'd try Geekbench as that seems to be the standard here. That also sounds like a RAM issue if its really struggling with the mutlitasking.

But something is definitely up if its being beaten by a core duo 2.4ghz. Do the geekbench score.

 

[downingp]

I will give geekbench a try. Do I want to use the original geekbench, geekbench (64 bit) or geekbench (rosetta) when doing the test? Am I going to want to close all applications and processes before running?

 

[TMRaven]

Fresh installing the os via the disk or resetting your pram/nvram will often times make your system snappy again.

 

[downingp]

Fresh installing the os via the disk or resetting your pram/nvram will often times make your system snappy again.

How do you reset the pram/nvram?

 

[downingp]

Ok I just ran Geekbench and got a score of 6465 (32 bit) and 7626 (64 bit). How does that compare with others?

 

[rkaufmann87]

How do you reset the pram/nvram?

SMC RESET

•*Shut down the computer.
• Unplug the computer's power cord and unplug all peripherals.
•*Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
•*Release the power button.
•*Attach the computers power cable.
•*Press the power button to turn on the computer.

PRAM RESET

•*Shut down the computer.
•*Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
•*Turn on the computer.
• Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
•*Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
• Release the keys.

 

[downingp]

Just reset the SMC and PRAM.
Ran geekbench again and got a score of 6472 (32 bit) and 7623 (64 bit).

 

[josh1231]

I previously owned an Intel Core 2 Duo 24" iMac and upgraded to the iMac i5 in April 2010. Ever since upgrading, I have not been all that impressed with the speed and response of the i5. I am pretty certain my previous Core 2 Duo was faster at processing. My sister just bought a new 13" Macbook Pro 2.4 Ghz and when I played around with that, it was very responsive. It seems like if I have two programs open at once (not even RAM intensive programs), the i5 is almost at a crawl with lots of waiting and beach balls. I have repaired permissions and verified the disk and that checks out fine. Is there a program or an internet test I could use to benchmark the i5 to verify whether it is functioning as it should? Any other suggestions?

Thanks.

I would think it would really depend on what you were doing with it. I had the 27" Imac core 2 and now I have the I5.

If I'm playing the Sims, there is no difference. If I'm combing 15 photos into a panorama in Photoshop, there's a huge difference. If you're not using something that is taking advantage of all four cores and that is all that is running on your machine, the performance difference is not going to be huge.

That's why most gamers (that also have a budget) don't spend the money on the the new core processors. They're nice, but for some things there's just not a huge difference.

As a side note, if you're running in 64-bit mode all of the time and you're worried about performance, buy 4 additional GB of ram at bestbuy. You'll love the speed difference.

 

[downingp]

I just ordered an additional 4 gb of RAM from OWC. Hopefully that will help give my iMac a speed boost.

 

[AndyMoore]

I'm in a similar position where I've upgraded to an i3 3.2 from a C2D 2.4 and have noticed in iMovie that when scrubbing through video clips, it seems faster on the C2D. There certainly seems to be less lag between where the mouse is and where the red line on the clip is.
Also, just opening iMovie is quicker on the C2D.

I'm putting this down to HD I/O rather the processor though but I still don't understand why the i3 seems slower.

Specs of both machines are in my signature and the i3 is running iLife 11 whereas the C2D is running iLife 09.

 

[biggd]

SMC RESET

•*Shut down the computer.
• Unplug the computer's power cord and unplug all peripherals.
•*Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
•*Release the power button.
•*Attach the computers power cable.
•*Press the power button to turn on the computer.

PRAM RESET

•*Shut down the computer.
•*Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
•*Turn on the computer.
• Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
•*Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
• Release the keys.

So what are these... Like. What's the "Pram"??

 

[Ubuntu]

So what are these... Like. What's the "Pram"??

My knowledge is limited but its Parameter RAM, it stores a bunch of system details like date and time and is powered by the battery so when you turn off the machine the contents aren't erased like normal RAM.

But beyond that I don't know how it would help in this situation, but it usually does help.