I live in Greece, and work for a big electronics company here. We started carrying Apple products a couple of months ago, and decided to order the 27" C2D machine back then, but still have yet to receive it. All models have been out of stock for a while, but today I noticed that the i5 machine was available, with the shipper receiving stock within seven days. So what I did was cancel my order for the C2D, and ended up going with the i5 iMac for an extra 200 euros. Is there that much of a difference between the two? While I have Photoshop and some other high end programs, I mainly use my current iMac for music, movies, pictures, and web surfing. Am I getting that much of a better machine, from the C2D to the i5? Thoughts/opinions...thanks
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So I havent received my 27" C2D iMac yet, so I decided to....
- Thread starter pb1300
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pb - yeah, it can be hard to spend the extra money and 200 euros is significant.
However, if you have the money, the i5 will be up to speed longer. It's almost twice as fast as the C2D machine. That is a pretty huge difference for 200 euros. Normally a processor bump gives you 10 percent or something at most, 100 percent increase is wild, and that is what the i5 does.
However, if you have the money, the i5 will be up to speed longer. It's almost twice as fast as the C2D machine. That is a pretty huge difference for 200 euros. Normally a processor bump gives you 10 percent or something at most, 100 percent increase is wild, and that is what the i5 does.
Just saw on the website that we order from, that the i7 will be available in two weeks, for an additional 150 euros above the difference between the C2D and i5. I think i am just going to stick with the i5, even though the i7 is out there. Thoughts?
I splurged for the i7 but then again I like to game occassionally. I originally looked at the i5 but for $200 US it was a my thought to future proof the imac as much as possible as you cannot reasonably upgrade, besides the memory.
I think the i5 would be the best cost/performance choice for your requirements. There is a large performance difference from the C2D to the i5 plus you get a better video card. The jump to the i7 is a much smaller gap in performance.
I think the i5 would be the best cost/performance choice for your requirements. There is a large performance difference from the C2D to the i5 plus you get a better video card. The jump to the i7 is a much smaller gap in performance.
The jump for Core 2 Duo to i5 is MUCH bigger than the jump from i5 to i7.
The Core 2 to i5 is like 100 percent increase, whereas i5 to i7 is maybe a 10-15 percent jump, in CPU performance.
For even more money and longer to wait on it, you might just want to stick with the i5.
I have the i7 and am very glad I paid a little extra for it. Hyperthreading is much more useful than I expected. As an IT Architect I have seen Windows based hyperthreading for years but Unix and the Mac OS take much better advantage of the 4 virtual cores than Windows. Bare Feats has an excellent comparison of the i5 and i7 here;
http://www.barefeats.com/imi7.html
"What about the Core i5 iMac? Based on the four CPU intensive apps featured in the graphs, we believe it's well worth paying 10% more for the Core i7 iMac to get 13% to 30% more CPU crunching power."
"The Core i7 (and i5) have "Turbo Boost" which increases the core clock speed when only one or two cores are active. We may have observed that phenom when we ran the single CPU test in Cinebench. In that scenario, the 2.8GHz Core i7 was 21% faster than the 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo."
What is not as easy to quantify is the way the extra cores allow you to power through so many things that you were used to slowing down your computer. It's so significant that I don't want to use my 2.8ghz MacBook Pro anymore.
http://www.barefeats.com/imi7.html
"What about the Core i5 iMac? Based on the four CPU intensive apps featured in the graphs, we believe it's well worth paying 10% more for the Core i7 iMac to get 13% to 30% more CPU crunching power."
"The Core i7 (and i5) have "Turbo Boost" which increases the core clock speed when only one or two cores are active. We may have observed that phenom when we ran the single CPU test in Cinebench. In that scenario, the 2.8GHz Core i7 was 21% faster than the 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo."
What is not as easy to quantify is the way the extra cores allow you to power through so many things that you were used to slowing down your computer. It's so significant that I don't want to use my 2.8ghz MacBook Pro anymore.
Im still going to go with the i5, I was just curious to know what the difference was between the i5 and i7. Like I said, I am not going to do heavy work on it. Aside from what i already do, I want the ability to expand a little more, and I think the i5 would be the best value.