So... We've seen the i5 and i7 Benchmarks... Now what?

[iMerlin]

It would literally take <10min to swap out the Ram yourself. You could get the Ram yourself for <$90 shipped (good Ram like Crucial). To save ~$100 for 10min of work seems like a good thing to me. Unless of course you make >$600/hr. But I understand if you don't feel comfortable doing it.

Yeah, I agree. They made this new iMac so easy to upgrade RAM. Take that extra 100 and go to TigerDirect or New Egg and get you a drive for your backups or something!

 

[53x12]

Yeah, I agree. They made this new iMac so easy to upgrade RAM. Take that extra 100 and go to TigerDirect or New Egg and get you a drive for your backups or something!

Yep I agree. Or take your significant other out to a nice dinner, or save up for a nice X-25M. The $100 puts you 1/3 of the way there.

 

[yourashero]

Or you could eat the $100. That might be more appropriate.

In all seriousness though, he can do what he wants. There's always the chance tiger direct loses it at the warehouse( happened to me).

 

[BenLava]

It would literally take <10min to swap out the Ram yourself. You could get the Ram yourself for <$90 shipped (good Ram like Crucial). To save ~$100 for 10min of work seems like a good thing to me. Unless of course you make >$600/hr. But I understand if you don't feel comfortable doing it.

Also, it's fun!

 

[PeckhamBog]

You could post a link to the article, but it seems very unlikely. This used to be the case with the very first hyperthreading implementations when the OS was not aware of hyperthreading: If you have four cores and eight virtual cores 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, 3a, 3b, 4a and 4b, the operating system must use four different numbers if four or fewer threads are actively running; any modern OS knows this.

So unless the OS is amazingly stupid, up to four active threads will run exactly the same with or without hyperthreading. And with five or more active threads, you will gain.

Sorry, my mistake, the article was comparing the performance of an i7 with and without hyperthreading on.

Here is the link http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2009/09/08/intel-core-i5-and-i7-lynnfield-cpu-review/10

This was originally posted by Eidorian

 

[Rocketman]

The i7 is a whole bunch better for $200 more. Based on a typically MINIMUM 3 year life (very conservative), That's $5.55 per month.

Get the i7 and shut up!

Yes you have to get the 27" screen vs. the 21.5" to get it, but that price differential is larger but still justifiable. Or go totally low end.

Rocketman

 

[53x12]

The i7 is a whole bunch better for $200 more. Based on a typically MINIMUM 3 year life (very conservative), That's $5.55 per month.

Get the i7 and shut up!

Words of wisdom there! Also comes out to less than $.19 a day. Skip a Starbucks coffee once a month for 3 years and you have the difference there for the i7.

 

[Stingray454]

The i5 and i7 have a built in memory controller supporting 1333mhz DDR3 RAM. Find and install 1333mhz DDR3 RAM and it'll run no problem. Someone needs to bench it with the higher speed.

Any reliable source on this? Are we sure it will support 1333Mhz memories? And I agree, I would love to see benchmarks with 1333-memory. If anyone got their i7 or find a link, please post.

 

[rrijkers]

Any reliable source on this? Are we sure it will support 1333Mhz memories? And I agree, I would love to see benchmarks with 1333-memory. If anyone got their i7 or find a link, please post.

YEah, who is taking the plunge? We got words but no proof. We need proof, and what about that throttling people talk about? What is this?

 

[wfj5444]

It's the best available to the platform. For most users that bought it, that's basically it.

Pretty much why I did it. Going from a Mac Pro to an iMac, I didn't want to skimp.

I figure if I can afford 1999, I can afford 2199.

 

[mindquest]

The i5 and i7 have a built in memory controller supporting 1333mhz DDR3 RAM. Find and install 1333mhz DDR3 RAM and it'll run no problem. Someone needs to bench it with the higher speed.

Is this memory controller confirmed? And how much can this faster memory speed up the machine?

 

[wfj5444]

Is this memory controller confirmed? And how much can this faster memory speed up the machine?

Faster memory would speed this machine up a miniscule amount.

In order of speed: Processor > Cache> RAM > Harddrive > Optical

Process/Cache/RAM are all so fast it would like putting a better spoiler on a Porsche. Yeah it will help but not by much.

Modern desktop computers are limited by physical media speeds or network speeds, not internal solid state pieces.

 

[Stingray454]

Faster memory would speed this machine up a miniscule amount.

In order of speed: Processor > Cache> RAM > Harddrive > Optical

Process/Cache/RAM are all so fast it would like putting a better spoiler on a Porsche. Yeah it will help but not by much.

Modern desktop computers are limited by physical media speeds or network speeds, not internal solid state pieces.

Well, actually, the CPU is somewhat limited by the memory speed. If the processor is done with its current task and wants to write to the memory before the last memory write is done, it basicly has to wait for the memory to finish. The jump from 1066 to 1333 is a 25% increase, quite a significant amount. So for memory-intense operations the new memory can be read/written to significantly faster. It won't make the computer 25% faster ofc, but the access-times to the memory 25% shorter.

Granted, this would only be noticeable when you read/write large amounts of data to the memory. I would imagine this happens when, say, handling a large photoshop file, and perhaps when gaming (large amount of textures in memory). But still, I think there will be a noticeable difference.