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The "I'm waiting for an iMac refresh" thread

dexthageek said:
I need some help.

My wife said I can get whatever I want, but it cannot go over $2000. This includes apple care.

The refurb i7 is $1849 - So after applecare that is $2018. Deal Breaker :(
The only reason for me to get the 27inch is the quad core. I really don't need that large of a display.

What should I get???
Click to expand...

Holy Crap, I think I did it.

Using my education discount

Reburbished i7: $1849
AppleCare: $119
Total: $1968
 
Imac i7 update for video editors?

Same boat as all the teeth biters.
I was ready to get it a week ago, but then i realized updates.
And forget the mac pro i'm a poor student.

Forewarning (i've read all the posts from beginning, but still sorry if these questions are redundant)

I do a lot of video editing and rendering so maybe you guys can answer my question with tech specs and how it affects the performance.

I use final cut pro studio including motion, color, and compressor.
Also use adobe premiere and After Effects

Also photoshop and illustrator.

I've been looking at i7 27 incher.

So if this graphics card is upgraded, how much performance boost will I actually get? And for what?

I heard that the After Effects CS5 is not able to run well on the imac? Is that correct? Why would they say.... i have no idea...

I've already scratched the idea of being able to put in new cards and esata.

But the 27 inches would make such a beautiful palette to work on!!! Hook up an external monitor to work with Color... dang.

this is so frustrating.
 
andrewbring said:
Same boat as all the teeth biters.
I was ready to get it a week ago, but then i realized updates.
And forget the mac pro i'm a poor student.

Forewarning (i've read all the posts from beginning, but still sorry if these questions are redundant)

I do a lot of video editing and rendering so maybe you guys can answer my question with tech specs and how it affects the performance.

I use final cut pro studio including motion, color, and compressor.
Also use adobe premiere and After Effects

Also photoshop and illustrator.

I've been looking at i7 27 incher.

So if this graphics card is upgraded, how much performance boost will I actually get? And for what?

I heard that the After Effects CS5 is not able to run well on the imac? Is that correct? Why would they say.... i have no idea...

I've already scratched the idea of being able to put in new cards and esata.

But the 27 inches would make such a beautiful palette to work on!!! Hook up an external monitor to work with Color... dang.

this is so frustrating.
Click to expand...

ATI 5000 series supports OpenGL 4 but OS X doesn't support it yet and I'm not sure do those apps, Final Cut doesn't, that's for sure. AE should run fine, iMac is very powerful, the GPU is the weakest component but it ain't bad either.

GPUs are still more or less poorly used in software thus you wouldn't be looking at major increase in performance, maybe ~15% if Apple uses ATI 5870 but with 5850, less than 5%. Biggest issue is that we never know what Apple does, just like they just did with Mini even though the innards were pretty same as we expected.

I've said it several times, if you need it now, pull the trigger, the update won't significantly change high-end 27".
 
Today's Mac mini upgrade dropped some hints for the new iMac:

320M graphics replace the 9400M (this is a given)
HDMI port may be added
 
dwarnecke11 said:
Today's Mac mini upgrade dropped some hints for the new iMac:

320M graphics replace the 9400M (this is a given)
HDMI port may be added
Click to expand...

320M was known since the MBP update. I can't see HDMI in iMac unless they add it but keep the MDP as HDMI would drop the support for analog displays, such as older TVs and VGA displays. iMacs' MDP supports audio thus you can make it a HDMI port with 40$ adapter, it isn't that big deal
 
See I am limited to $2000 because my wife knows I want the new iPhone for my birthday next month.

Will there really be any noticeable difference between the i5 and i7?
 
Not unless you work with video. That is only right now of course, I'm not going to say that getting an i7 over i5 with the exception of video is totally useless, because there's always the futureproofing element in buying the i7 for the possibility that hyperthreading will be commonplace in the next few years, and will perhaps prevent cpu bottlenecks for whatever more intensive apps that come our way in the future.
 
I was about to purchase a 27" imac in Barcelona last week but couldn´t because all stock had gone from El Corte Ingles a large department store here. They said there was no stock in the whole of Barcelona and only a few left in Madrid if we wanted to make an order and wait. This, along with the Buyer´s Guide advice made me hold off. Spain is usually a month behind updates from Apple in the US, so the fact they have very little stock left in the retail stores here, if any may mean a refresh sooner rather than later. It may not be of any significance, but it´s nice to stoke the fire of speculation that little bit more.
 
dexthageek said:
See I am limited to $2000 because my wife knows I want the new iPhone for my birthday next month.

Will there really be any noticeable difference between the i5 and i7?
Click to expand...
Most likely no significant difference for most tasks. With the close clock speeds of the i5 and i7, HyperThreading looks to be the most prominent difference (it helps with many threads).
 
TMRaven said:
Not unless you work with video. That is only right now of course, I'm not going to say that getting an i7 over i5 with the exception of video is totally useless, because there's always the futureproofing element in buying the i7 for the possibility that hyperthreading will be commonplace in the next few years, and will perhaps prevent cpu bottlenecks for whatever more intensive apps that come our way in the future.
Click to expand...

adamski2009 said:
Unless you work with video, nothing earth shattering.
Click to expand...

What do you guys mean unless you work with video.

Is the only thing you guys are referring to is this hyperthreading?
Which i don't really understand at all?

Or is this not the only thing you are referring to?
 
Hyperthreading essentially doubles the amount of logical cores a cpu has. So in some work processes, the cpu will act as if it has 8 cores instead of only 4. This can up the performance of hyperthreaded supported tasks by up to 35-40%.

I have iStat menus up all the time, so I'm constantly monitoring how my cpu reacts with its current workflow, and I havn't seen major uses of hyperthreading outside of video encoding. OSX itself already has hyperthreading implemented, but its just a teeny-tiny part of the cpu's usage, so I doubt there's any improvements.

I skipped the i5 and went with the i7 to futureproof my computer, but that's only because I plan on keeping it for a long time. There's nothing wrong with the i5.
 
TMRaven said:
Hyperthreading essentially doubles the amount of logical cores a cpu has. So in some work processes, the cpu will act as if it has 8 cores instead of only 4. This can up the performance of hyperthreaded supported tasks by up to 35-40%.

I have iStat menus up all the time, so I'm constantly monitoring how my cpu reacts with its current workflow, and I havn't seen major uses of hyperthreading outside of video encoding. OSX itself already has hyperthreading implemented, but its just a teeny-tiny part of the cpu's usage, so I doubt there's any improvements.

I skipped the i5 and went with the i7 to futureproof my computer, but that's only because I plan on keeping it for a long time. There's nothing wrong with the i5.
Click to expand...

I keep quoting you haha. Because your answers are so in-depth and helpful.

So the hyperthreading is current on the i7, correct?

And when I asked about "not unless you work with video," you were refering to the current imacs, not any predications for the future imacs, correct?

Do you think the new imacs will have any improvement in the video editing world? This comp is basically gonna be my workstation for video editing +sound/graphics/that area.

thanks
 
andrewbring said:
I keep quoting you haha. Because your answers are so in-depth and helpful.

So the hyperthreading is current on the i7, correct?

And when I asked about "not unless you work with video," you were refering to the current imacs, not any predications for the future imacs, correct?

Do you think the new imacs will have any improvement in the video editing world? This comp is basically gonna be my workstation for video editing +sound/graphics/that area.

thanks
Click to expand...

New iMacs will *likely* have quad cores and/or hyperthreading trickle down into models other than the top BTO model, so if you are planning on getting anything other than the 27" i7 for video then yes the revision will probably be better. How much any revision will best the current 27" i7 for anything other than probably OpenCL performance and a marginal increase in CPU speed, it's hard to say...
 
ee4life said:
New iMacs will *likely* have quad cores and/or hyperthreading trickle down into models other than the top BTO model, so if you are planning on getting anything other than the 27" i7 for video then yes the revision will probably be better. How much any revision will best the current 27" i7 for anything other than probably OpenCL performance and a marginal increase in CPU speed, it's hard to say...
Click to expand...

Okay this might sound.... unintelligent but... what is opencl?

Muchos gracias
 
andrewbring said:
Okay this might sound.... unintelligent but... what is opencl?

Muchos gracias
Click to expand...

OpenCL stands for Open Computing Language. It’s a C-based programming language with a structure that will be familiar to programmers, who can simply use Xcode developer tools to adapt their programs to work with OpenCL.
 
andrewbring said:
I keep quoting you haha. Because your answers are so in-depth and helpful.

So the hyperthreading is current on the i7, correct?

And when I asked about "not unless you work with video," you were refering to the current imacs, not any predications for the future imacs, correct?

Do you think the new imacs will have any improvement in the video editing world? This comp is basically gonna be my workstation for video editing +sound/graphics/that area.

thanks
Click to expand...

Yes, i7 has HT but i5 doesn't. The i7 which is currently used is the best performance for best price. There is new i7 880 which is ~10% faster due faster clock speeds but it costs nearly 300$ more. Current GPU is also very capable and unless Apple moves to desktop GPUs, there won't be any big difference.

In raw power, current i7 is a great buy. Update won't make it much better if at all.
 
andrewbring said:
Okay this might sound.... unintelligent but... what is opencl?

Muchos gracias
Click to expand...

It's a good question. OpenCL is "open computing language", a new-ish framework for general purpose computing. It basically allows you to use processors other than the main CPU for computationally intensive tasks (most notably the GPU). The 4xxx discrete GPUs in the current iMacs were not built with OpenCL in mind, so they aren't as capable as some of the newer cards with regards to that (and also the current ATI drivers are terrible for OpenCL, but hopefully that will someday be fixed).

As far as I know only a few parts of Snow Leopard use OpenCL and I honestly don't know how much other commercial software makes use of it.
 
Real shame the iMac didn't get updated today. I managed to sell of my old 7,1 iMac for a very nice price to other day, with the only problem that I'm still waiting for a refresh on the iMacs. So now I'm stuck with a borrowed PC (Yeah, it's painful)
Not that I'm expecting a big upgrade since the model got a big remake last year, but better GPU and CPU maybe.

Any intelligent guesses on when they'll do it? Now that they didn't do it today I think it'll at least take a few weeks before they do it again, but could they wait until after summer?
Some say stocks are low, lets hope that is a sign for updates to come.
 
Last MBP update: April 13
Last MB update: May 18
Last Mac Mini update: June 15

About a month in between the updates. Maybe another mac refresh in a month? Will it be the iMac?
 
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