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Wait for new iMac?

I always wait for the newest model to come out before I buy.

I never buy the newest model, I always buy the previous model from *that guy* who always buys the new model. You know who *that guy* is, he's the one will would go broke so long as he had the latest and greatest!

It's cheaper that way! :D
 
Lord Appleseed said:
Sandy-bridge is overrated. Also, why buy sandy-bridge iMacs now, when its likely that they introduce ivy-bridge next year which is supposedly more powerful yet again?
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Now you are talking about waiting a year (or more) as opposed to waiting a few weeks, maybe months. Also, ivy-bridge won't be bringing any huge speed increases like sandy bridge did. It will just be taking SNB 32nm to reduce heat and make the SNB chips more efficient. I don't see how you can claim SNB to be over-rated and then recommend waiting for ivy bridge. If you aren't happy with the improvements brought by SNB now surely you are going to be even more dissapointed when ivy bridge releases A YEAR LATER. :confused::rolleyes:
 
xxBURT0Nxx said:
Now you are talking about waiting a year (or more) as opposed to waiting a few weeks, maybe months. Also, ivy-bridge won't be bringing any huge speed increases like sandy bridge did. It will just be taking SNB 32nm to reduce heat and make the SNB chips more efficient. I don't see how you can claim SNB to be over-rated and then recommend waiting for ivy bridge. If you aren't happy with the improvements brought by SNB now surely you are going to be even more dissapointed when ivy bridge releases A YEAR LATER. :confused::rolleyes:
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Well I didnt mean it as in waiting for Ivy-bridge, but waiting for the next iMac altogether (with even better GPU, better processor, and maybe other new additions). As I said before, thats just my opinion because many potential iMac buyers seem to expect too much of the upcoming upgrade.
i am not saying that SB isnt good or anything, people just hype it way too much in general.
 
Lord Appleseed said:
Well I didnt mean it as in waiting for Ivy-bridge, but waiting for the next iMac altogether (with even better GPU, better processor, and maybe other new additions). As I said before, thats just my opinion because many potential iMac buyers seem to expect too much of the upcoming upgrade.
i am not saying that SB isnt good or anything, people just hype it way too much in general.
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I don't think so. People are expecting a substantial increase in performance with Sandy Bridge, and that's totally reasonable, considering the boost in performance the current Macbook Pros have seen.

Perhaps you are just seeing things out of perspective since you have apparently no desire to purchase the new iMac.
 
ShiftyGray said:
I don't think so. People are expecting a substantial increase in performance with Sandy Bridge, and that's totally reasonable, considering the boost in performance the current Macbook Pros have seen.

Perhaps you are just seeing things out of perspective since you have apparently no desire to purchase the new iMac.
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How much would "substantial" be when comparing the old MacBook Pro to the new one? (I suppose it could be similar when comparing the 2010 iMac to the 2011)
 
ShiftyGray said:
I don't think so. People are expecting a substantial increase in performance with Sandy Bridge, and that's totally reasonable, considering the boost in performance the current Macbook Pros have seen.
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+1 to this point if some mac book pro's are seeing 80% ups in some areas why can we not expect the same from a machine that is technically capable of much much more?
 
Spyriadon said:
+1 to this point if some mac book pro's are seeing 80% ups in some areas why can we not expect the same from a machine that is technically capable of much much more?
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MBPs moved from dual cores to quad cores or from C2Ds to Sandy Bridges. iMac won't get 6-core yet and the CPU bump is only one generation, not two like with some MBPs. Sure, it will still be a nice bump but nowhere near 80%.
 
Hellhammer said:
MBPs moved from dual cores to quad cores or from C2Ds to Sandy Bridges. iMac won't get 6-core yet and the CPU bump is only one generation, not two like with some MBPs. Sure, it will still be a nice bump but nowhere near 80%.
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I live in a nice little dream world :)
At any rate your correct.
 
I may get my first iMac as soon as this weekend but I wonder how long it will take for an iMac to become obsolete. New processors come out all the time. The latest and greatest gets expensive but when you necessarily have to upgrade how long will that be. That's my reasoning for buying it before the refresh.
 
LordGav1n said:
I may get my first iMac as soon as this weekend but I wonder how long it will take for an iMac to become obsolete. New processors come out all the time. The latest and greatest gets expensive but when you necessarily have to upgrade how long will that be. That's my reasoning for buying it before the refresh.
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That is incorrect in the case of Apple. The price of the refresh will likely be the same as the current ones, meaning you will have more for the same price.

Hence I would wait.
 
Lord Appleseed said:
How much would "substantial" be when comparing the old MacBook Pro to the new one? (I suppose it could be similar when comparing the 2010 iMac to the 2011)
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80% is too dreamy yes but I would say anything around 20% is substantial and I think we can expect that.
 
Hellhammer said:
MBPs moved from dual cores to quad cores or from C2Ds to Sandy Bridges. iMac won't get 6-core yet and the CPU bump is only one generation, not two like with some MBPs. Sure, it will still be a nice bump but nowhere near 80%.
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I agree, you can get a good idea by looking up i7 2600k on geek bench which is scoring 14694 compared to 9303, that's a 37% increase

Edit: this is the current (2.93ghz) vs the 2600k (3.4ghz) if it gets it.
 
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Lord Appleseed said:
Well I didnt mean it as in waiting for Ivy-bridge, but waiting for the next iMac altogether (with even better GPU, better processor, and maybe other new additions). As I said before, thats just my opinion because many potential iMac buyers seem to expect too much of the upcoming upgrade.
i am not saying that SB isnt good or anything, people just hype it way too much in general.
Click to expand...

Tell that to the benchmark tests... sandy bridge is a pretty significant improvement over previous processors. You can't say that going from a c2d to the i7 in the 13" pro is not a HUGE processor upgrade. Many tasks are completed in half the time. Go look at the threads showing time differences on video encoding with various different mac processors and tell me that SNB isn't a significant upgrade in the processor world.

Just because you may not do processor intensive tasks and won't notice the difference between the two does NOT mean others are in your same situation.

go have a look at this thread if you want to see what sandy bridge brings to the mac... hardly insignificant.

previous gen 13" - almost 20 minutes to encode the video, new i7 13" - 10 minute encode time. The new Sandy Bridge i7's encode the video in just over 5 minutes, previous gen i7 took over 11 minutes. The quad core mac pro was slower than the new macbook pro's, and the 6 core mac pro was barely faster... so again you are wrong in saying that this is not a significant upgrade.
 
xxBURT0Nxx said:
You can't say that going from a c2d to the i7 in the 13" pro is not a HUGE processor upgrade.
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I didn't. But I cant imagine that going from i7 to i7+SB will be that huge.
Someone previously said 20%,...thats awesome enough for me to consider it when they also upgrade the GPU to something (much) more powerful.

CHSeifert said:
Look here - the iMac fan blows air out through a tiny 2" hole hidden behind the stand of the iMac - so air flow in this slim chassis is not that great.

This is also why you see all the iMac owners having trouble with dust and particles on the inside of the LED panel in their iMacs !!
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AH I see, thanks for clearing that up.
Well I didnt have any dust problem yet so this is new to me.
 
Lord Appleseed said:
I didn't. But I cant imagine that going from i7 to i7+SB will be that huge.
Someone previously said 20%,...thats awesome enough for me to consider it when they also upgrade the GPU to something (much) more powerful.


AH I see, thanks for clearing that up.
Well I didnt have any dust problem yet so this is new to me.
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Depends on what processors you are going from and going to... just because it says i7 doesn't really mean anything, there are a lot of "i7" processors

going from an arrandale dual core i5 or i7 to a SNB quad core i7 is going to be a huge jump (probably around 50%). going from one of the quad core i7's that can be found in the high end 27" iMacs to a SNB quad core i7 will be a smaller jump, but still significant (~30%)

The reason i first quoted you was because you said "SNB is overrated and not a big jump, wait for ivy bridge"

ivy bridge will be an even smaller jump than this refresh, so your argument is flawed!
 
I'll be buying the 2011 27" iMac refresh. Going from 250GB RAM to 1TB or more and 1GB to 16GB hard drive and 128MB video card to 1GB video card will be a huge upgrade for me.
 
iRobby said:
I'll be buying the 2011 27" iMac refresh. Going from 250GB RAM to 1TB or more and 1GB to 16GB hard drive and 128MB video card to 1GB video card will be a huge upgrade for me.
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Wow you have awesome memory but really poor HDD space, you should keep up and balance those numbers soon ;)
 
I've love to see Apple go back to a low end iMac like they had in the early days of their Intel line up.

Push the Mini down to 499, get the iMac at 899 perhaps(that was the old price point. Give it the same specs as the lowest Mac Mini. Some places like a university would buy the old in one for the sake of simplicity.

Sure this would make the Mini a lower end machine, but hey Apple could spread their market. And there could always be a custom machine with higher specs on the Mini(or the server could have very different specs for CPU and RAM and of course HDD)
 
shawnriv said:
Do you know something we don't know? Is the new one coming out Wednesday?:confused:
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nobody knows when they will be released until they are released. even rumors have proven to be false in the past. NO they are most likely not coming out tomorrow, but Apple typically does release new products on tuesdays, so it's always possible!
 
xxBURT0Nxx said:
ivy bridge will be an even smaller jump than this refresh, so your argument is flawed!
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I know it will have a smaller jump, but it will be a bigger jump for me if i skip the SB...IF I SKIP...we'll see if I can resist the awesomeness.
I also started checking out 17" MB Pros recently, so maybe....
 
xxBURT0Nxx said:
nobody knows when they will be released until they are released. even rumors have proven to be false in the past. NO they are most likely not coming out tomorrow, but Apple typically does release new products on tuesdays, so it's always possible!
Click to expand...

I'd be fine if they just announced it for pre-orders. Even if it doesn't actually ship for a few more weeks. I can dream.
 
CHSeifert said:
Look here - the iMac fan blows air out through a tiny 2" hole hidden behind the stand of the iMac - so air flow in this slim chassis is not that great.

This is also why you see all the iMac owners having trouble with dust and particles on the inside of the LED panel in their iMacs !!
Click to expand...

You can say the same for any type of electronics such as an HDTV and even your MacBook Pro. It has even less space under that keyboard than the iMac which happens to use notebook components as well (except for the CPU) and still has more space than a laptop. Dust is everywhere.
 
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