What imac to get??? i7 or i5

[azzabazza]

Hey i'm getting a 27in imac. I need quick help deciding what is worthit for me to get.

i7 or i5? What is better. I understand the i7 supports HT though will I really even use this?

My family want the mac for general use, i.e facebook ect. I however will be using the computer for FCP studio and adobe CS5.

I will be getting 8gb ram (4x2gb sticks).

 

[nemE]

For general use and editing, the i5 will do fine enough. My main Windows rig uses an i7, and it's lightning fast for encoding/editing but overkill for everything else.

For Photoshop/FCP, you'd need at minimum 2GB of RAM. 4GB will be more than comfortable for you and 8GB may be a bit too much.

Technically speaking, there are bandwidth bottlenecks in the i5's design, that you wouldn't get with the i7. Do some googling to see what I'm talking about.

tl;dr: go with the i7 if you're going to be doing really heavy work. go with the i5 if you're going to be doing casual editing. 4GB is more than enough, wait for memory prices to drop, then throw 16GB in it, in a year or two.

 

[Lynas]

Simple rule of thumb. Throw as much money as you can afford at it.

Look at ways of getting discount or even consider a refurb.

I binned my Quad Core AMD 3.4GHz and I haven't looked back. Awesome bit of kit that does EVERYTHING I want it to and that was after 4 days of owning a Macbook Pro.

Honestly, these things are stupidly good.

 

[Hellhammer]

Get the i7. FCP is single core so the extra MHz the i7 provides are crucial plus the compressor is multicore (supports HT too I think) so HT will boost that even more. It's only 200$ anyway, i5 you may regret, i7 you cannot.