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Which imac

S

sweedlepipe

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 15, 2008
2
0
Hello All,

I've come into a little money from an investment, enough to splurge on an iMac desktop. I'd appreciate some advice on which to get.

There are two posh 24'' models; the 2.4 GHz and the 2.8 GHz. Will there be much tangible advantage in getting the 2.8 over the 2.4?

I'm not a heavy user. Most of my time I use the internet and scan and catalogue photographs. At present I use a Windows XP PC with 40G hard disk and 256 MB RAM at 1.29 GHz. A little slow at times but manageable.

Regards

Sweedlepipe
 
I thought i would need the 2.8, since I do a lot of photo editing and sift through gigs of data every day, but I've never been sorry that I bought the 2.4. It's been great to me. Just make sure to upgrade the RAM as soon as you can, and you will be absolutely impressed with the performance.
 
Get the most processor as you can afford. Get the minimum, or 2gb RAM if they'll put it in as one module. Get a large hard drive if planning on many photos and videos. You can add ram yourself and it's cheaper if you buy from crucial.com or sites other than Apple.

You can add more hard drive space easily with an external USB or firewire drive.

I've got the 20", and it's plenty large for me. Bigger will be better if you're planning on using it as a TV.

4D.
 
You will not notice the performance bump from the processor unless you are doing processor intensive work such as photo editing (photoshop) or video editing/ rendering.

Both are great machines, however like someone mentioned earlier, you can not upgrade your processor in the iMac, so choose wisely. Personally, I would purchase the processor upgrade (or buy refurbished,.. the 2.8 model is on sale for $1899 which is a steal) and wait on other upgrades such as ram.
 
From the Barefeats shootout:

"For those wondering if the 2.8GHz model is worth the extra $$$ over the 2.4GHz model, it can be argued that it is NOT worth it in terms of 3D accelerated gaming. But remember that the extra $$$ buys twice the memory and a larger, faster hard drive. And if you use your iMac to get "real work" done, (Photoshop, iMovie, iTunes, etc.), the 2.8GHz model's clock speed advantage is worth the extra $$$, too."
 
Thanks for your replies and advice. They will help me in my decision.

Regards

Sweedlepipe.
 
I have both the 2.4 and the 2.8. With normal use like you are going to be doing you will never use over 10% of the processor. Don't waste your money. Just get the 2.4 and max out the memory after you get it. If you in fact find out you need more hard drive space you can add an external by firewire port that is very fast and perfect for storage and backups.
 
What about with processor intensive apps like Photoshop; do you notice any difference between the 2.4 GHz and the 2.8 GHz?
 
I do run Photoshop on both machines and with 4gb of ram I can't tell any difference between the two machines.
 
There are some things you can do in photoshop that will task a processor, and if you do them a faster processor will make them work faster. Most of the things you do in Photoshop task the system RAM. Add as much RAM as you can and you'll be fine. You don't want data intensive apps thrashing back and forth to the hard drive.

I just ordered 2x2gb (4gb) of RAM from Crucial for less than $100. If you look at their chart the added ram significantly improves system performance.

Anyone want a 1gb ram module for your imac cheap?
 
Thanks, that's interesting. I'm sort of in the same situation: I'm thinking of getting either a white imac 2.16 GHz or a new alum 2.4 GHz. The white has a 3 gb ram limit and the alum I believe is 4 gb ram. If I wouldn't see a difference in processor speed (all things being equal i.e. given same ram) under normal usage, then I'd be inclined towards getting the cheaper white iMac. In which case, if I got 4 gb (2 X 2) ram for the white iMac, would the amount of ram available for use actually be 3.3 gb? compared with 3.0 gb from a 2 X 1 gb configuration?

I guess my question boils down to: would the .24 GHz difference in processor speed and the .700 gb difference in ram capacity in the new vs. older white iMacs make much difference, both under normal and intensive app use?
 
Thunderbird said:
Thanks, that's interesting. I'm sort of in the same situation: I'm thinking of getting either a white imac 2.16 GHz or a new alum 2.4 GHz. The white has a 3 gb ram limit and the alum I believe is 4 gb ram. If I wouldn't see a difference in processor speed (all things being equal i.e. given same ram) under normal usage, then I'd be inclined towards getting the cheaper white iMac. In which case, if I got 4 gb (2 X 2) ram for the white iMac, would the amount of ram available for use actually be 3.3 gb? compared with 3.0 gb from a 2 X 1 gb configuration?

I guess my question boils down to: would the .24 GHz difference in processor speed and the .700 gb difference in ram capacity in the new vs. older white iMacs make much difference, both under normal and intensive app use?
Click to expand...

Would the difference between matte (white) and glossy (alum) screens make in difference in your photoshop work?
 
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