topic new iMac! in Installation & update

new iMac!

Stephen Dolbee — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:07:25 GMT

The new iMac looks great. 27"!!! Choice of i5 or i7 quad-core. Is it worth the $200 extra for the i7? Will AC see a significant speed increase? Also, going from 4 to 8 gigs of ram is an extra $200. Until 64 bit comes out for AC, will that affect performance (with just AC running)?

Thanks

Re: new iMac!

Laszlo Nagy — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:18:31 GMT

Stephen wrote:
The new iMac looks great. 27"!!! Choice of i5 or i7 quad-core. Is it worth the $200 extra for the i7? Will AC see a significant speed increase? Also, going from 4 to 8 gigs of ram is an extra $200. Until 64 bit comes out for AC, will that affect performance (with just AC running)?

Thanks

I think the i7 offers greatly increased performance.
See these comparison charts:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-desktop-cpu-charts/benchmarks,60.html

Re: new iMac!

Karl Ottenstein — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:48:54 GMT

A loaded 27" system sounds pretty wonderful and the price sure seems reasonable. 😉 Good to see Apple go LED with all of their displays now - no mercury, but apparently instantly bright with no warm-up and better color gamut.

K

Re: new iMac!

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:49:00 GMT

I received my new iMac 27" 2.8GHz i7 (4GB) last Friday and it is a great machine. The screen is great and the speed is incredible for everything else. (Video processing-Visual Hub/Handbrake shows CPU use at 700% - surprising for a quad core machine)

My previous machines were a PowerMac G5 (2x2GHz) tower and an original MacBookPro 15" 2.16 GHZ Core Duo (32 bit 2GB RAM max).

ArchiCAD performance is still limited. There is good rendering performance for Sketch rendering (400% CPU) but Lightworks seems limited to 100%. 3d generation is also still not great (about a 50% improvement from my laptop- commensurate with the GHz change) but sections and trace reference seem snapier. I'm finishing up a project in CDs so there's not a lot of visualization work, but the ATI card seems very smooth on OpenGL 3D flythroughs.

Hopefully after this project is complete I can try out AC in windows under Parallels or BootCamp to see if thats a better experience.

Re: new iMac!

Thomas Holm — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:44:01 GMT

Thompson, wrote:
(Video processing-Visual Hub/Handbrake shows CPU use at 700% - surprising for a quad core machine)

The i7 quad-core processor supports hyperthreading, meaning programs see eight "virtual" cores. That's why it's so much faster than the i5.

My dual quad-coreMacPro 2009 has 16 virtual cores. Seems to me Archicad 13 makes good use of them in many situations, sketch rendering, section generation, drawing updates etc. But not Lightworks. Get Artlantis instead!

Re: new iMac!

Stephen Dolbee — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:30:00 GMT

Apple is having some sort of sale on Friday. I wonder if the new iMac will be part of it? Tomorrow will tell.

Re: new iMac!

owen — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:42:57 GMT

There are some benchmarks out now for the i5 and i7 iMacs ... and they are very impressive indeed.

On the multi-CPU Cinebench test the i7 rendered the scene in 0:58 vs 0:45 for a 2.26Ghz 8-Core Mac Pro! The i7 beats the 4-Core Mac Pro.

I think it is a no-brainer to go with an i7 if you are considering an iMac - they are half the price of a 4-Core Mac Pro, faster and come with a bigger screen. The Core2Duos really don't make sense anymore unless you really cannot afford the extra $500 .. which i dont think applies to anyone using it for work.

Definitely on my shopping list

http://www.macworld.com/article/143970/2009/11/core15_imac.html

http://handras.hu/?p=1869

Re: new iMac!

Stephen Dolbee — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:39:51 GMT

I just ordered an i7 today. $101 off-not as much as I'd hoped, but better than nothing. Should arrive in about 2 weeks.

Re: new iMac!

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 07:47:08 GMT

Ok i'll admit it, I know very little about how computers run and ram and processors etc, all I know is that I like my specs to have higher numbers in them as apposed to lower numbers!!

So my question is: would it be worth taking the 27" i7 all the way and loading it up with 16GB of RAM? When I say worth it, would it reduce rendering times in Lightworks and 3ds/Vray, and would it improve the overall speed of ArchiCAD?

Im thinking yes, but I would like someone with a little more hardware experience to let me know either way.

Chers,

Mike

Re: new iMac!

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 07:58:20 GMT

fuzzymike2002 wrote:
So my question is: would it be worth taking the 27" i7 all the way and loading it up with 16GB of RAM? When I say worth it, would it reduce rendering times in Lightworks and 3ds/Vray, and would it improve the overall speed of ArchiCAD?

I would say that 4GB is the minimum, 8GB is desirable, but 16GB is overkill in most cases.

I have 16GB in my MacPro and do often push the limits but that is only when I am running multiple OS's, several ArchiCADs, Photoshop, InDesign, Revit, NavisWorks, Acrobat and the usual other stuff (Mail, Safari, etc.)

My MacBook Pro runs just fine with 4GB. I will probably max it out to 8GB soon, mostly so I can run a Windows VM without tedious memory swapping.

Re: new iMac!

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:14:28 GMT

Thanks again Matthew.

So if we go with 8GB ram, would speed/efficiency be affected if the 8GB was made up of 4x2GB or 2x4GB?

Cheers, not Chers as in the last post, no one needs any Chers in their life.

Mike

Re: new iMac!

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:56:19 GMT

There might be a measurable difference in performance but I doubt it would be noticeable and I don't know which would be the faster.

I recommend going for the 2x4GB option and leave the other two open for a future upgrade.

Re: new iMac!

Fritz T — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:19:48 GMT

Can anyone comment on using the smaller 21'5 imac as a workstation? The two model seem to have the same specs, except for the 1tb hard drive option..?

Re: new iMac!

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 06:58:37 GMT

Fritz wrote:
Can anyone comment on using the smaller 21'5 imac as a workstation? The two model seem to have the same specs, except for the 1tb hard drive option..?

I would go for the bigger screen. It's only $200 more but makes a big difference.

Re: new iMac!

Fritz T — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 08:30:45 GMT

I would love to. The only problem is that here the cost difference is closer to $780, depending on the exchange rate. We pay $1820 for the lower end 21'5 imac. (see the attached Gizmodo note)
Do you perhaps know how AC runs on this mac?

Re: new iMac!

Erika Epstein — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:14:09 GMT

Are y ou able to buy a refurbished machine from Apple? Here you can save 30% or more and it comes with the same warranty as a new one.

Re: new iMac!

Fritz T — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 11:44:14 GMT

Hi Erika, This option only seems to be available in the US, UK, and AUS markets as a direct purchase from Apple.
The refurbished mac sold by the local reseller comes without any warranty.

After seeing it, I now do think I'll rather go for the larger 24'.
Cheers

Re: new iMac!

Erika Epstein — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:58:06 GMT

Sorry to hear that Fritz. You won't regret going with the larger screen. The extra inches will save you so much time

Re: even newer iMac!

aahatimo — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:32:03 GMT

apple has really bumped up the imac specs today!
http://www.apple.com/imac/performance.html
plus the new magic trackpad.
http://www.apple.com/magictrackpad/