my experience with intel Imac 17inch

[bigdaddysheikh]

Hello fellow members.

About 2 months ago I bought the new Intel Imac 17 inch. I paid about $1800 cdn for the machine including taxes and student discount. I expected this machine to run extremely fast as I was upgrading from a P4 1.8 715 ddr ram.

Shortly with in one week's time I did comparitive run with my little brother's mac mini and my Imac. The mac mini outperformed my Imac in the area of gaming (Intel Imac come with ATI 128 ram and the mac mini has 32 mb built in) We tested the same games, first halo then battlefield 1942. His mac mini destroyed my Imac. Then I ran software test such as loading up adobe cs 2 and dreamweaver. To my surprise the mac mini was only a bit behind not alot. I expected the Imac to beat the mac mini by atleast 500 miles but to my dissapointment it didnt.

So I returned it assuming my IMAC surely cannot be worse than the mac mini as I paid one thousand dollars more. I got a brand new Imac. To my surprise the same thing happened.!!!!

I came to the point I was soo frustrated I nearly smashed my imac open. The software that I was running consecutively was adobe cs2 for web graphics and dreamweaver to build and program. The amount of lag it was having between each program was ridiculous.

So now after all of this ordeal I have installed boot and now have windows xp on my system. Let me tell you one thing, it is the smartest thing I have ever done. Now my Imac is performing atleast 100 times better than before and there seems to be no sign of any lag.

I have been reading for a while and it has been said that rosetta might be the cause of the lag, but I am going to call apple and go to the apple store and give them an ear full.

But for anyone who is in my situation, who likes to run alot of programs and is utiliing them all, get boot camp and install windows xp pro SP2. You wont regret it.

I would like to ask if anyone else has have the same experience.

 

[doctorxring]

The very last thing I have felt like doing is smash my Intel iMac 20.

It's a gem. And a speedy gem at that.

 

[DCraver]

Hello fellow members.

About 2 months ago I bought the new Intel Imac 17 inch. I paid about $1800 cdn for the machine including taxes and student discount. I expected this machine to run extremely fast as I was upgrading from a P4 1.8 715 ddr ram.

Shortly with in one week's time I did comparitive run with my little brother's mac mini and my Imac. The mac mini outperformed my Imac in the area of gaming (Intel Imac come with ATI 128 ram and the mac mini has 32 mb built in) We tested the same games, first halo then battlefield 1942. His mac mini destroyed my Imac. Then I ran software test such as loading up adobe cs 2 and dreamweaver. To my surprise the mac mini was only a bit behind not alot. I expected the Imac to beat the mac mini by atleast 500 miles but to my dissapointment it didnt.

So I returned it assuming my IMAC surely cannot be worse than the mac mini as I paid one thousand dollars more. I got a brand new Imac. To my surprise the same thing happened.!!!!

I came to the point I was soo frustrated I nearly smashed my imac open. The software that I was running consecutively was adobe cs2 for web graphics and dreamweaver to build and program. The amount of lag it was having between each program was ridiculous.

So now after all of this ordeal I have installed boot and now have windows xp on my system. Let me tell you one thing, it is the smartest thing I have ever done. Now my Imac is performing atleast 100 times better than before and there seems to be no sign of any lag.

I have been reading for a while and it has been said that rosetta might be the cause of the lag, but I am going to call apple and go to the apple store and give them an ear full.

But for anyone who is in my situation, who likes to run alot of programs and is utiliing them all, get boot camp and install windows xp pro SP2. You wont regret it.

I would like to ask if anyone else has have the same experience.

It is prob4bly bec4use you're using Rosett4 to run these progr4ms.

 

[linuxinu]

Yeah, I've had a similar experience. I downloaded the doom 3 demo and played it on my ibook g4, it wasnt really playable. I went to the apple store and loaded it up there, they were virtually the same, same settings. Rosetta seems to really suck up resources but the universal app's should be superb.

 

[dtravis7]

Rosetta? Do you guys know what Rosetta is? An Emulator. Adobe CS2 and the games you are playing are NOT made to run on the new Intel Macs without emulation. Show me any software running under Emulation that runs at full speed. Rosetta is a PPC Emulator that allows Power PC Applications to run for now on the Intel Macs till Universal versions are made. It's no fault of the new Intel Macs. Blame Adobe though for all their legacy code so it can't be converted to a Universal binary. They have to release a completely new version (CS3) sometime next year. Those games are running the same way so I am not surprised they are running a bit slow.

Did you even compare all the other Applications that are universal? I have both here and trust me, the intel Mini or iMac blow down any of the G4 PPC Minis or iMacs for that matter.

 

[BlindingLights]

Thank you dtravis7, I was about to go insane.

Rosetta doesn't come on iBooks. iBooks use G4 processors, so there's no need to emulate the G4 processor, considering it has one.

And use Universal Binary apps, please. ESPECIALLY CS2 and Dreamweaver... THEY'RE NOT BUILT TO RUN ON INTEL IMACS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you tested a Universal app, the Intel would BLOW the Mini into pieces.

I LOVE my iMac 17" Intel. Please know what you're doing before you complain.

 

[bigdaddysheikh]

Hello,

Use bianry applications... well i beleive i should not be constrained to certain types of application if I am to purchase a machine. I bought this machine on the complete assumption that I would be able to run any program I wish to do so and was not constrained to certain types.

Are you suggesting that the performance of the IMAC is limited to the universal binary application? If i should not use dreamweaver or cs2, can you point on any substitute which are in universal binary.

 

[Aptmunich]

Hello,

Use bianry applications... well i beleive i should not be constrained to certain types of application if I am to purchase a machine. I bought this machine on the complete assumption that I would be able to run any program I wish to do so and was not constrained to certain types.

Are you suggesting that the performance of the IMAC is limited to the universal binary application? If i should not use dreamweaver or cs2, can you point on any substitute which are in universal binary.

You made an assumption, and you were wrong. A good salesperson would have told you about the current limitations regarding certain software, especially if you had mentioned you need to run Adobe's products.

At the moment, anything that hasn't been specifically updated to run natively on the intel based macs will not run as fast as on a comparable PowerPC based machine.

That's just the way it is at the moment. Adobe will release CS 3 in 2007, which will be Universal - then you can expect stoking performance. The same goes for most other apps - they WILL run natively at some point in the future, just not all yet.

As for Doom 3 and the other games: You can download patches for them to make them universal.

Yeah, I've had a similar experience. I downloaded the doom 3 demo and played it on my ibook g4, it wasnt really playable.

Check the system requirements for Doom3: The iBook G4 doesn't use Rosetta, but simply doesn't have the power to run high-end games smoothly.

 

[dtravis7]

You made an assumption, and you were wrong. A good salesperson would have told you about the current limitations regarding certain software, especially if you had mentioned you need to run Adobe's products.

At the moment, anything that hasn't been specifically updated to run natively on the intel based macs will not run as fast as on a comparable PowerPC based machine.

That's just the way it is at the moment. Adobe will release CS 3 in 2007, which will be Universal - then you can expect stoking performance. The same goes for most other apps - they WILL run natively at some point in the future, just not all yet.

As for Doom 3 and the other games: You can download patches for them to make them universal.


Check the system requirements for Doom3: The iBook G4 doesn't use Rosetta, but simply doesn't have the power to run high-end games smoothly.

Agreed totally.

I think the main reason Doom III is really slow on an iBook is the Video Chip and VRAM. Doom III wants a top of the line Video Card to run with a decent framerate.

 

[Logan]

If you simply want to run OSX "true mac" apps on a Mac Mini, does it matter if you get a G4 or Intel chip?

Sounds like Intel is currently emulating mac binaries, maybe i'll snag a G4... they aren't planning to retro ALL apps to run IDEALLY on intel I hope?

 

[dtravis7]

If you simply want to run OSX "true mac" apps on a Mac Mini, does it matter if you get a G4 or Intel chip?

Sounds like Intel is currently emulating mac binaries, maybe i'll snag a G4... they aren't planning to retro ALL apps to run IDEALLY on intel I hope?

Anything that says Universal will run at Full Speed on the Intel based Macs. If it's not avalible in a Universal Binary, it will run under Rosetta which is an Emulator. Some non Universal apps run fine, but things like Adobe CS2 and such, you are going to notice a slow down.

 

[Logan]

Well, I'm still PC native (and a little bit of linux) and here's like a small list of stuff i want to do with my Mac Mini:

Run OSX ONLY (Unless I'm FORCED to use WinXP, I have other systems to run WinXP)

Warcraft III (I know is Mac compatible... but universal??)
Adobe Photoshop (PC edition, maybe I'll do a switch to Mac with my license)
Sun's OpenOffice (I would assume is Universal)
Mozilla Firefox
Quickbooks (or a cheaper financial tracker, I saw a Mac Version...)

Sounds like most apps with intel chipset are still getting converted over... and if it isn't universal now, they should upgrade it?
Also the Single Core and Dual core - is that 64bit proccessor equivalent? And if not, is it possible to get a 64-bit processor in a Mac Mini?

Sorry for the rambling off topic

 

[bigdaddysheikh]

Hey,

When I ran Adobe cs2 and Dreamweaver with conjunction to launch firefox, there was a major delay in the opening of firefox. But if you only run that program by it self it runs just fine.

I am not bashing the intel based macs I am just giving an honest experience as I read alot of threads and reviews in order to buy my Imac. It is not a bad buy, I cannot wait until all the programs are in universal because now on XP i see the full potential of teh IMAC and it is unbeleivablel. It is awesome and would recommend it to anyone but if you use heavy web based softwares wait till the universal stuff comes out.

Thanks for the input guys.

 

[Logan]

Thanks for the information and review, bigdaddy!

This is the type of info I like to know.

 

[goobimama]

You might want to upgrade your RAM. Apps running under Rosetta need a lot of memory and 512MB does not do the trick. At least 1GB is required to get some kind of smoothness in operations.

Also, why would you run firefox? Safari operates "exceptionally" fast on the intel iMac..

 

[Alexis]

Mmm. I wouldn't spend $1800 on anything without doing a bit of research first.

But all the Rosetta applications do run well, but you need to wait for them all to be converted before they'll run at full speed.