Apple 17" iMac Core Duo REVIEW

tangram · Jan 18, 2006

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/imac-coreduo.ars

im not very impressed of the intel chip so far.
as for the new powerbook, there is no way it will be 4 times faster as they claim

baggss · Jan 18, 2006

The new iMac scored fairly well, but not sufficiently well to warrant the speed claims made.

Mr Bobbins · Jan 18, 2006

Or an upgrade from the last imac G5's.

coach_z · Jan 18, 2006

in all honesty i just skimmed over the article and the one downfall i might have noticed is that they used macs with 512mb of ram, and we all know that macs are a bit ram hungry....i think they should have upped it to at least a gig before the tests and i think all results would have been a lot better.

-chris

johnnyluu · Jan 18, 2006

coach_z said:
and we all know that macs are a bit ram hungry

Not really macs, rather OS X is Ram hungry.

Amen-Moses · Jan 18, 2006

Here is another:

http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/solution-20060118.html

Definitely not the 2-3x that Apple are claiming, more like 25-35% on average and that is only for Intel compiled Apps.

It is a pity that we can't try out a dual core G5 iMac (the chips are available, the will isn't) but I would hazard a guess that such a beast would outperform the Intel version appreciably.

Amen-Moses

to_tough_to_die · Jan 18, 2006

The Core Duo T2400 employs Intel's Smart Cache with its Advanced Transfer Cache Architecture. What it amounts to is 2MB of L2 cache shared across both cores of the CPU. It also has Intel's SpeedStep technology, which ramps down the processor speed in order to save power. That's not going to be terribly important for the iMac, but the MacBook Pro should be able to take good advantage of the technology.

Hmm... should be good for the battery life everyone has been woundering about.

EDIT: Adding content.

The 1.83GHz iMac sports a 17" LCD with a resolution of 1440x900, same as its predecessor. Unlike previous iMacs, you are not limited to mirroring if you hook up an external monitor. Using a mini-DVI connector (not included), you can hook an external monitor up and use an extended desktop. You'll be able to run a 23" LCD at 1920x1200, or a CRT (yuck) with an analog adaptor at 2045x1536.

Sweet, no more need for the hacks.

mynameis · Jan 18, 2006

Benchmarking using Rosetta is pretty worthless in my opinion when trying to compare different platforms. If I was in the market, I would go with a Core Duo model.

dtravis7 · Jan 18, 2006

The Benchmarks with Rosetta are to show users that need support for their expensive applications that only run on a PPC what to expect.

mynameis · Jan 18, 2006

dtravis7 said:
The Benchmarks with Rosetta are to show users that need support for their expensive applications that only run on a PPC what to expect.

They are good in that aspect.

Amen-Moses · Jan 18, 2006

to_tough_to_die said:
Hmm... should be good for the battery life everyone has been woundering about.

Actually the battery life is the same or slightly lower from the reviews I've read, the dead give away is that the power supply for the duo powered ... what are they called again? MacBook Pro or something ... laptops has had a wattage increase.

Jobs was extremely careful to not mention battery life wasn't he.

Amen-Moses

Ex_PC_Puke · Jan 25, 2006

As stated earlier ---- users don't run benchmarks -- they run a mix of apps that ranges from basic to quite complex -----

- Buy the best mix of CPU+Gfx+Memory you can afford
- Avoid any new major tech changes (OS or HW) for at least 6 months after initial deployment
- Ignore the hype - be happy

OOOOOOOOmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

yogi · Jan 25, 2006

Yes in my opinion the wattage increase is kinda silly, but I guess we'll see killer battery with the core solo in ibooks (or macbooks, whatever) and I can't wait for my time at college...

rusbo.uk · Jan 27, 2006

So how many hours battery life will it give?

to_tough_to_die · Jan 27, 2006

Amen-Moses said:
Actually the battery life is the same or slightly lower from the reviews I've read, the dead give away is that the power supply for the duo powered ... what are they called again? MacBook Pro or something ... laptops has had a wattage increase.

Jobs was extremely careful to not mention battery life wasn't he.

Amen-Moses

Ya, but even if it had lower battery life, it could afford it, as the processer has power-saving and is faster, which will allow you to get more work done before the thing ides.

ByzantineRemnant · Jan 27, 2006

^Thats pretty interesting logic. Usually when one measures a computers battery life, they measure time, not productivity...

Amen-Moses · Jan 27, 2006

to_tough_to_die said:
Ya, but even if it had lower battery life, it could afford it, as the processer has power-saving and is faster, which will allow you to get more work done before the thing ides.

The dual core G4s have the same power saving and are lower powered, if Apple had wanted they could even have put two dual core G4s in a laptop and had the worlds first quad laptop!

Jobs tried to sell the switch as relating to less watts but the sheer fact that the new laptops need MORE power (i.e watts) than the old ones surely shows that he was telling porkies.

The switch was political, both Motorola and IBM had bigger fish to fry and could no longer justify the small numbers of processors that Apple bought. Intel otoh are suffering badly from AMD competition and need to have a high profile ally, Apple are that high profile ally.

The losers are us, we could have had quad G4 laptops with 8 hour battery time OR dual core G5s with 4 hours, the chips are out there (albeit expensive) and easily beat the pants off of anything that Intel can offer whilst also beating AMD offerings on power terms. But it wasn't to be, those wonders are now going to Xbox-360 buyers (not to mention PS3 and Nintendo) along with the next generation of Mobile phones, PDAs etc (Motorolas real customer base). Yet again the world was there for the taking but politics got in the way!

Amen-Moses

Roberto91 · Jan 27, 2006

once They get all teh apps to run on intel it WILL rock.

Games, they arent good now...but give it 4 months...games will fly on it including the Macbook pro

about th epost above, I think if apple had the oppurtunity to put a G5 in a Laptop they would...they lost a lot of laptops sold because they stayed with the G4.

mmoy · Jan 29, 2006

I think that the move away from Power is pretty sad in that it's killing off the diversity of processors available to the general public. In general, x86 has a big advantage in integer and Power has the advantage in floating point and applications where a lot of registers is a benefit.

Desktop applications are usually integer-intensive and supercomputer-apps are floating point intensive. Of course many of the high-end apple apps are floating point intensive too.

So I think that Apple could have done more with Power but they've hitched themselves to a new ride and we'll see where that ride takes them.

Amen-Moses said:
The dual core G4s have the same power saving and are lower powered, if Apple had wanted they could even have put two dual core G4s in a laptop and had the worlds first quad laptop!

Jobs tried to sell the switch as relating to less watts but the sheer fact that the new laptops need MORE power (i.e watts) than the old ones surely shows that he was telling porkies.

The switch was political, both Motorola and IBM had bigger fish to fry and could no longer justify the small numbers of processors that Apple bought. Intel otoh are suffering badly from AMD competition and need to have a high profile ally, Apple are that high profile ally.

The losers are us, we could have had quad G4 laptops with 8 hour battery time OR dual core G5s with 4 hours, the chips are out there (albeit expensive) and easily beat the pants off of anything that Intel can offer whilst also beating AMD offerings on power terms. But it wasn't to be, those wonders are now going to Xbox-360 buyers (not to mention PS3 and Nintendo) along with the next generation of Mobile phones, PDAs etc (Motorolas real customer base). Yet again the world was there for the taking but politics got in the way!

Amen-Moses

baggss · Jan 29, 2006

mmoy said:
I think that the move away from Power is pretty sad in that it's killing off the diversity of processors available to the general public. In general, x86 has a big advantage in integer and Power has the advantage in floating point and applications where a lot of registers is a benefit.

Desktop applications are usually integer-intensive and supercomputer-apps are floating point intensive. Of course many of the high-end apple apps are floating point intensive too.

So I think that Apple could have done more with Power but they've hitched themselves to a new ride and we'll see where that ride takes them.

I agree with you. Apple moved away from PPC because IBMs roadmap just didn't mesh with Apples. No G5 in a Powerbook was more or less the last straw. Not being able to meet the 3Ghz G5 deadline that Steve promised us a while back didn't help. IBMs focus is not on the desktop market for the PPC, Intel's is.

Apple 17" iMac Core Duo REVIEW

tangram

baggss

Mr Bobbins

coach_z

johnnyluu

Amen-Moses

to_tough_to_die

mynameis

dtravis7

mynameis

Amen-Moses

Ex_PC_Puke

Guest

yogi

rusbo.uk

Guest

to_tough_to_die

ByzantineRemnant

Amen-Moses

Roberto91

Guest

mmoy

baggss

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