New iMac worth it?


Recommended Posts

Alright a little back story first.

I used to be an iMac user (2005-2008), well in 2008 I bought the Mac Pro (8core 2.8ghz xeon), and I have not had to replace my computer since. Still feels pretty fast and snappy, gaming is average (I do use bootcamp a ton). So now the new iMacs are coming out and I'm wondering if its time to upgrade again, and if the new imacs are noticabily faster than what I currently have.

Here are my current specs:

Mac Pro 2008 (30" display near same res as the 27" iMac so no biggie there)

Processor 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon

Memory 10 GB 800 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM

Graphics ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB

Storage Crucial c300 SSD 128gb + 1TB Samsung 7200rpm

Heres what I'm looking to get:

iMac 27" LED Display 2560x1440 resolution

Processor 3.4GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz

Memory 24GB (2x4GB Apple, 2x8GB Expercom) 1600MHz DDR3 RAM

Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2GB GDDR5

Storage 1TB Fusion Drive

So if anyone has any ideas in terms of the new cpu's and their performance vs the xeon's, same with the memory and graphics.

Am kinda afraid of going to a fusion (Software solution eeeeek), where as now I just use my ssd for everything, then media on the regular drive.

Anyway, thanks for the help, hopefully :p

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1122832-new-imac-worth-it/
Share on other sites

He only hits me because he loves me :'(

Honestly, if you have the money, it's clear you already want to do it.

This kind of thing isn't about need, it's a want. It's purely an economic decision :)

Also, Fusion is kinda :| I'd rather do what you're doing now and handle it all manually.

CPU wise, you will not see much of a difference, as those dual Xeons are on par with the i7,

neither on the "fusion" drive specially when compared to a standalone SSD+hdd configuration

(assuming the SSD is dedicated to the OS, and program data is on the HDD)

Ram, not so much, as the one on the PRO i assume it should be ECC (ddr3) even if is just 10gb

should run "more stable" than the 24gb on the new iMac

Graphics wise is where you would notice most of the difference, as the 680MX is technically a downclocked version of the 680

(very good card specially when compared to the 5770, but it all depends on what "gaming" you'll be doing)

All in all, it all comes down to what you want and what you're willing to trade off in terms of performance (or bottlenecks, such as the Fusion drive)

I just boosted my RAM on my Mid Year 2010 Mac Mini from 2 GB's to 8 GB's and still don't notice any real faster speed difference just yet other than the fact that it is no longer creating so many so called Recovered (Temp) Files on Boot Up to ML and/or Boot Camp.

I am hoping to see a better Speed Difference after I order my SSD from either Godaddy.com or Crucial.com. Just FYI.

I just boosted my RAM on my Mid Year 2010 Mac Mini from 2 GB's to 8 GB's and still don't notice any real faster speed difference just yet other than the fact that it is no longer creating so many so called Recovered (Temp) Files on Boot Up to ML and/or Boot Camp.

I am hoping to see a better Speed Difference after I order my SSD from either Newegg.com or Crucial.com. Just FYI.

Correction: Newegg.com or Crucial.com. This is the second time in 24 hours that I had to make such a Correction. My Bad. :-)

Also, Fusion is kinda :| I'd rather do what you're doing now and handle it all manually.

Handling everything manually won't make you look more interesting, nor will anyone question your masculinity for allowing the OS to do these things. But if you really really want to let your inner geek out you can always disable the software handling "Fusion Drive" and get two serperate drives: 128 GB SSD + 1TB HDD.

Back on topic - is there no official Apple sanctioned graphics card upgrades available? Sure those dual xeons are going to be still pretty decent even compared to the i7's... I'd guess only the graphics would really be holding you back unless you were a SERIOUS gamer.

I guess the RAM only being DDR2 would hold you back performance wise though... that said my Wintel PC only has a single Intel Core 2 Quad with DDR2 but a semi-reasonable graphics card and I'm able to play stuff like Battlefield 3 at 1080p and pretty high detail... so maybe it is just the graphics holding you back?

Edited by Charisma
: Removed reference to a deleted/troll post
Sure those dual xeons are going to be still pretty decent even compared to the i7's... I'd guess only the graphics would really be holding you back unless you were a SERIOUS gamer.

People should keep in mind that the 2008 Mac Pro has Xeon processors based on the Core 2 Duo/Quad architecture. The 2009 Mac Pro introduced Nehalem (first generation Core i7). In that light it could very well be that the 3,4 GHz Core i7 iMac outperforms his 2008 Mac Pro.

From what I remember from back in the day my 2010 2,93 GHz Core i7 iMac already had higher benchmarks than a friend's 8-core 2008 Mac Pro, but don't quote me on it. :p

I was looking at a breakdown of the two new iMacs and came to the conclusion that they really are nothing more then a MBP built into the iMac body. Now I could be wrong, however, having opened my iMac 29 (mid 2009) to add a SSD it occurred to me that it was nothing more then a MBP. Just my thoughts.

I was looking at a breakdown of the two new iMacs and came to the conclusion that they really are nothing more then a MBP built into the iMac body. Now I could be wrong, however, having opened my iMac 29 (mid 2009) to add a SSD it occurred to me that it was nothing more then a MBP. Just my thoughts.

The 2009, 2010, 2011 en 2012 iMacs all have desktop CPUs in them, so in that regard they're different. In the 27-inch iMac the only part laptop is de GPU from what I understand, and the optical drive in the previous models of course.

I'm confused though, did you expect to encounter a desktop-grade GPU inside the iMac's thin casing?

Out of curiosity what is the value of your Mac Pro to resell, in the event that you go for the iMac? Should at least net you 30% of the cost towards the iMac?

Did a search on craigslist for other peoples postings (all of the states), and went by their pricing of a simliar spec'd mac pro, which was around 1200~. Mine has the ssd, newer graphics card (by apple's standards).

I'm confused though, did you expect to encounter a desktop-grade GPU inside the iMac's thin casing?

On a desktop computer? One would hope so. I don't understand what the value of going so thin is outside of aesthetics and price gouging when they make it nearly impossible to change components on your own.

I'm confused though, did you expect to encounter a desktop-grade GPU inside the iMac's thin casing?

why not? they don't take up that much room if they are integrated chips, NVidia had integrated chips that where desktop card quality that took up not much room at all

why not? they don't take up that much room if they are integrated chips, NVidia had integrated chips that where desktop card quality that took up not much room at all

If that was a reasonable option, even in the previous models, I'm sure they would have done so. In this regard nothing has changed between the 2009 and 2012 design. The only trade-off I find completely unacceptable in the current 21,5-inch iMac is the fact it comes with a laptop HDD and a 5400rpm model at that. From what I understand the 27-inch iMac doesn't suffer that issue luckily.

Anyone know where I could get benchmarks to compare the two cpus? Not even sure what model i7 is in the new iMacs

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-3770+%40+3.40GHz

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E5462+%40+2.80GHz

(x2)

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • Who is paying for this 30x scale-up? Its sounds expensive.
    • Millions of users to benefit from Windows 11's new performance boost on Adobe Photoshop by Sayan Sen Despite the advent of AI-generated imagery, Adobe's Photoshop remains one of the most popular tools on this planet. Adobe does not have a publicly reported total user count but it's probably not wrong to assume there are millions. As of 2025, Adobe Creative Cloud has had approximately 41 million paid subscribers, many of whom likely use Photoshop. In addition, more than 166,000 companies worldwide are apparently also using the app. These figures are according to a very recent report by SQ Magazine. Out of them, it is fair to assume that many are probably running Windows. As such, there is good news for these users as Microsoft has announced Photoshop is getting a big 20% performance boost on x86-64 (AMD64) systems and a 13% bump-up on Arm devices. This is definitely great news for them as many have complained about the slow performance and general sluggishness of Photoshop on Windows 11 ever since the advent of the latter back in 2021. If you are wondering how Microsoft managed to do this, the answer lies in a combination of compiler-level optimizations and a technology called Sample Profile Guided Optimization (SPGO). According to Microsoft, Adobe worked closely with the company’s Visual C++ team and adopted the latest MSVC toolchain enhancements together with SPGO to squeeze more performance out of Photoshop’s CPU-bound workloads. Unlike traditional Profile Guided Optimization (PGO), which requires developers to create special instrumented builds and run lengthy training workloads, SPGO gathers performance data directly from optimized release binaries. This means Adobe could collect real-world usage information which gives a major advantage to this technique, as companies could leverage data collected from actual customer workloads rather than only relying on synthetic benchmark runs. In theory, this should allow optimizations to better reflect how users interact with software in the real world. Thanks to this, there are improvements to code layout, function inlining, hot-and-cold code separation, and other low-level tweaks that help processors execute instructions more efficiently. Essentially the compiler is better able to identify “hot” code paths, those which are most frequently executed, and optimize them accordingly.
    • "The 2TB Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSD hits lowest price in over three months¨ I'd prefer to see the lowest price in over a year
    • Glad these prices are starting to come down, but that is still crazy. I bought the 2TB 9100 Pro (slightly more expensive version with PCIe 5.0) last year for $240.
    • The 2TB Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSD hits lowest price in over three months by Sayan Sen Yesterday, we covered a really good deal wherein you can get a 4TB TeamGroup T-FORCE G50 NVMe PCIe Gen4 SSD for a low price of just $400 with a special discount coupon. That's just $100 per TB, making it a very good offer during these hard times. The deal is still live, so you can check it out in its dedicated article here if you do not want to miss out. Meanwhile, if you don't have that kind of budget but still wish to buy an SSD for a good price, the 2TB variant of the TeamGroup SSD at $280 its lowest price in over three months. Meanwhile, those seeking 2TB but faster performance can check out Samsung's 990 PRO, which has hit the lowest price also in the last quarter or so, as it's on sale for $370 (purchase links under the specs table down below). Thus, you want a faster drive, get the 990 Pro, or you want more capacity, grab the TeamGroup 4TB linked in the first para. The 990 PRO is a PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD and still one of the fastest drives available today for under $500. Speaking of fast, sequential reads and writes are rated at 7450 MB/s and 6900 MB/s, respectively. The random throughputs for reads and writes are 1400K IOPS and 1550K IOPS, respectively. The 990 PRO is based on Samsung's 7th Gen V-NAND flash, and it too is TLC. It packs 2 gigs of LPDDR4 DRAM cache, which helps the random performance. The endurance rating for this is 1200 TBW (terabytes written), which should be sufficient for most users. The Samsung 990 PRO is compatible with the PlayStation 5, but if you are going to use the 990 PRO on a PC, check out the Samsung Magician app that lets you track your drive's health, update its firmware, customize various settings, and more. The tech specs are given below: Specification TeamGroup T-FORCE G50 2TB Samsung 990 PRO 2TB Interface PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.4 PCIe Gen 4.0 x4, NVMe 2.0 Form Factor M.2 2280 M.2 2280 Controller InnoGrit Controller Samsung In-house Controller NAND Flash 3D TLC 3D TLC DRAM Cache None (HMB supported) 2GB LPDDR4 Sequential Read (Max) 5,000 MB/s 7,450 MB/s Sequential Write (Max) 4,500 MB/s 6,900 MB/s Random Read (4K) Up to 600,000 IOPS Up to 1,400,000 IOPS Random Write (4K) Up to 700,000 IOPS Up to 1,550,000 IOPS TBW (Endurance) 1,300 TBW 1,200 TBW MTBF 3,000,000 hours 1,500,000 hours Operating Temperature 0°C to 70°C 0°C to 70°C Storage Temperature -40°C to 85°C -40°C to 85°C Shock Resistance 1,500G / 0.5ms 1,500G / 0.5ms Heatsink Patented Graphene Heat Spreader No Get them at the links below: Samsung 990 PRO SSD 2TB (MZ-V9P2T0B/AM): $369.99 (Sold and Shipped by Amazon US) TEAMGROUP T-Force G50 2TB SSD (TM8FFE002T0C129): $279.99 (Sold by TeamGroup, Shipped by Amazon US) Good to know This Amazon deal is U.S. specific, and not available in other regions unless specified. We only use first-party seller links (at the time of article publishing); ensure that you purchase from a first-party seller link only. Check out Today's Deals on Amazon | or our recent tech deals. Become a Prime member (for Students or SNAP) via Neowin Get Prime Access - Prime for half price (for qualifying Medicaid, EBT, SNAP) Subscribe to Prime Video, Audible Plus, Music Unlimited or Kindle Unlimited via Neowin As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
  • Recent Achievements

    • First Post
      Jocimo earned a badge
      First Post
    • Week One Done
      suprememobiles48 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      Windows Guy earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • One Month Later
      Prasann earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Prasann earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      522
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      174
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      90
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      81
    5. 5
      ATLien_0
      70
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!