Apple unveiled the new 2010 iMac line on July 27th. AppleInsider has published now a all-in-one review of all new iMac models.
There’s little doubt that 2010 is the year of the iPad and iPhone for Apple, with the company largely focusing on the new kids on the block. But the Mac isn’t entirely out of the picture. While the Mac business is a more mature product line than Apple’s mobile device lineup, it remains an important segment–both to Apple and the customers who use the Mac. And though the four new iMacs (two 21.5-inch models and two 27-inch models) released in July provide only small speed boosts, these latest desktops will make most customers very happy.
The report contrasts the performance benchmarks rankings of Cinebench 11 and Geekbench 2 to compare the the $1699 entry level dual core 3.2GHz Core i3 against the midrange $1999 quad core 2.8GHz Core i5 and the high end $2199 quad core 2.93GHz Core i7. Check out new prices and buy it from Amazon.
Standard equipment: The Intel Core 2 Duo processors found in the lower-end iMacs of the previous generation are gone. Apple now uses dual-core Intel Core i3 processors with 4MB of Level 3 cache in three of the new iMacs. The $1199 21.5-inch iMac has a 3.06GHz Core i3, while the $1499 21.5-inch iMac and the $1699 27-inch iMac both feature 3.2GHz Core i3 processors. The fourth iMac, a $1999 27-inch model, sports a 2.8GHz Core i5 quad-core processor with 8MB of level 3 cache.
Overall, the performance scores indicate that the Core i5 offers a performance boost up to 41 percent at just 18 percent more cost, while the high end Core i7 is up to 45 percent faster than the Core i5 while being just 10 percent more. It’s also 104 percent faster than the Core i3 model while being just 29 percent more expensive.
The entry level Core i3 CPU design does not support Intel’s “Turbo Boost,” a feature that enables individual CPU cores to dynamically speed up when only one is being actively used. It does support Hyper Threading however, which enables the dual core chip to act like a virtual quad core when running software that is optimized for multiple cores.
The Quad Core Core i5 and i7 also pack twice as much L3 cache; 8MB, compared to 4MB on the dual core models. All of the machines use a faster new 1333MHz bus for RAM, although in testing, the site reported that using faster RAM only appears to offer a slight advantage up to 3 percent on the new machines.
However, despite the newest 2.93GHz Core i7 model only being clocked 5 percent faster than last fall’s Core i7 iMac, the site noted that “the new Mid-2010 iMac Core i7 was 3 to 23 percent faster than the Late 2009 iMac Core i7 in our various CPU intensive tests.”
All of the iMacs come with 4GB of 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM installed as a pair of 2GB SO-DIMMs. With a total of four memory slots, you can add more SDRAM without having to replace the memory that comes with the iMac. The iMacs support a maximum of 16GB of memory.
The iMacs use 7200-rpm hard drives; the $1199 iMac has a 500GB drive, while the other three models have 1TB hard drives. All four iMacs have 8X SuperDrives, and right next to the SuperDrive slot is a SD card slot, which has been upgraded to support SDXC, a new format that allows for SD card capacity over 32GB.
Our users have shown interest in:
- all imacs
You might like: