iMac - To Buy or Not To Buy - Plus new Intel Core Duo

[jpb5151]

Originally Posted by nixgeek

ACtually, Core 2 Duo does matter, especially considering that it will bring EM64T to the Core CPUs.

Yes, thanks, I should've clarified -- my statement was meant to be subjective and only subjective. For example, my MacBook 1.83 is plenty fast for me and the Dell PIII it replaced was slower but also fast enough (ran OpenBSD).

64-bit addressing is very handy, although I've only needed it on a system designed to handle super-large (>4.5 GB) datasets in R. Mac users who do memory-intensive things will indeed benefit.

Please forgive me for remaining somewhat hesitant about the upcoming Core 2 performance. This is not directed against any person (nor company for that matter), it's just that I've seen too many benchmarks. The only processor upgrades that impressed me after real-world use were the 80286 to 80386, 80386 to 80486 and 80486 to "Pentium" jumps; everything else was sort of a letdown (including the initial PPC).

[nixgeek]

No need to apologize. However, it is considered to be a big thing. Tests have already been conducted and compared to the AMD64 architecture, The Core 2 Duo trumps it. See here for some articles from AnandTech regarding Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Duo Extreme (the latter might not be used on the Macs though).

http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2800&p=1
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2795&p=1

There's also this article from bit-tech.net:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...cessors/1.html

I'm excited to see how the new Macs with the Core 2 Duos perform. Even more, I'm excited to see how "Woodcrest" is going to perform on the upcoming Mac Pros if they are unveiled at WWDC. Time to start drooling...

[Mat]

Well hello. Thanks to all who took a lil time to help me out on this thread.

I am now a very happy owner of a 20" iMac. I am using it right now to type this. It is superb.

Cheers, Mat.