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Anyone else waiting to see the specs of the new iMacs?

http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#iMac

They should be coming out in June or July.

Mine is a late 2009 model. The first redesign that had a quadcore i5 and a 4850 HD (in the 27 inch model).

After a long hesitation, and deliberating whether I would build a tower for gaming, I think I'll splash out and just upgrade to the newer one (hopefully getting 800-900 € for this one, which has Apple Care running till end of the year).

My 4850 can still run games pretty good at native res in Windows, usually 30+ FPS. I did lots of fiddling around and found how to overlock the mobility card to desktop frequencies, and with a barely audible increased fan speed the GPU is usually between 70-75 C, which seems reasonable. Of course due to the resolution the anti aliasing is usually off because the performance cost isn't really worth it (though some old games like Titan Quest can run native with AA at 60 FPS, as well as well optimized games like DIRT 2).

The 4850 was already one year old when the mobility version came out in 2009.

But this time the 7xxx cards for desktop came out only in late December, and the mobility version has just come out I think.

This means the newer iMacs would potentially be a decent gaming rig for the next three years.

What do you think?

Links

AMD Launches Radeon 7700M, 7800M, and 7900M Mobile GPUs
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5778/amd-l...obile-gpus

I just bought the 27" quad 3.1Ghz i5 4GB iMac a few weeks ago and stuck in an extra 8GB ram. I considered waiting for the new ones, but decided it wasn't worth waiting given that the current range meet my needs. I don't do any gaming but use mine for coding and data analysis, which sometimes needs a lot of processing and/or RAM.

I'd still be interested to see the new ones - the only thing I might have wanted better is a larger screen. If the new range has a 30" I might consider trading up.

[s0apgun]

Really wish these were going to be released before Diablo III... going to have to buy something temporary until then.

Blahah Wrote:I just bought the 27" quad 3.1Ghz i5 4GB iMac a few weeks ago and stuck in an extra 8GB ram. I considered waiting for the new ones, but decided it wasn't worth waiting given that the current range meet my needs. I don't do any gaming but use mine for coding and data analysis, which sometimes needs a lot of processing and/or RAM.

I'd still be interested to see the new ones - the only thing I might have wanted better is a larger screen. If the new range has a 30" I might consider trading up.

Sorry but if they are coming out in 1 month it was obviously worth waiting regardless of what you are going to use them for. Unless, of course, you are rich. Just saying.

I got the 6-core 2010 mac pro, kitted it out with the best of everything, and I have to say that as a mac it is still a supercomputer. Windows however, whether parallels or boot camp, is a little underwhelming. Skyrim runs fine on 'high' resolution, but can't do the 'ultra high' without noticable lagging.

Now if you want a gaming rig you could spend a third of what I dropped and run new games at max specs for years... But if you want a mac, I don't know if they have the ability to virtualize high-end gaming rigs.

maybe I'm wrong though...

I got myself the current 27" iMac with everything maxed-out. The thing is a beast, whether I'm playing games (Crysis and Deus Ex look especially nice on it) or compiling large codebases with Xcode. My wife does interior design (AutoCAD/Revit) with it, and has had a good experience with it, too.

Obviously whatever comes next will be great for gaming, too, but I'm sure the current one will last me for at least the three years that the AppleCare applies to it.

turvy Wrote:Sorry but if they are coming out in 1 month it was obviously worth waiting regardless of what you are going to use them for. Unless, of course, you are rich. Just saying.

Not at all, and I'm certainly not rich. It's simply that I require the system now, not in a month (though I'll still need it then), and putting off the purchase would cost me far more money than the amount the price of a system of the same spec might decrease by once the new ones come out. In any case, whether it's 'worth it' is entirely subjective.

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dtcamero Wrote:Windows however, whether parallels or boot camp, is a little underwhelming.

I'm guessing you are aware but due to the choice of words I would like to remark that there is HUGE difference between parallels and bootcamp.

When you boot under Windows with bootcamp, you have a PC. There is barely any difference whatsoever with a PC of equivalent hardware. There is no emulation whatsoever that can fail with any kind of software. It's running Windows natively. All software is hitting the CPU directly with no translation layer anywhere.

Most Mac ports of Windows games, as far as I know, are not true ports: they use an emulation engine like Wine. Don't quote me on this, but I think I read somewhere even Diablo 3's official Mac release uses Wine under the hood. So there is nearly always a performance cost for translating all the system and graphics API calls, even when the Mac games is thought to be a port.

The exception would be OpenGL games which logically are easier to port, like Valve's Source engine which appears to be truly optimized for Mac OS.

dtcamero Wrote:Now if you want a gaming rig you could spend a third of what I dropped and run new games at max specs for years... But if you want a mac, I don't know if they have the ability to virtualize high-end gaming rigs.

What graphics card do you have in that Mac Pro? Skyrim is running at 30 ish FPS here at native 2560x1440, it can go down to 25 in some towns, and usually 40 or more in caves/dungeons. I'm running it at highest settings with increased view distance. No anti alias though!

Depends what you mean by lag for "high end" gamers anything under 60 FPS is lag so ... (o_O) I find Skyrim very playable and smooth enough at 30+ FPS. Granted, there is also a huge difference between 30 and 60 FPS, but usually until you experience the latter, you don't feel it that much.

And this brings me to this point...

As for running at max specs for years this is a myth.

In fact, when I was eyeing the iMac and I had made the mental shift to spending 1800 € + on a computer, I figured, hey, why not build myself a high end PC instead?

So I looked at what I could get for my money, I looked at the latest benchmarks for graphics card that had just come out and was thoroughly disappointed. Contrary to consoles, you NEVER get constant 60 FPS, and certainly not for years to come. No matter if you get the latest nVidia GPU that cost you 600 € for a graphics card alone. And since I was looking at a PC rig, those weren't even 27 inch benchmarks.

Go buy the latest ATI or NVidia card right now and find out how many games run with 4xAA at 2560x1440 at 60 FPS, with highest settings. Most games won't, or will drop to lower FPS every now and then. A good example is Call of Duty Modern Warfare. All is good and plain sailing at 60 FPS and then you have all this smoke covering the screen and now it's crawling down to 40 or 30 FPS. Yay.

There will always be badly optimized games like Crysis. These games are just what the "high end" gaming community needs, something to benchmark their rigs. It's completely and utterly irrelevant as far as graphics quality is concerned. For example, when Guild Wars came out, back then it looked splendid, and it was silky smooth. The texture mapping was spot on and the overal graphics quality was superb. I think it was one of the first games I saw that made such a good use of "bloom". This game wasn't wasting the GPU.

This is the main reason I quit my "power gamer" mentality and splashed for the iMac (putting aside development in Mac OS, just looking at the gaming aspect).

You'll never run new games at max specs for several years, on a PC, with the same rig. Not unless perhaps going dual or triple SLI, overclocking,watercooling... which isn't even gaming anymore it's just another subculture. People spend 5000+ $ on a PC gaming tower just looking at the specs, when there aren't even any games that make proper use of two CPU cores. Now drop a 27 inch native res in the mix, and you're not even looking at one year of top performance on a "high end" gaming rig which would be cost equivalent to an iMac.

What I have realised in retrospect, is that spending 1800 € + on a single all in one computer is simply a paradigm shift all of its own. It's like changing belief systems.

turvy Wrote:Sorry but if they are coming out in 1 month it was obviously worth waiting regardless of what you are going to use them for. Unless, of course, you are rich. Just saying.

And for the same reasons (paradigm shift), you could just as well say, that Blahah didn't make any mistake in buying early. It will most certainly meet his needs.

Instead of looking purely at specs, you look at the overall experience. Instead of trying to get that mythical 60 FPS or that mythical benchmark score which will change from day to day as new CPUs come out, you look at that gorgeous 27 inch IPS screen while you work, and a CPU that can more than handle anything that you throw at it.

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Blahah Wrote:

turvy Wrote:Sorry but if they are coming out in 1 month it was obviously worth waiting regardless of what you are going to use them for. Unless, of course, you are rich. Just saying.

Not at all, and I'm certainly not rich. It's simply that I require the system now, not in a month (though I'll still need it then), and putting off the purchase would cost me far more money than the amount the price of a system of the same spec might decrease by once the new ones come out. In any case, whether it's 'worth it' is entirely subjective.

Agree. I was in the same position when I was about to leave for India in April 2010, and the new Macbook Pros were rumored, and I had to spend my last job's bonus. I waited and waited, and then I had to leave the company by mid April, so I got the MBP just a month before they were refreshed.

There is no better, there will always be better. If you want the betterest model, a new one is always coming out. What matters is that the one you bought now is a good purchase, and I'm sure it is

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What's interesting beginning with the last iMac revision is the Thunderbolt interface.

In theory we might be able to upgrade the iMac's graphics card with an external dock in the years to come.

It's not quite clear yet whether that wil be possible according this this article:

Quote:A Thunderbolt version of the ViDock would alleviate this problem considerably, but even Thunderbolt only operates over 4x PCI Express 2.0 — and it isn’t understood whether an external graphics card would get the full 4x — bidirectional 16Gbps (2GB/sec) — or just 2x.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/921...w-you-away

Though even if that will be possible with the rest of the configuration overhaul and the resell value of Apple computers, I'm not sure it's worth upgrading the graphics card alone over reslling and getting a new model (thinking after 2-3 years of use here).

The biggest annoyance really is the upgrade but since I organized my folders for easier backup, it won't be that much of a hassle. Main hassle will be to reinstall php, mysql, ... and Windows.

I guess I am too self-centered sometimes. But boy, you guys are really demanding people.

turvy Wrote:I guess I am too self-centered sometimes. But boy, you guys are really demanding people.

Guilty as charged . I'm sorry to admit that I spend about 15 hours a day on my computer most days - so I do like to make sure the equipment I use (computer, headphones, chair, desk, etc) make those hours as comfortable as possible, minimise any possible medical risks of spending so long in one position etc., as well as minimising the amount of frustration caused by inadequate equipment. It does cost a significant portion of my disposable income, but hey, I find it inexplicable that others pay for sports tickets or to go out drinking .

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turvy Wrote:(...) But boy, you guys are really demanding people.

Hehe, are you referring to Blahah's comment about a 30 inch screen? That made me chuckle as well

But every one has their needs. If you do a lot of Photoshop or CG modelling or CAD as Khakionion mentionned, the screen is never large enough. At my last job, designers who make Flash or Photoshop website templates, nearly all of them had Macs, Mac Pro's mostly and iMacs also.

And even if he didn't, it requires no justification at all. Like I said, it's a matter of perspective or a paradigm shift of its own. If you believe you can't spend more than 1000 € on a computer that's what you get. It's a self imposed limit. Obviously there are physical limitations depending on your current earnings. But I noticed looking around people often have the money for things they say they can't buy. In truth, what happens is they consciously or unconsciously choose to spend the money on some things rather than others.

Buying my iMac was yet another reminder of how beliefs are behind everything. That's what the companies are after. They know people believe themselves to be in a special category. They believe they are "middle class" or "poor", or "someone with taste". No matter the belief. All arguments are just for decoration. People argue on and on about Macs vs PCs but at the end of the day if you believe 1800 € is too much for a computer, you'll never buy a high end iMac and that's it.

And the funny thing is... when you finally make the move... life suddenly throws money at you. Like I had a bonus from work, and some tax returns I completely forgot about.

ファブリス Wrote:Hehe, are you referring to Blahah's comment about a 30 inch screen? That made me chuckle as well

In my defence, I have to work with very detailed visual models of data like protein structures, and even a 27" screen feels restrictively small. Ideally I'd have a 3D projector and a 20ft screen!

I don't need a 20ft screen, but just having the Latex code document on the left and the compiled formulae on the right in a decent size would be great and probably make me more productive. 27" is just about right for that at a legible font size.

And a non-glare screen would be great! ... and I also want a graphics tablet on which to write kanji! I think after thousands of hours of studying Japanese I have EARNED that!

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There are rumors that the new iMacs will have non glare treatment on the glass panels.

I just found out that when the late 2009 iMac came out the mobility card was really a desktop 4850 underclocked. Meaning that safe overclocking with MSI Afterburner gave it the desktop speeds (core clock and memory). That's what I do now, with noticable FPS gains.

However since then the marketing people are cheating, and a 6970M was the equivalent of an underclocked 6850 (by ~15%). And the 5850M was based off an underclocked 5750.

It's a fair guess that the new high spec iMac will feature a 7970M. So it will be the equivalent of an underclocked 7870. Increasing the core clock from 850 to 1000 Mhz with MSI Afterburner I think should make it equivalent to the desktop 7870 (shader cores, texture units seems to be identical).

As for the "automatic graphics switching between the integrated GPU and discrete GPU" I'm not sure it's of any use on the iMac? I think it's mostly a power saving feature for laptops.

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Sweet I just realized with the newer Thunderbolt iMacs it's possible to have a bootable OS X and even Bootcamp partitions on an external SSD drive.

Is anyone doing this?

I think I'll get a min. 120 GB SSD and make two 64 GB partitions, and use the iMac's internal HDD to clone/backup the bootable partitions. If the SSD ever fails, I could get it replaced, and restore from the backup. Although I'm guessing the internal partition will also show up when I boot and hold down the Alt key but I guess that's a minor annoyance.

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Yeah, I did that with my Macbook Pro for a while. SSD are so worth the money, IMO.

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With a Thunderbolt enclosure? Which one did you use?

EDIT: Ok, I see, although FireWire limits the throughput, it's still much better than the HDD

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions...an-upgrade

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Elgato 120GB, I was mainly using it with my Elgato EyeTV 250 for ripping VHS to it directly. I installed a windows partition on it as the SSD that came with the initial MBP were quite small.

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Ah, nice. These are the two Thunderbolt external solutions I know of so far:

* Elgato which you just mentioned
* Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt Adapter link

Both are fairly recent solutions!

You mean you managed to install Bootcamp on the external SSD? I was just researching that. The only solution I have seen so far, is to install Windows on the internal drive, and then clone the Bootcamp partition with WinClone.