Benchmarks of 2009 iMacs, Mac minis show negligible speed-ups - Page 2

Dave

Bad news there. A Toby over on Macrumors created a thread about his installation of RAM in his new mini and he noticed that the C2D were not socketed. There goes a cheap upgrade ..sigh. I'm going to remain hopeful that whatever card Apple is using can be replicated by a 3rd party.

Well I can't help it if reading comprehension is a weakness of yours. How is that my fault?

Those are some pretty clear examples of times when additional cpu performance benefits the user immensely. Some of those tasks are so cpu intensive that you will not use your machine for anything else until that task is done. Others can take HOURS to complete. Why wouldn't you want a faster if not the fastest possible machine possible (within reason of course) to do that?

If you don't 'get' it, I don't know what to tell you.

So snow Leopard will work faster on these than last year's model? Why is that? He stated a whole slew of items that take forever-NOW.

Geekbench doesn't test graphics performance, which should be increased substantially for both machines over their predecessors. Both the 9400M vs the GMA 950 and the Radeon 4850 vs the pseudo-8800GS in the iMac should be no contest at all.

I've used my iMac to make movies in iMovie, used iMovie to export them in different formats, used iDVD to make a few movies and even used handbrake a few times. Yes, I wait for encoding times and all but I've mostly felt the wait times were reasonable. Handbrake seems to takes the most time. Still I just go watch a TV show or something while it works. Honestly, I'm not going to be that impressed with loosing a few minutes waiting for the encode until it's down to 15 min or so.

I know many people with Mac's and PC's that most only use them for iTunes, email, internet and basic photo stuff. That's just the way most people use their machines I think.

Okay, the top of the line machine isn't as damned fast as you'd like it to be. I still think the processor and graphics are a good buy, especially given the price on the mac.

and can yall stop freaking complaining about how bad the low-end imacs are? or how bad the mini's are? chirst, the imacs and mini's aren't supposed to be top-of-the-line machines. especially the low-end ones. and has anyone noticed the low-end imacs are CHEAP. 24" screen for cheap!!!! These machines will move very quickly, simply because they offer a lot at a low price. These aren't cheap by PC standards, but by apple standards these computers are rock bottom.

The high-end are pretty good too (not mac pro, but still good), so stop the whining! Buy a low-end mac pro if you want quad core that badly. quad-core is simply not affordable in an imac. it has nothing to do with cooling.

IBM processors, do you really want to go there?
In that time there was nothing comparable to Power PC, the main reason Apple changed them for Intel was the lack of support from IBM.
You can't have a partner that is not marching at your pace. Look at all the products Apple released since Intel/Apple partnership begun. Apple TV, TimeCapsule, iPhone & iPod touch and the entire computer line.
The change came as natural it could be, Apple was not anymore the Computer brand, it has another channel called iPod and expanded it to make 4 mayor businesses.

In some way was IBM lost, but who can blame them... They thought they had more future making processors for consoles and car computers. Many of the top car brands use even up to 12 PPC chips on their cars like BMW, Mercedes Benz and many others.

In my opinion the PPC chip was way better than what it was offered by AMD and Intel at that time. Worked with so many high end software that was ridiculous fast on Power Macs and sluggish on windows.

As a consultant and support asset I seen so many changes in both worlds (Windows & Mac) and I still prefer Mac for the whole experience. (sorry HP)

Fair enough. Sorry my temper got a little carried away in my first post. It does that, and it's not terribly productive.

And I do understand, somewhat but I'm not so sure that they aren't delivering, at least not yet. I fully reserve the write to have my optimism here proven wrong, but I just think that the improvements are of the "oh, the clock speed is higher!" variety that all of us here can easily get excited about immediately.

I think once we see some thorough benchmarks and, really, more importantly, once we see Snow Leopard I think these machines will look better. If not "great," necessarily.

I made a movie with iMovie and encoded with iDVD. The movie was 1-2 minutes long but I encoded with iDVD to play on my TV. With my C2D MBP (2.16ghz) it took 20 minutes! I want an ATV just to avoid this hassle.

2 hour handbrake rips take about 2.5 hrs to complete. A friend has a last gen octo core MP and says 2 hr movies take him 20 minutes.

I can easily use a more powerful Mac. Alas, the only one that really offers the performance I desire is the Mac Pro and its not in my budget.

The comment about me being ignorant is no too smart on your part, but let's not start a cat fight.

I still maintain that for most tasks, there won't be any speed increase, period. Core image/video? Am I really talking to someone who understands these things? Do you know how many Mac Apps REALLY leverage the graphic card for processing? Put the list together, and you'll quickly realize they're not exactly targeted at users using a mini or even an iMac (to set the record straight, I see one app benefiting from it, quicktime will actually benefit from the H.264 hardware decoder on the mini now, but hey, H.264 hardware acceleration has been available for years, even the 5+ years old nVidia GPUs can do it).

OpenCL still has to prove itself as no-one has really played with it. Plus it may simply die after this new generation of nVidia powered Macs as nVidia is being sued by Intel (I suggest you read the news).
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...cts_apple.html

It's simply the reflection of what's going on at Apple: major shift of resources from the OS/hardware to consumer products like the iPhone (and please don't argue with me on that one, I live in the bay, every Apple employees from the Cupertino campus you can meet around here will tell you the same thing, most of them are actually pissed by that shift).

Leopard already utilizes dual core machines efficiently. Grand Central is for more than 2 core machines. It is supposed to facilitate the use of machines with 4 cores or more. Open cl may be useful for machines with the current gpus. We'll know more as it gets closer to release.

Not arguing about the IBM CPU, I loved my PPC macs, and still use one! What I meant is that at that time Apple was all about speed, all about bashing intel for lack of it, and Apple was crying because IBM couldn't keep up with its needs. Now, things are quite reversed, they have all the power they need, but they choose not to use it. I don't get it.

it looks like you only took a look at the first lines of my post, but again...
Computer power in these days don't relay on the processor only, it has to do more with the total of components and how they work and communicate together. In the case of Apple computers with the OS, you should know that Mac OS X is another kind of beast and use the whole components in its particular way, with Snow Leopard the user experience will be exponentially boosted.

I have customers that edit HD for local tv in their iMacs, it could be faster on a Mac Pro but is darn faster than some of the offering on windows world. Not to mention the hundreds running Adobe's suites. They use their equipment for profit and depend on speed to do stuff.

They just not complain cause their Macs are up to the task and KNOW how to use them.

The retail costs for a faster CPU is rather high...otherwise I would be thinking about it.

It's so disappointing to come here to read helpful insight from users and all I read in almost every post is someone bitching that they didn't get what they wanted for Christmas. I'm certain these machines are more than marginally better than the last machines even if it's GPU vs CPU. Apple does not have a track record of releasing crap. I personally think they probably should have waited for Snow Leopard as this will show the true power of these and recent machines.

This update made me feel good about my "older" Mac

Apple is starting to smell...

Is there a part where "Nehalem isn't here yet" that confuses people about this minor iMac speed bump? Yes, it was almost worth of a stealth bump that the MBP got but Apple is skipping the quad penryns. Could be heat, could be they're expecting to get the mobile Nehalms before anyone else like the Nehalem-EPs from Intel...although that's less likely given the volumes that HP and Dell push out.

I loved those machines, I still have a quicksilver I got second hand and still works pretty well as a server.
Change is good, I think we got benefit from Apple switch to Intel, more products, more ways to use your computer and running multiple OS.

Overall the whole computer industry changed a lot compared of what they was 10 years ago.

Do you remember those Power Mac TV spots? The one with the tanks and the kid that blows away part of the house with his G5?

hehe!

The benchmarks show that the new machines aren't going to be any faster than the ones they replace.

If you're happy with the current performance of the iMac and mini then fine. I'm not.

I expect more for the premium price that Apple demands with its products. I don't mind paying more but I don't want less for my money.

And you better read up on Snow Leopard because it's designed to leverage the power of machines with more than 2 cores. Leopard utilizes 2 cores rather well thank you. So don't make out SL to some magic code that'll turn dual core Macs into performance beasts because it likely will not.

My opinion is that apple is just restuffing the same old stuff to show those products are still alive before a real update when Snow Leopard comes out..

oh wait thats probably just me fantasizing again

Hello there, I know is hard sometimes to find information.
I think you must pay attention that all the computers are basically oriented for Snow Leopard that will take advantage out of the GPU.
If you consider that just a little.... you will discover that not only gamers got better cards for play, all mac users that upgrade to Snow Leopard will have an entire new and better experience.

I was talking about the GPUs, which weren't in the previous models, and which Grand Central doesn't really have much (anything?) to do with.

The new MacBooks already use the NVIDIA GPU to accelerate some H.264-related tasks. That should carry over to these new Minis and iMacs — and the number of Quicktime/video-related tasks that take advantage of GPU acceleration should increase greatly in Snow Leopard, as well… to say nothing of the applications which will, hopefully, also take advantage of GPU acceleration under OpenCL.

http://www.macrumors.com/2008/10/18/...pros-and-airs/

The "Early 2006" minis can't run GeekBench64. Nor does it seem likely that these early models will run Snow Leopard.

For $1400 less, I'll take my early 2008 Mac Pro over their new slower machine. The new GPU architecture is NOT going to make any difference with Leopard or SL over my 8800gt. Everything is already perfectly smooth and instant... what's to improve? If I can play COD 4 on full detail, I'm pretty sure this machine can handle coverflow.

I can live with the extra .001 of a second it takes to render my photoshop files on my 'old' Mac Pro.

These updates are a bust.
Apple's 'Switch' campaign is now targeted at their own users.

So you have an Intel Mac with one core? Thats all your crying about?
Then any of the last generation or the present should represent to you a big leap in performance.

Last generation Macs has Intel Core Duo at least (multi core)

Yes Snow Leopard use a lot of multicore but did you read the OpenCL Part? if not I copy-paste the general idea straight from Apple's Snow Leopard web page to refresh your memory.

OpenCL
Another powerful Snow Leopard technology, OpenCL (Open Computing Language), makes it possible for developers to efficiently tap the vast gigaflops of computing power currently locked up in the graphics processing unit (GPU). With GPUs approaching processing speeds of a trillion operations per second, they’re capable of considerably more than just drawing pictures. OpenCL takes that power and redirects it for general-purpose computing.

Yes I'm aware of open cl.

I hope that its a great as you expect it to be. Time will tell.

This is fairly dramatic. What benchmarks have you seen showing the iMac two or three years behind. The iMac is using Penryn parts.


Yes what would be the point of bringing out the "new hotness" in the middle of a bad recession. It's likely Apple will wait for mobile Nelehem for a big iMac update.

What faster processor could the iMac use?

These functions you list are somewhat of a running target. As quickly as hardware is improved, software is made as equally as demanding. It never really comes to a point of equalization.

OK. I came in late on this thread, but from what I can gather, it appears that these benchmark scores and pathetic cosmetic changes (or no changes -mini -), mean that Apple's industrial design team and engineers are on a leave of absence or not disciplined enough without Steve there cracking the whip?
I mean, really, is all I have to look forward to now for the balance of the year is the 3rd gen iPhone? Oh man.

The article clearly stated these benchmarks are only for the CPU and not the entire system performance. They did not test video encoding or DVD burning.

Low power desktop quad core cpus (for the iMac, probably couldn't be made to work in a mini).

Mobile quad core cpus. I admit this choice isn't as appealing as the low power desk top cpus which come in speeds that are nearly as fast as the dual core cpus already in the iMac.

Sure software is a moving target in that it continues to get more demanding of cpu power. But that's a good thing for Apple and pc makers in general. It gives users a reason to get new and faster machines. Right now the HW seems ahead of the SW. At least in the case of > 4 core machines.

But eventually Apple and MS will harness this power and people won't remember how they lived without it.

Video encoding is done by the cpu isn't it? At least with HB it is. I imagine its the same with iDVD.

Or it could mean Apple doesn't want to launch a major change in the middle of a severe world economic recession. Apple will likely wait until the end of the recession to launch a major change.

Good point, however with Billions in cash, I think Apple has the resources to bring more to the table than this and still make it affordable. Something is going on.....

Do you honestly think that all these machines went from drawing board to production in the few weeks that Jobs announced his hiatus? If you really think that, then " Apple's industrial design team and engineers" have been impossibly busy since took his leave.

Depends on the machine. Most of the new dedicated GPU's can handle video encoding.

I don't think there was a drawing board. From the looks of things they used the same hardware, while only updating the insides a bit. Jobs may have given the go ahead for this decision, but why?

Apple essentially offered a slight bump at a lower cost. Their is no reason for them to use their savings to sell more machines during an economic crisis.

They are likely using their savings to maintain operations by not cutting services or laying people off.

Maybe not, but on the other hand should we also believe, as another member posted, that Apple is merely holding back because of the world-wide recession? Should we be expected to be that naive?

(I could have included more quotes,,,

Lots of interesting comments.

I tend to agree with those who point out that this iMac update is barely marginal. I was hoping to replace my expired iMac, but looks like a dubious proposition now.

I am saddened by Apple's continued policy/habit of releasing relatively modest desktop updates. As if buffing it up (so to speak), and that stand wedgie (be still my heart), and boosting cpu and graphics by some tiny percentage will bring in droves of new iMac buyers.

Yes, more standard RAM is good, and slightly more MHz is good. Slightly better price curve is good. Word is not yet in on newer shared graphic vs. older dedicated. Throwing away a Firewire port is bad. And rolling this out approximately one year after last revision and trumpeting it as their latest and greatest -- it is all ludicrous. And so sad.

Their vision seems to be gone.
Maybe its just about being able to have a new Marketing Campaign - to be able to advertise New, Improved, Finally Available...

(I can't speak to the Mac Pro, as it has always been out of my price and need range.)

The one bright improvement seems to be the low-end Mac mini, which now is a bit better performing, with more memory, more HD, better CPU speed, and now comes with DVD writer, rather than the Combo drive (CD-RW, DVD-RO) in last year's -- I mean two years ago -- model.

From where I stand the new low-end mini seems to be the only decent improvement and value for $$$. I am putting one onto my wish list. Maybe it will keep me Mac-happy till ...

I too hope that there is some major iMac revamp later this year when the newer Intel architecture is available. One can hope, anyway.