It's a winning formula that's thus far eluded Apple's competitors -- and we imagine the company will eventually decide to change the equation entirely.Of course, you're stuck with the iMac's super-glossy display finish, which I don't really mind, but some find incredibly annoying. That's creeping up into serious professional territory, and I wouldn't be surprised to see pros start looking at the iMac as production-capable machines, especially if Thunderbolt peripherals can reduce or eliminate the need for PCI capture cards and storage controllers.
So here we are, looking at the $1,999 27-inch 3.1GHz Core i5 iMac, which is the fastest stock configuration.
(There's a 3.4GHz Core i7 available … 27-inch (viewable) LED-backlit glossy widescreen TFT display with support for millions of colors; Resolution: 2560 by 1440 pixels; Processor. As you can see from the benchmarks, it's a thoroughly capable machine -- we never experienced any slowdowns while working with it, and we clocked a rock-solid 60fps in Portal 2 at 1680 x 1050 resolution and well over 100fps in Half-Life 2: Episode 2.You'll note that the $2,199 2.2GHz Core i7 MacBook Pro scored slightly higher on GeekBench, and within range on the other benchmarks.
And we're pretty sure Apple's displays get glossier every year. In addition to the new processor and Thunderbolt, Apple also bumped the graphics card to an ATI Radeon HD 6970M, which the company claims offers three times the performance of the outgoing model, added a 720p FaceTime HD webcam, and tucked an ambient light sensor into the case for automatic brightness adjustments. Benchmark results for the iMac (27-inch Mid 2011) with an Intel Core i7-2600 processor can …
The iMac "Core i5" 2.7 27-Inch Aluminum (Mid-2011) is powered by a Quad Core 2.7 GHz Intel "Core i5" I5-2500S (Sandy Bridge) processor with a dedicated 256k level 2 cache for each core and a 6 MB shared level 3 cache. I'd call that matchup in Apple's favor, especially given the near-useless state of Windows 7 touch overlays.That's not to say that the iMac is perfect: it's still frustrating that Apple ships such beautiful displays but doesn't offer a Blu-ray drive, which is the best way for the average consumer to watch high-quality 1080p content. In lieu of a system bus, it has a "Direct Media Interface" (DMI) that "connects between the processor and chipset" at 5 GT/s. The potential for tragedy remains high as long as the SD and DVD slots share such intimate quarters. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Magic Trackpad become the standard pack-in after Lion ships.That's really it from the outside of the case, but I can't let this go without noting a minor niggle with the iMac's design: the close proximity of the DVD and SD slots on the right side makes it far too easy to accidentally put an SD card in the DVD slot if you're not looking. So has the best all-in-one PC gotten even better, or is Apple just keeping pace?
A quick Google search reveals that I'm far from the only one who's had this problem -- let's hope the next major iMac revision puts the slots on opposite sides of the case.Is the new iMac just another processor bump, or is it a serious upgrade?Given our experience with other Sandy Bridge-based systems, it's no surprise that the new iMac shines in the performance department as well. Also while i was in there put a new samsung 830 256gb now this thing runs the way i thought it should . It's an interesting dilemma if you're considering a high-end Mac: do you choose the gorgeous 27-inch display, or take nearly the same performance in a portable and sacrifice some screen resolution and a Thunderbolt port?