Intel 17&quot; Core Duo iMac reviewed at Ars Technica

Until C.K. receives his 20" Core Duo iMac, we can peruse the in-depth review of the 17-inch model over at Ars Technica. They put the new iMac through its paces including both informal and formal benchmarking with Rosetta and without.

The author of the article, Eric Bangeman, notes that when you run heavy processor intensive applications such as Photoshop or Unreal Tournament on Rosetta, don't expect them to be zippy. In fact, you may be better off holding off on purchasing a new iMac if you are a professional graphic designer, audio engineer, or film maker. Pro applications, even those authored by Apple, are just not finished for the Intel processor platforms. Running those same applications with Rosetta may feel a bit laggy if you are used to using a G5 machine. According to Bangeman, Photoshop tests with Rosetta on the Core Duo iMac put it about level with a 1GHz G4 machine. Once Photoshop and other pro applications are released as native for the Intel procs, the Core Duo will definitely be a solid purchase.

Bangeman also confirms that the only part of the Core Duo iMac you will probably upgrade at home will be the RAM. Similar to the last model of iMac G5, only the bottom plate of the housing is removable.

[via Ars Technica]

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Source: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/imac-coreduo.ars/

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Hardware iMac Reviews

Until C.K. receives his 20" Core Duo iMac, we can peruse the in-depth review of the 17-inch model over at Ars Technica. They put the...

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Fritz Laurel

WTF???

Compressing a 49.4MB Quicktime movie to "iPod-ready" takes almost 4 mins on a Dual G5??? My ass is does. My Dual 1Ghz G4 will compress a similar video in 19 seconds.

Thus, I can't trust his figures at all!

FL

January 18 2006 at 1:06 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Randolph

I too would like to see an A/B test of 1 or 2 Gig ram iMacs But using the iMovie06 and a complex transition between two clips as the benchmark right now it seems the dual quad 2.5 is still the speed champ and will remain so untill its Intel replacement ships... and the rumors are all over the map on the timing for that... ranging from June to 'Fall 06'

January 17 2006 at 11:34 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

khourshed

we should not cry on the Past we should look to the future, and the future is bright (I hope so)

January 17 2006 at 10:57 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

rbarbera

Well, interesting to see the first "review", but... 512Mb of RAM on iMac the Dual Core vs 1Gb of RAM on the iMac G5? This not seems to me comparable!. Using Photoshop with a 48Mb file with only 512Mb of RAM is asking for problems... without Rosetta. Imagine when Rosetta is take into the account.

First try. I'm waiting for a comparation beetween machines with the same amount of RAM ;)

Best regards,
Rafa

January 17 2006 at 10:11 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Dave

also they make it clear that you as of now can not install Windows XP OR Windows Vista beta... it will require some additional software. while i am sure that it will be done sooner than later i was truly hoping that Apple would have made their intel Macs work out of the box with Windows... in fact if they had it would have ensured that my next 2 computers were Macs (i have to be able to run Windows and VPC is not acceptable) but now i will wait and see what soultions are brought out and how good they are.

January 17 2006 at 10:09 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply