Four flavors of iMac

Non-technical Dad here looking for advice. Yesterday's new Apple announcement has me more confused than ever. I am looking to buy a new (or recently discontinued) iMac. My decision of which model rests largely on the graphics capability as I expect this desktop will be my 10 year old son's gaming device for the next 5 years. I can't seem to find any information on how these Nvidia products compare, on Nvidia's website or Apple's. Other considerations don't really matter. There's enough memory, hard disk, processor speed, etc. for all my other needs.

I can still purchase an "old" iMac with either:

ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB memory
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS with 512MB memory

Or get a new one with either:

NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 256MB memory (new)
NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 with 512MB memory (new)

Obviously, the more expensive the Mac one buys, the higher the capability of the Nvidia component. But how does, for example, the "old" 8800 compare to the new GT 120/130?

Thanks in advance.....

Beware: Apple took away the MiniDVI port and replaced it with their own Mini DisplayPort.
(The Mini Display-to-DVI cable runs $10 more than the MiniDVI-to-DVI cable.)
I'm confused – when it comes to hooking a Mac up to an HDTV, isn't MiniDVI more common than the MiniDisplay port?
They also removed the extra Firewire port.
Plus, they now make you pay $19 for the remote.
That's quite sad…

no, the bluetooth keyboard has no usb ports on it. if you didnt plug a keyboard into the usb ports on the back of the computer, then you'd have 4 open ports, total. ignoring, of course, the mouse using a port in either example.

I'm curious why no eSATA? External drives are all headed in that direction and yet not one of the upgrades released today includes eSATA.

Its all great but why does the iMac with ATI Radeon 4850 take 4-6 weeks to be delivered?

why not quad core? why not quad core? why? damn it! i was so sure that they will add a quad core model with imac this time..

pfff i cant afford a macpro apple and i need something better than dual core...

why not quad core model apple? why?


disappointed and complaining...

Disappointing. I was hoping for a Quad core, as I'm planning to have 2 cores devoted to OS X and 2 cores to Vista under VMWare and give each system 4 gigs of ram.

I'm going to buy this Gateway I saw at the local Microcenter that has a Core 2 Quad and 8 GB of RAM for $799. Put on a iAtkos/Kalaway build of the OS and I'm good to go.

Boooooo! Oh well, I don't get my bonus until the end of March anyway. It'll give me time to mull it over, too.

I've been waiting forever for Apple to make more affordable workstations like they used to, but they keep on making them more expensive. (More powerful, definitely, but also more expensive.) In addition, finding refurbished low-end models has become increasingly more difficult than it was in the past. However, I don't customize as much as I used to and a terabyte drive is enough to hold all the crap I keep on my computer... but I do love swapping in the latest big hard drives when they come along and internal ALWAYS outperforms external.

On the flipside, Apple's continuously lowering the prices of the iMacs. Not only do nearly all the frills come standard, but you can also upgrade the high-end iMac to a Radeon HD for only $50. (HELLO!!!) I've been waiting for Apple to stuff a quad-core in their high-end iMacs, but they wouldn't be as affordable as they are now and I bet it's a year off at the earliest. I hate the opaque box/non-swappable parts model of the iMac, but I do like 24 inch built-in monitors and I need to get an Intel Mac. I know I'll have hard drive and quad processor envy eventually, but the G5 PowerMac is quickly losing eBay resale value.

Oh, heck. Down to one FireWire port now, are we? I'm happy it's FW800, but the previous versions had FW400 and FW800, albeit without the extra USB. This was perfect for our hot-desk studios; FW400 for the audio interface, FW800 for the drives. But this update means that we would now have to unplug the audio interface, attach a HDD, get a FW800 -> FW400 cable and daisy-chain the two. For every studio user who brings in a drive. And Pro Tools isn't a fan of USB drives... oh, no.

There's enough space on the back of those 24"-ers for a FW400 port as well. Probably even on the 20". Bad Apple. You're going to make life difficult for me when upgrade time comes around.