Apple's 17-inch Intel iMac reviewed

Well, they've officially hit the streets a-running; Apple's first round of Intel-based systems are making it through the review chain, and Ars Technica's already got a review up of the 1.83GHz Core Duo T2400-based iMac. It shouldn't come as any surprise that the Intel machine wiped the floor with its G5-based counterpart in many of the common-task benchmarks they ran, scoring between twenty and over 250% faster performing common tasks like compressing video and ripping CDs, but it looks like it's losing out big time in some Xbench tests and anywhere else Rosetta emulation was required for parity. They also gave XP and Vista a go on the box to see what they could see... and didn't have any luck getting it to install right off the bat. Still, all in all Ars seems to think the Intel iMac is a good buy even despite the lack of native-Intel apps for the platform right now, and they're predicting big success for Apple's big move.

[Via TUAW]

[scb @ Jan 17th 2006 12:12PM]

many xbench tests aren't using the second core, which is why some tests were slower

[Jonathan Zuniga @ Jan 17th 2006 12:22PM]

with all this apple stories and apple ads, engadget seems to be turning to an apple blog. lol.



http://groups.myspace.com/engadgetreaders

[Jordan @ Jan 17th 2006 12:33PM]

I've got a 20-inch, just got it delivered yesterday. I've also owned a G5 17", and I must say, this thing absolutely destroys the G5 in the way that it feels. I mean, it just snaps, it's SO fast.



I ordered RIGHT after the keynote, forgot to enter my student discount info, paid for fast shipping and tax, but I've got it! :)



I have not played with an Rosetta apps, just copied my stuff to it last night and played with the native apps for about 2 hours.



The difference is astonishing.

[OMAC @ Jan 17th 2006 12:41PM]

Us PC guys have been telling you this for years! Welcome to the Intel club! Now if you really want to get your Macs screaming get Apple to switch to AMD!

[crescentdave @ Jan 17th 2006 12:43PM]

It's like we've been telling applets all along ... intel blows right by the "reality distortion field" known as the power pc chip.



All the hype, all the ads, all the misleading "tests" conducted by Apple couldn't change this simple fact.



I am SO glad to see Apple on the Intel (wish it included AMD) platform. Now that it's truly competitive, Windows is going to have to respond. Bottom line: all consumers are going to benefit.

[GeeksAreSexy @ Jan 17th 2006 12:49PM]

Kindda normal if you ask me, the bench werent made to run on this platform just yet..

[Vadim Lozko @ Jan 17th 2006 1:05PM]

To #2, while I can see where your comment is coming from, when was the last time you heard Dell or HP develop something that draws attention? Like them or not, they are the hottest company in the market right now. Just look at their stock price.

[Illiminated One @ Jan 17th 2006 1:21PM]

Yeah, it really bugged the hell out of me when Apple fanboys would keep yapping about how programs run twice as fast on their machines compared to PC users. Now, you can tell they are shutting up because it's been exposed that they were just sheep herded by Steve Jobs.

[Digiguy23 @ Jan 17th 2006 1:35PM]

Drop the AMD crap already

[bitswapper @ Jan 17th 2006 1:38PM]

If you read the article, the dual-core Intel beats the single-core ppc easily. Not so with the dual-core G5. Depending on the test, results were favorable for one or the other.

[Chris @ Jan 17th 2006 1:46PM]

Well, times have changed. It may have been true at the time. Of course a dual core Intel chip is going to be faster than a single core PowerPC. The problem is that IBM was not able to match Intel's mobile chips.



"Yeah, it really bugged the hell out of me when Apple fanboys would keep yapping about how programs run twice as fast on their machines compared to PC users. Now, you can tell they are shutting up because it's been exposed that they were just sheep herded by Steve Jobs."

[Jonathan Zuniga @ Jan 17th 2006 2:11PM]

my quad G5 still hauls ass.



http://groups.myspace.com/engadgetreaders

[Jordan @ Jan 17th 2006 2:24PM]

Man, people are funny.



One, I'm an IT Manager managing about 18 PCs, and also have a PC myself. My Mac is my newest toy.



I know the differences. Not all of us "Mac guys" are dumb, or make any of the claims that you all are stating.



The G5 is a much nicer chip than the P4, anyone with a brain knows that. The Athlon 64 and FX, on the other hand, are very nice.



The Core Duo, however, is just plain awesome.



And so what? Not all of us are in the RDF, or give a crap about the numbers and benchmarks. When I go home after an exhausting day of fixing crap, I like to just chill out on a Mac, edit some video, put in some photos, listen to some iTunes, and not worry about a @#$#@ driver for any of it.

[Illiminated One @ Jan 17th 2006 2:40PM]

There are still two questions that need answering:

1. Will developers keep support for IBM based Macs or only develop for the Intel chips here on out?



2. Does Apple change in thinking mean that the Ipod will play WMA's anytime soon?

[Pip @ Jan 17th 2006 3:21PM]

Yeah, looking at the review "wiped the floor" is the last way I would describe it. For more of the tests, the Intel iMac was only about 10-20% faster than the G5 iMac. Yeah, it's faster, but it took two cores at a higher clockspeed to be barely faster?



Maybe what Steve was saying about the G5 wasn't all hype after all.

[granny down east @ Jan 17th 2006 3:25PM]

Yay, #4 and #6; wouldn't trade my six-year AMD machine for anything.

Maybe I *would* trade for Apple with AMD inside...hmmm.

[Jo @ Jan 17th 2006 3:59PM]

Does anyone remember the Apple advertisement with the Pentium processor on top of a snail? Is the next one on top of an African Swallow?

[mike @ Jan 17th 2006 5:53PM]

Us PC guys have been telling you this for years! Welcome to the Intel club

----

but... Intel has drastically changed what it's been doing all these years.. they gave up pitching the BS Hz rating for 'performance per watt' which is what Apple wants from them...

The G5's are plenty powerful, they just couldn't get G5's into a notebook.

[mike @ Jan 17th 2006 5:58PM]

2. Does Apple change in thinking mean that the Ipod will play WMA's anytime soon?
---

Huh? What are you thinking?

Changing chips is not huge...IBM couldn't get a chip out for the Powerbooks. That's it.

.. changing to woefully disappointing and irrelevant WMA format.. ?

umm.... never

[Dan @ Jan 17th 2006 6:06PM]

I can't wait to try out one of these. I have one of the 2.0GHz G5s, and it's lightening fast - so if the intel ones are two times as fast, it must be pretty much instantaneous. :P

[Joey Geraci @ Jan 17th 2006 7:19PM]

wma aren't what I would call irrelevant, as every other mp3 player uses them, even if they can't compete with the ipod. The new digital kiosks use them. The digital music rental services use them. I call that pretty relevant, and, dare I say it, hot.

P.S. Ipod 4g color owner. You would have to pay me to switch to the 5g.

[Alfrun @ Jan 18th 2006 4:18AM]

Nice THing but i think too expensisve - apple style as every time ...

[Alex @ Jan 18th 2006 4:47AM]

Now that we know the intel (duo core) iMacs are faster than the G5 (single core?) iMacs, How are the new intel iMacs comparing with the dual core G5 PowerMacs? I mean, since they're both dual core it's probably more fair. Oh and maybe one can also under/overclock either machine to the same clockspeed as the other.
All I wanna know is if the performance gain from the new iMacs (comparing with older iMacs) is really because x86 is in fact superior than PowerPC, or just because the new yonah chip is a newer technology than the G5...

[eduo @ Jan 18th 2006 8:12AM]

A few things:

-PowerPC beat Intel Pentiums hands down 5 years ago (when the snail ad came out). This is not the case now but it was and at the time it was pretty much a non-discussion. IBM and Motorola didn't stay competitive and Intel (along with pushes from AMD) advanced a lot (and in the road also lost the obsession with MHz, which was misleading to start with). The Core Duo is right now a better chip than the G5 (a three year-old chip, mind you). Whatever the case the G5 chip still remains a wonderful chip, from a technical side and it's very sad that it was left to rot instead of getting further development. The blame is on IBM, not Apple.

-The reasons to pick Intel over AMD are very clear and there are plenty of references around. I won't repeat them here but I can understand Apple deciding to pick the overall best supplier instead of going with two different suppliers for different machines. Makes sense in both marketing and business sides.

-One of the few things that did work out of the last three years (a period in which Apple had to come to terms with the fact that what had been a great decision at the time had now become a marketing and user satisfaction nightmare, especially for laptop users) is that OSX had to become optimized as hell, to take the maximum advantage of existing hardware. This meant that when moving over to the Core Duo (which is a faster chip than anything OSX had had to run in before) the thing just screamed in the new hardware (whereas getting regular hardware updates means you don't have to optimize your software, the hardware makes it run faster by itself). Windows is famous for being exactly the same speed every time you update the OS and the CPU at the same time.

-There were more, but I forgot them.

[craigtheguru @ Jan 18th 2006 2:19PM]

I performed an analysis of the new MacBook Pro while at Macworld, comparing the new laptop to previous G4/G5 systems.

The full analysis is here:
http://www.craigtheguru.com/reports/MacBook_Pro_Performance_Analysis.php

[heywood @ Jan 20th 2006 1:33PM]

How fast do you really need? I have a G5 20 inch 2.1 iSight, stock (plus a Gb of RAM), and I can NOT believe how well it performs. It actually outperforms a dual G5 I have at work (granted, that's plugged into a crappy Windows network, but still.) I can't speak to benchmarks, but I can tell you this...I work in Photoshop all day. I recently ran 7 actions, including blur, resize, and various other filters, on a 300-DPI, 400 MB file with somewhere in the neighbourhood of 20 layers, including nested groups, containing text, Smart Layers, and raster layers. the G5 SMOKED through the actions in about a minute, maybe a minute and a half. It was lightning. As for standard user apps, my iTunes rips a full CD in under 2 minutes. I have an iPod, but would never use quicktime to export video for it...I don;t know if anyone's noticed, but it doesn;t always work...instead, I use iSquint (Fast and FREE!!)...I converted 4 episodes of The Colbert Report from DIVX AVI to MP4 in about 12 minutes. all this has made me rethink my "buyer's remorse" when I saw the Macintel premier at Macworld a scant 2 weeks after buying my G5. Even the DVI port doesn;t make me sick with envy; as a friend pointed out to me, since my G5 only has a Mini VGA, that means the built-in screen is a VGA, and it's absolutely beautiful. (I will soon be buying a Dell 20 inch so I can extend my desktop...40 inch screen!! mint). I could not possibly be happier with my G5. For $2560 Canadian (including 1.5 GB Ram, 3-year Apple Care, and Taxes, after discounts), I have a machine that will not only serve me VERY well for at least 2 years, but one that will almost certainly retain a good portion of its value to be applied to the NEXT generation of Intel Duos, should they have evolved to the point that would warrant replacing my curent GodBox. And that's my 2�.