Apple's Core i5 / i7 27-inch iMacs now shipping to expectant owners
By Vladislav Savov 
posted Nov 10th 2009 7:53AM
posted Nov 10th 2009 7:53AM
Lovers of Snow Leopard, oversized IPS display panels, and Intel's very latest processors, your time for rejoicing has come. Apple has begun sending off shipping confirmations to customers who ordered up their slab of quad-core all-in-one nirvana in October, and the biggest and baddest iMacs should be arriving at their new homes imminently. To remind you, the reason for waiting on these units was the 2.66GHz Core i5 750 inside, which comes along with 4GB of RAM, a Radeon HD 4850, and a cool terabyte of storage. We're sure some of the eager new owners couldn't resist upgrading that spec to a 2.8GHz Core i7 860, which we can kind of see the sense in -- after all, an iMac is for life, not just for Christmas. That's how that saying goes, right?
Like or loath Apple, this is still a pretty great machine.
Upgradeable to 16 GB of RAM... Not something you see on the average desktop PC, that's for sure...
i challenge you to find an i7 mobo that cant upgrade to 16gb or more.
heffeque @ were have you bin all core i5 desktop systems support up to 16gb
4 x 4GB ddr3 ram cost around $ 800 - 1000 USD on a average desktop PC as you say and about 400 more on a Apple pc.
but i dont think most people would pay that much.
Andy @ The Core i7 Supports up to 24GB of DDr3 Ram
OMG were do they Come From i thought all if not most Engadget users should know this ...
@THEHAWK
They were obviously being sarcastic.
@heffeque
If you did your homework, which you obviously didn't, the latest and greatest Intel platforms support 16GB+++ worth of memory. Stop acting as if it's an exclusive feature on iMacs. :P If anything, Apple is so late to jump in the Core i5/i7 bandwagon.
I am no Apple fanboy, but man, always found iMacs to be sexy.
effeque.. noob...
@THEHAWKs: You're wrong. The Core i7 in the iMac is the i7-860, which is dual-channel (Lynnfield). It supports up to 16 GB of RAM. You're thinking of the triple-channel Core i7-9xx (Bloomfield) which supports up to 24 GB of RAM.
@THEHAWKs -
It's usually a good idea to buy the RAM 3rd party when purchasing a Mac from Apple - along with extra HD space - as it is cheaper 99% of the time than adding it to the order thru Apple.
But then you already knew this before bashing folks this morning - huh?
I meant the typical All-in-One computers. Obviously big bulky desktops can fit 16 GB and more.
Here's Dell's AiO: http://www.dell.com/us/en/home/desktops/desktop-xps-a2420/pd.aspx?refid=desktop-xps-a2420&s=dhs&cs=19
Here's HP's AiO: http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/series_can.do;HHOJSID=LnZ2K5GCszW5twTb1wB4D7dGVQsMpQfHFyGClz8165NSrzrNswww!1796829287?storeName=computer_store&landing=desktops&a1=Category&v1=All-in-One%20PCs&jumpid=in_R329_prodexp/hhoslp/psg/desktops/All-in-One_PCs
Here's ASUS's: http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=3lDDGLp7Xa1NiCzy
None of them support 16 GB of RAM.
Mmmmmm I'd buy that if I had the money, of course Windows 7 and Ubuntu would go on there and I'd remove the Mac OS just so I wouldn't be completely gay. But only sort of gay. I wonder if all I had was Apple hardware if I would become a snob too? Eh, I'm not a millionaire so I wont be buying this thing anyways.
Great maching perhaps but NOT a great GAMING MACHINE
Apple still fails
STILL playing nfs carbon? :D
You guys are all missing the main shortcoming of this computer!!!
Even though it has a Corei7 CPU the motherboard still only supports DMI (10Gb/s) rather than implementing the only real advantage to Corei7 which is QPI (25.6Gb/s)
The current gen iMac is a serious letdown because Apple rushed it to market; If they'd waited until December/January to release them I'm pretty confident they'd have QPI and wouldn't be a waste of time!
athousandleaves:
This is the Core i7/860. It doesn't use QPI, as it doesn't have any fast devices to talk to that are off-CPU. This is because it doesn't do multi-chip multiprocessing, and the memory controller and PCIe controllers are on-chip.
In short, the 860 moves the entire north bridge on-CPU, and since QPI was only needed to talk to the north bridge, you don't need QPI to go super fast.
Read a review. This chip smokes my Core i7/920 at all tasks, it even stacks up on (non-overclocked) memory bandwidth, despite only having two channels of memory instead of 3.
@ why not...
So you'd rather waste your CPU cycles on something the North Bridge could be taking care of?
Man, if only i had the cash.
I hear you.
Man, if only LG could release this monitor so I could plug it to my ridiculous average Joe PC without having to pay a fortune for a toaster that wouldn't even let me change the video card or add a secondary HD....
LOL 1000s of $ and what pathetic specs. 4850?? Which bloody year are they living in?!
i5?! A damn castrated CPU after charging you your left testicle (pun intended)?
I dont think Kurian gets it... you're not just buying processors and ram, youre getting a package. My roomate has the 21.5" and it is awesome! The 27" with an i7 and that form factor... DAMN
nVidia's CEO has enough money to buy all those new iMac powered by ATI Graph........oh snap!
hahaha engadget taking the piss out of apple! Never thought id see the day.
Honestly though, with an i7, theres no compromise for the all in one form factor now, i hope hp can step it up with a touchscreen i7 rig like this.
Have you used a touchscreen all-in-one? I've always wondered wether or not it would actually come in use, considering your arms are likely to tire quickly...
One in the family room is great, you just leave skype / whatever and simple stuff like solitaire open, you forget abut the mouse completely. But not for like documents and stuff.
Hehe, welcome to 2009 Apple... I've been running Core i7 920 and 6GB RAM for ages now. Waiting for my Radeon HD 5850 which I ordered yesterday :P.
I bet yours fits into the screen like the apple one too!
I rep windows hard, but thats a very capable machine for the form factor.
How many ages exactly?
Same thought here, Apple used to be leading in development but since they switched to Intel they seem to lag more and more behind their competition if it comes to hardware. Such a shame that they are slow, consider it a bag of hurt of simply don´t give their users the option to use the best hardware that is actually avaible without giving up 12 ribs, 2 arms and a testicle.
correction JZ,
that would cost you $1960.00, so roughly half a black market kidney would be more correct.
It's not about the proccesor in the new iMacs... it's the IPS display and its 2560x1440 resolution thats really amazing. I bet the screen alone is bordering on the $1000 -$1200 price tag. Dell is rumored to release a monitor with the same 27" LG panel as the iMac (the U2711) and i bet it wont be very affordable. The 30" Dell 3008WFP (which has almost the same resolution) is $1700 and its not LED backlit.
So you probably have i7 on your desktop PC for a few months now, but it's not really what this iMac is all about. With the i5 / i7 processors and 4850 radeon you can have a very decent workstation for editing video / CAD / or other graphical intensive stuff which doesnt cost a fortune.
Well I can't speak for Alexis, but my i7 940 PC was delivered in November LAST year. Having said that the iMac looks a nice bit of kit, would never buy one in a million year, but looks nice. Heat dissipation issues would worry me in a form factor like that though.
You know what's funny about this? Nvidia's CEO was ragging about how awesome the best technology is used in Apple machines.
So aren't we all just a bit amused, that the high end iMacs running the i5 and i7 CPUs, in fact, use AMD (ATI 4850) video cards?
OH MY GOD! I JUST LOOKED AT THE SITE. ADD $1960.00 TO GET 16GB OF RAM.
W T F.
LOL
You can get 16GB for the new iMacs for $980 from OWC:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/iMac/DDR3_21.5_27
Apple makes it easy to install on your own.
Didn't everyone who really cares about this article already get an email about it?
this article is for the non-caring ones! (sarcasm)
engadget reports everything, even non-relevant ones (to you/everyone), its their job!
and no not all apple product buyers received info about this on their mail.
and about the product, NICE, but no thank you.
its not as portable as my gigabyte m912x touch netbook / hackintosh. (lolwd)
Lovely in so many ways bar one - no blu-ray drive. So silly to make such an expensive system with such a beautiful display... only to give it an optical drive that is a decade old. Apple need to bury their anti-blu-ray hatchet now.
@Gus I lol'd
I really don't get the love affair with bluray. Who want's to spend $30 on a movie? So they can watch it on their computer?? Makes no sense.
Why the hell is Need for Speed Carbon on the display? That's like 3 years old
That's the only game it can play.
That was the last game released for Mac OS X.
lol. welcome to 2009 apple users.
hi alexis ;)
You mean welcome to September 2009, 2 months ago? Magnificent troll.
Pretty sad that Apple still offers a standard package whereby the video card can't handle the display without overheating.
694 posts re: problem with 24in iMac from 2006: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1107864&tstart=0
Now the new ones have more hardware issues: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=808339
There is even a class-action lawsuit being filed over the 2006 defect, since Apple refuses to address it.
Cool Story Bro....
That thing is going to be running HOT
Really a fail and stupid spam, the spam is bad in all regards, I am pissed to see this spam.