Ladies and gentleman , the fastestMacwe’ve ever seen is presently sitting in the Macworld Lab . It ’s the 27 - in 2.93GHz quad core Core i7 iMac , fit out with a self-coloured - state drive ( SSD ) . This built - to - Holy Order ( BTO ) model posted the highest Speedmark 6 mark of any iMac we ’ve tested — for now .
The 27 - inch 2.93GHz quadriceps core Core i7 iMac with SSD is n’t one of the four received constellation Apple fling , andMacworlddoesn’t mouse - rate BTO framework . To get the Core i7 CPU and SSD , you have to customise a 27 - column inch 2.8GHz quad essence Core i5 iMac ( ) when ordering through the on-line Apple Store . promote to the 2.93GHz Core i7 adds $ 200 to the $ 1999 infrastructure Mary Leontyne Price . substitute a 256 GB SSD for the toilsome drive adds another $ 600 . So the full price of the iMac we test ( with 4 GB of tup ) is $ 2799 .
We used our Speedmark 6 test suite to guess the performance of the 2.93GHz quad core Core i7 iMac and to see how well it performs compare other current iMacs . Overall , the 2.93GHz quad core Core i7 iMac with an SSD is telling , posting a Speedmark 6 grievance of 254 , currently the highest Speedmark 6 grade posted by any Mac . ( We just experience two of the threenew Mac Promodels , and we ’ll try out them and ply solution soon . We guess that the unexampled Mac Pros will trounce the Core i7 iMac , but the story will be how much of a performance divergence there is . )
Compared to the standard configuration 27 - inch 2.8GHz musculus quadriceps femoris essence Core i5 iMac with a 7200 - rev hard drive , the 2.93GHz quad gist Core i7 iMac is 17 percent quicker overall . We saw the most striking improvement in our Aperture , iMovie , iPhoto , and Unzip Archive examination , which were n’t surprising since these tests tend to compose data file to harrow , and the 2.93GHz quad core Core i7 iMac with its SSD provides a speed benefit .
Interestingly , the one test where the 2.8GHz quad core Core i5 iMac win by a wide border is in our HandBrake trial . The 2.8GHz quad nucleus Core i5 iMac was nearly three time dissipated than the 2.93GHz quadruplet nub Core i7 iMac . This consequence was n’t much of a surprisal , though ; as we ’ve experienced whiletesting DVD ripping on the new iMacs , some iMacs ( like the 2.93GHz quad nub Core i7 iMac we tested ) come with Hitachi - LG SuperDrive mechanics that haveriplock , which slows down the SuperDrive during motion picture playback to reduce noise from the driveway mechanism . Other young iMacs we prove came with Pioneer SuperDrive mechanism that produce fast results . Apple does n’t specify what SuperDrive mechanics is being installed when you regulate your iMac .
We also compared the 2.93GHz quadruplet core Core i7 iMac with another BTO iMac , the 27 - in 3.6GHz dual inwardness Core i5 iMac ( $ 2499 with SSD rather of a difficult drive ) . With both models using an SSD , we found the extra $ 300 for the 2.93GHz quadruplet core Core i7 iMac gets an 11 per centum cost increase over the 3.6GHz dual gist Core i5 iMac . The Core i7 iMac demonstrate big boosts in our Cinebench , MathematicaMark , and Compressor tests , where the software can take advantage of the extra core provided by the Core i7 .
bring up from the SSD also provides a benefit that really ca n’t be valuate by hand . The general snappiness of the SSD iMacs gave the impression of a faster machine . Windows , documents , and programs feel like they opened much quicker than when reboot from a hard drive . Even starting up the iMac in our mental testing configuration ( we try out to confine the items that set up at startup to only what ’s necessary ) felt shorter , though it was too degenerate for exercise to sentence with a stopwatch .
27-inch Core i7 iMac/2.93GHz quad core with SSD (BTO) benchmarks
Best result inbold . Reference systems initalics .
How we test . Speedmark 6 piles are relative to those of a 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook , which is assigned a sexual conquest of 100 ( higher scores are better ) . Call of Duty score is in frames per 2d ( higher is better ) . MathematicaMark is a performance grievance ( higher is better ) . All others are in minute of arc : seconds ( lower is unspoiled ) . All iMacs were tested with OS X 10.6.4 and 4 GB of RAM . The 2.66GHz Mac Pro was tested with OS decade 10.6.1 and 3 GB of RAM . We reduplicate a 1 GB filing cabinet , created a Zip archive in the Finder from the two 1 GB files and then unzipped it . We convince 90 bit of AAC audio files to MP3 using iTunes ’ High Quality setting . In iMovie ’ 09 , we imported a camera archive and export it to iTunes using the Mobile Devices setting . We ran a Timedemo at 1024 - by-768 with 4X anti - aliasing on in Call of Duty 4 . We imported 150 JPEGs into iPhoto ’ 09 . The Photoshop Suite test is a set of 14 written undertaking using a 50 MB file . Photoshop ’s retention was set to 70 percent and story was set to Minimum . We used Compressor to encode a .mov file to the program ’s H.264 for video podcast setting . We ripped a videodisk chapter to the hard drive . We memorialise how long it take to render a conniption with multiprocessor in Cinebench . We ran the Evaluate Notebook test in MathematicaMark 7 . We ran the WorldBench 6 multitasking test on a Parallels 5 VM hunt down Windows 7 Professional . We timed the import and thumbnail / prevue creation clock time for 150 picture in Aperture.—Macworld Lab testing by James Galbraith , McKinley Noble , Blair Hanley Frank , and Chris Holt .
Though the SSD - outfit 2.93GHz quad core Core i7 iMac is impressive , we suspect that it wo n’t hold in the championship of World ’s Fastest Mac for very long . Two fresh Mac Pros ( the $ 2499 quadriceps femoris core 2.8GHz Xeon role model and the $ 3499 eight core group 2.4GHz Xeon simulation ) just arrived in the laboratory . And we ’re wait the $ 4999 12 - core 2.66GHz Xeon Mac Pro afterwards this week . Expect benchmark issue and a full review of the young Mac Pros get shortly .
[ Roman Loyola is a Macworld senior editor in chief . ]
