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Unboxing of the Early 2009 NVIDIA iMac, Early Benchmarks


Engadget has posted an unboxing gallery of the new iMac. Externally, there is not much different in the new machine with the exception the removal of the FireWire 400 port and addition of a mini DisplayPort. The new iMac does come with the keypad-less keyboard (pictured above). MacRumors readers who are waiting on delivery of their new iMacs are congregating in this thread.

Meanwhile iFixit has disassembled the iMac completely and provided their usual detailed gallery.

Primate Labs has already posted some benchmarks of the new iMacs and Mac minis. Unsurprisingly they found that processor speed has not improved significantly between the older and the new models:

Processor performance hasnt increased substantially in the latest hardware; the performance increase seems to scale with processor speed. This isnt surprising, since neither the iMac nor the Mac mini moved to a new processor architecture.

Geekbench, however, only measures processor and memory performance and does not measure graphics card performance. The main improvement in these models was a move to an NVIDIA-based architecture with improved integrated graphics. This should improve graphics benchmarks and will also provide additional benefits when Snow Leopard is released.

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38 months ago
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38 months ago
nice, now wait to see how mac mini performs...
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38 months ago
Bleh.

Not much to get excited about. It looks like an interim model.
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38 months ago

nice, now wait to see how mac mini performs...

99.9999% sure that it performs like the Aluminium 2.0 Ghz Macbook.
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38 months ago

Bleh.

Not much to get excited about. It looks like an interim model.


I have to agree, it's the same machine intro'd in 2007. Do we really need an unboxing?
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38 months ago
and the cpu numbers are

Intel Core 2 Duo E8435 3.06 GHz (2 cores)
Intel Core 2 Duo E8335 2.93 GHz (2 cores)
Intel Core 2 Duo E8135 2.66 GHz (2 cores)

...
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38 months ago
So much for progress!
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38 months ago

and the cpu numbers are

Intel Core 2 Duo E8435 3.06 GHz (2 cores)
Intel Core 2 Duo E8335 2.93 GHz (2 cores)
Intel Core 2 Duo E8135 2.66 GHz (2 cores)

...

http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=6633765&postcount=70

Nothing new there. Apple shifted their previous processors down and nothing more.
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38 months ago
Can someone help explain to me what the advantage is of having an "nvidia chipset"? How is this different from the graphics card itself? I understand that snow leopard is going to take advantage of the computational power of the grahphics card in order to speed things up... but what's the difference between using the graphics card and using "the chipset"? I have the now-previous generation iMac 24" 3.06GHz with Geforce 8800 GS graphics card. Will my computer significantly underperform a similarly equipped computer with an "nvidia chipset" with snow leopard?
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38 months ago
Not an amazing update. Another thing they changed was the stand. It now tapers like the 24" LED cinema display.

I really like the Radeon 4850, though!
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