i5 vs i7 iMac-new member

[T~Hack]

Hey there.

Will be purchasing a new mac in december and would like a definitive answer.

3.1gHz i5 VS 3.4gHz i7

[CipesDesign]

T-Hack, welcome. Please create a profile for yourself so that we can see your OS and VW's versions, specs, etc. Thanks!

Read the following closely:

http://kbase.vectorworks.net/questions/929/Vectorworks+2012+System+Recommendations

Take special note of the Video/Graphics Card recommendations:

http://kbase.vectorworks.net/questions/714/Video%7B47%7DGraphics+Card+Guidelines+for+Vectorworks+-+9%7B47%7D13%7B47%7D2012

FWIW I run an iMac i7 2.8GHz machine w/ 4GB RAM and a 512 MB GPU. If I was to upgrade I would for sure double the GPU Memory (at least) and perhaps add more System RAM... Overall my performance is very good, with no noticeable hardware performance problems.

[CipesDesign]

PS: Sorry about that second URL. For some reason it isn't "hot linked". But you can copy and paste it into your browser...

[Christiaan]

3.4 GHz i7

[Bryan G.]

Christiaan, It can be ordered with an i7 3.4.

stumped me for a min.

not sure if the upgrade though is really worth it. just my opinion.

Peter is there a noticeable difference between your 2.8 and the stock 2.7.

[CipesDesign]

Bryan, I have no way of comparing the two. But I would guess there isn't much difference. FWIW my machine is circa 2009 and since then all of the stock clock speeds have changed, but not by very much.

[Christiaan]

For ?160 i7 includes "Hyper-Threading (Intel Core i7 only) - a technology that allows two threads to run simultaneously on each core. So a quad-core iMac has eight virtual cores, all of which are recognised by Mac OS X. This enables the processor to deliver faster performance by spreading tasks more evenly across a greater number of cores."