2.7GHz vs 3.1GHz

*Babs

*Babs

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After replacing my creaking old laptop with a MacBook Pro a while back, I've decided to take the plunge and switch my old PC to a 27" iMac.

What will be the difference in day-to-day processing of the 2.7GHz vs 3.1GHz? If I'm processing RAW images in LR3.5 will there be a noticable difference between the two? Or am I better to go for the cheaper 2.7GHz and upgrade RAM?
 
Is it exactly the same spec but just a higher cpu speed?
Same CPU type, same amount of RAM etc?
If so then you probably won't notice a huge improvement (though there will definitely be an improvement) but if the cpu in the iMac is a newer generation than the one in the Macbook then you could see a huge improvement.
I must confess to knowing 3 parts of nothing about Macs btw. :LOL:
 
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Roughly proportional to clock speeds so you'll get 27/31ths the performance on the cheaper one. I know there are other differences, but that's a bit cheeky of Apple - the 2.7GHz is probably $10 cheaper than the 3.1GHz...
 
:LOL:

The 2.7 has AMD Radeon HD 6770M with 512MB GDDR5 memory and the 3.1 has AMD Radeon HD 6970M with 1GB GDDR5 memory. Otherwise they're the same.

There's also a refurbed i7 availablewith 3.4GHz Quad-Core and 4GB memory (1TB hard drive and AMD Radeon HD 6970M graphics with 1GB memory
) which might be a better bet. Then I can upgrade the RAM from cruical ... ??
 
arad85 said:
Roughly proportional to clock speeds so you'll get 27/31ths the performance on the cheaper one. I know there are other differences, but that's a bit cheeky of Apple - the 2.7GHz is probably $10 cheaper than the 3.1GHz...
Click to expand...

So it's not worth the extra £250 for the 3.1?
 
If I was a betting man I'd bet the chips came off the same production line and were just selected on test. They will have cost exactly the same to make.
 
*Babs said:
So it's not worth the extra £250 for the 3.1?
Click to expand...
15% quicker, but if you're running lightroom, it'll be idle 90% of the time. No, I wouldn't pay it and the graphics on the cheaper one will be fine.
 
Stratman said:
If I was a betting man I'd bet the chips came off the same production line and were just selected on test. They will have cost exactly the same to make.
Click to expand...
Oh yes - and I'm speaking as someone who works for a silicon company ;)
 
For that money you're better off buying a fast SSD that will make a *massive* difference to your system performance.

Any system much beyond a Core 2 Duo has a huge bottleneck around disk I/O.
 
When i looked at it the benchmarks suggested it wasnt worth going the extra for the 3.1 over the 2.7.

Mine is the basic 27" 2011 model with 4gb of ram and ive had no issues with it so far, speed wise it has been excellent.
 
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