Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
iMac Hardware

Apple 27-inch iMac With Intel's Haswell Inside Tested 241

MojoKid writes "Apple's late 2013 edition iMacs are largely unchanged in external form, though they're upgraded in function with a revamped foundation that now pairs Intel's Haswell 4th Generation Core processors with NVIDIA's GeForce 700 Series graphics. The Cupertino company also outfitted these latest models with faster flash storage options, including support for PCI-E based storage, and 802.11ac Wi-Fi technology, all wrapped in a 21.5-inch (1920x1080) or 27-inch IPS displays with a 2560x1440 resolution. As configured, the 27-inch iMac reviewed here bolted through benchmarks with relative ease and posted especially solid figures in gaming tests, including a 3DMark 11 score of 3,068 in Windows 7 (via Boot Camp). Running Cinebench 11.5 in Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks also helped showcase the CPU and GPU combination. Storage benchmarks weren't nearly as impressive though, for iMacs based on standard spinning media. For real IO throughput, it's advisable to go with Apple's Flash storage options."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Apple 27-inch iMac With Intel's Haswell Inside Tested

Comments Filter:
  • by teg ( 97890 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2013 @03:30AM (#45266677)

    I bought one - 27 inch, with all available upgrades except for the max memory. Memory is user replaceable, and it's cheaper to buy it elsewhere. Here are my impressions

    • Unpacking it and setting it up is, as always, a breeze. Take off the top lid, lift the surprisingly light computer to a desk, put in the power chord. Done. Initial setup of the computer is then done in a minute.
    • Restoring my user profile from a time machine hard drive, to get applications, user data etc. was fast and smooth
    • The high res screen is gorgeous. It's also very well calibrated out of the box - my calibration hardware hardly changed anything this time around. Compared to earlier iMacs -and most other screens today - there are no reflections, even though it is glossy.
    • Fusion drive [arstechnica.com] - Apple's automated tiering solution - works very well. For most practical purposes, it worked just as well as my last SSD-based iMac - but this time, I don't have to do manual file management of SSD vs. HD.
    • The computer is noiseless
    • Performance is good (photo and movie editing), but that's obviously to be expected. My Linux VMs are very happy too.
    • The games I tried work well on high settings, but the Witcher 1 doesn't work at all - first, a bug causes it to believe that the system doesn't meet minimum requirements (the older, slower one did). Some editing of config files later, it starts - but videos don't display (sound only) and the 3D display have all objects except text rendered black.
    • While the sound coming out of the chassis sound surprisingly good, you really want separate speakers or good headphones if you are listening to music while you work.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

      Interesting insight into the mind of an Apple buyer there. I note you use the word "surprising" a lot, as do Apple themselves in their marketing. You also don't quantify things like the time machine restore being "fast" - fast in comparison to what, and with how many apps and how much data? What does noiseless mean, presumably not 0db?

      What I'm getting at is your impression of the machine is based entirely on your expectation of it. I'm not saying it isn't nice hardware, it is, but that is also the very defi

  • I have owned Macs since 2000. They are generally well engineer machines from hardware to the software. I have always like the Unix underpinnings (I get nostalgic). However, lately, I can no justify spending much on a Macintosh. I feel that Apple just seems to be laser focused on the casual computing market. The processors haven't really change in the last few years. The systems now skimp on the GPUs meaning gaming is essentially pointless (a console would be a better choice for the money). Right now, I feel
    • Our work IMacs are pretty kicking machines. We have 2012 models with 3.4 GHz Intel Core I7s, 24 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 and 1 TB harddrives networked with Apple Servers and our up time is wonderful. Our support is a 3 person crew with only one really doing the hardware or software maintenance while the others keep the DBs and other special software going. Other agencies depend on the organizations ITD and they have windows machines but cannot boast of the uptime and productivity we have.
    • Well they skimp out on discrete GPUs because an Intel GPU is more than adequate for the average consumer. Your use case of Macs for the internet and word processing only reinforces their strategy.
    • by Bogtha ( 906264 )

      The systems now skimp on the GPUs meaning gaming is essentially pointless

      From the article summary:

      the 27-inch iMac reviewed here bolted through benchmarks with relative ease and posted especially solid figures in gaming tests

  • by GlobalEcho ( 26240 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2013 @08:26AM (#45268253)

    It's always interesting to hear of novel (to me) industrial processes Apple uses to make its product. Case in point: the article mentions Apple has switch to friction-stir welding [caranddriver.com].

Every nonzero finite dimensional inner product space has an orthonormal basis. It makes sense, when you don't think about it.

Working...