I’m in the market for a new Mac. If you’ve seen the svnmark times, you’ll see that my current PowerBook G4 1.33Ghz is already an order of magnitude slower than the current Intel models. The top of the lines are the Mac Pros, but I wonder if they’re a bit too much. Plus I don’t have an external LCD.

24

Enter the iMac 24″ – it looks to be the bridge between the consumer iMac line and the professional Mac Pro line. Consider the following:

  • It has an upgraded video card, the same as the Mac Pro
  • It has Firewire 800 which is critical for fast data transfer for audio/video editing.
  • It’s got Core 2 Duo, which is not quite a Xeon, but its available in up to 2.33Ghz and the Core 2 Duo is 10% faster than the original Core Duo. Because of that, I estimate that the Core 2 Duo 2Ghz will get 1:48 on svnmark, the 2.16Ghz will get 1:40 and the 2.33Ghz will get 1:30.
  • You can upgrade it all the way up to 3GB, which is 1GB more than any other Intel Mac aside from the Mac Pro. Unfortunately, 2GB SO-DIMMs are very pricey, but then again so is the memory for the Mac Pro.
  • It’s got a massive screen – a little strange that its an inch bigger than the Apple Cinema 23″. But it still makes you feel like a Pro to have a massive screen like that. :)