Goodbye G5. Hello iMac. i7 availability?

[earache]

My dual 2.5GHz G5 feels so slow and seems to be getting slower by the day. Finally made up my mind to get a new 27" iMac. I'm thinking about the 2.8GHz Quad core i7. Anyone know if those are readily available at Apple stores?

[MacArtist]

Seems to me I've read an article or two that they are in limited supply.

[jdc]

they are BTO, probably nothing "in stock"

why not order it out of state and save sales tax?

macconnection, powermax, smalldog can get them

or... how about an i5 instead?

$1850 after rebate from macconnection -- $350 cheaper than the i7...

[M A V I C]

What are you going to be using it for? Unless the apps you're using are multi-core aware, I'd go with the i5. I don't think Apple lets you turn hyperthreading off.

Photoshop, for example, is largely not multi-core aware.

I took this screenshot yesterday to prove the above point -

[earache]

Got one on order thru Apple using wife's Edu discount. Was the fastest way to get one. We should have it just in time for xmas. For me the i7 was important since I do a lot of 3d and rendering work. Want to move off my PC to the iMac for rendering. I use Maxwell which is multi-core aware. Can't wait.

[M A V I C]

earache wrote:
Got one on order thru Apple using wife's Edu discount. Was the fastest way to get one. We should have it just in time for xmas. For me the i7 was important since I do a lot of 3d and rendering work. Want to move off my PC to the iMac for rendering. I use Maxwell which is multi-core aware. Can't wait.

I'm curious to see real-world tests on the i5 vs i7 iMacs. The main difference is the i7 has hyperthreading, the i5 does not. Some people confuse hyperthreading with "cores." They think seeing 8 bars in Activity Monitor is better than 4. Really it's more like four bars cut in half. One bar maxed out on an i5 is about twice as fast as one bar maxed out on an i7.

I'm curious what speed apple has them running at anyway. They're using slow RAM and the multiplier shouldn't be over 21.