"BARE facts on Mac speed FEATS"

"Early 2008" iMac
CPU "Crunch" Tests

Originally posted May 16th, 2008, by rob-ART morgan, mad scientist

With this page, we show the advantage of the 3.06GHz "Penryn" iMac over the "sister" 2.8GHz version. Plus we threw in some Mac Pros, the fastest 2007 iMac, and the fastest MacBook Pro.

MAXON CINEBENCH 10 - CPU TEST
This is close to real world since Maxon takes code from Cinema 4D and measures how long it takes to render a 3D model. The give the session a rating. This test takes full advantage of all CPU cores.

PRIMATE LABS GEEKBENCH 64 bit
This is a better benchmark than Xbench in that it takes full advantage of the CPU cores.

ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS CS3
A true "real world" test, we take a sample created by Total Training and render it with the "multiprocessor" option enabled. It not only invokes all cores but spawns subprocesses -- one for each core -- each of which can utilized up to 3GB of RAM. It's a real stress test.

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS3
We have created an action file that applies 8 MP-aware functions or filters to a 100MB photo.

LEGEND of GRAPHS
Mac Pro 3.2 (8c) = "early 2008" Mac Pro 3.2GHz (8-cores, 16GB RAM)
Mac Pro 3.0 (8c) = "early 2008" Mac Pro 3.0GHz (8-cores, 16GB RAM)
Mac Pro 2.8 (8c) = "early 2008" Mac Pro 2.8GHz (8-core, 16GB RAM)
Mac Pro 2.8 (4c) = "early 2008" Mac Pro 2.8GHz (4-core, 8GB RAM)
iMac 3.06 = "early 2008" iMac 3.06GHz (Penryn Dual Core, 4GB RAM)
iMac 2.8 (08) = "early 2008" iMac 2.8GHz (Penryn Dual Core, 4GB RAM)
iMac 2.8 (07) = "mid 2007" iMac 2.8GHz (Core 2 Extreme, 4GB RAM)
MBP 2.6 (08) = "early 2008" MacBook Pro 2.6GHz (Penryn Dual Core, 4GB RAM)

The iMac "early 2008" results were colored in ORANGE; it's not quite fair to compare the iMacs to the Mac Pros but it's important for you to know the potential performance you give up when you choose an iMac over a Mac Pro.

INSIGHTS
The "early 2008" iMacs beat the fastest iMac from last year but are no match for the Mac Pros running at the same core frequences or faster when it comes to high-end software that utilizes all available CPU cores and more than 4GB of RAM.

Next week we will post some benchmark results for "normal" applications like MS Word and iTunes to show that when the iMac is used for "mundane" tasks, it holds its own against the Mac Pros.

IF YOU MISSED IT....
Take a look at the Graphic Processor Shootout between the "early 2008" iMac with the Radeon 2600 Pro versus the GeForce 8800 GS.

BIG MAHALO
We want to thank Other World Computing for providing samples of their 4GB iMac 800MHz memory kit for this test session.

WHERE TO BUY A MAC
When ordering products from Apple Store USA, please click THIS TEXT LINK or any Apple display ad as your "portal" to the online store. In so doing, you help to support Bare Feats.

Also check with Small Dog Electronics and Power Max. (Power Max takes trade-ins.)

WHERE TO BUY MEMORY FOR YOUR MAC
Apple charges and arm and a leg for CTO memory options. We suggested ordering your Mac with minimal configuration and ordering quality Mac tested memory upgrades from ....

Other World Computing

Trans International

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© 2008 Rob Art Morgan
"BARE facts on Macintosh speed FEATS"
Email , the webmaster