Apple adding a new iMac model that uses the MBA's ULV proc

[Deinos]

Title says it all. Story over at Ars.

I don't get this move other than to get a cheaper sku out there and further leverage economies of scale on the proc. Desktop will not benefit from a ULV, and slower hard drive speeds are going to hurt it. $200 more gets you what you expect in a desktop, and (depending on the model) also gets you into a nice MBA.

Thoughts?

 

[CEpeep]

Just a lower end iMac to reduce the cost of entry. In the US it's targeted at Educational customers which it should be fine for. Even Intel's very low end parts are plenty fast for most productivity applications these days, so I don't see the CPU speed being much of an issue. It has the HD5000 so there should be enough GPU and compute power under the hood too.

I expect the cost of the lowest model to drop to at least $999 (sub-$1000) once the new Retina iMacs are available.

 

[Cheetoz]

I dont see why anyone would want to save $200 just to get so much less. (At these price points)

 

[The_Moves]

I find the ULV processor to work just fine for most everything except gaming, which is why you build a dedicated Gaming PC.

 

[ScottSwing]

Most people don't need that much power. See: MacBook Air users.

And I don't see how a CPU change affects hard drive speed.

 

[Deinos]

... I don't see how a CPU change affects hard drive speed.

I probably worded that poorly. The Macbook Air users gain the benefit of the PCI-e ssd which helps makeup the difference with the ULV proc.

 

[mi7chy]

Wonder if Apple got a bargain on surplus low end i5 for the base $1099 mode. 1.4GHz base clock is very wimpy for a desktop when the $999 Surface Pro 3 i5 is 1.9GHz base clock.

 

[CEpeep]

1.4GHz base clock is very wimpy for a desktop when the $999 Surface Pro 3 i5 is 1.9GHz base clock.

That i5 only has an HD4400 GPU. The one Apple is using here has the HD5000. I'll take the faster GPU any day, especially on OS X where the compute power is actually used to good effect.

 

[The_Moves]

You also got to keep in mind the Dave Ramseys out there (aka most of my friends now)....

 

[wonderfield]

I dont see why anyone would want to save $200 just to get so much less. (At these price points)

You actually spend $200 less to get about the same (or more), in theory: the CPU in the low-end iMac is $50 higher at volume, and Apple probably only saves a couple tens of bucks on the hard disk. Apart from the CPU, the standard HDD and soldered RAM in the low-end model, the machines are otherwise identical. What Apple actually pays for these CPUs is anyone's guess, though.

I can see getting the $1,099 model for a few reasons:

1) It's cheaper, obviously, for adequate compute power for most purposes.
2) At idle and load, the new iMac should both consume less power and be less noisy. For individual machines, this is probably a non-issue, but when you have a lab of twenty or thirty of the guys, it'll make a difference.
3) In high sales tax states, you could end up saving $20 in taxes on the low-end model. It isn't much, but further divides the out-the-door cost between the two models.

 

[mi7chy]

That i5 only has an HD4400 GPU. The one Apple is using here has the HD5000. I'll take the faster GPU any day, especially on OS X where the compute power is actually used to good effect.

Really no difference in performance between HD 4400 and HD 5000 for real world software like games so I'd take the half GHz (~36%) CPU clock difference.

 

[brentsg]

The masses have the pitchforks out on MacRumors, but to me the iMac makes sense. It's aimed at the low end, plus bulk purchase buys for institutions.

The GPU is HD5000, as was mentioned. The base clock is low, but the better iMac cooling should result in a good bit of headroom toward the 2.7GHz turbo max. This CPU also supports hyper threading, which is unusual for ULV. CPU performance should be on par with the more expensive model except in use cases that demand a quad core CPU.

Energy consumption will be awesome for entities that bulk purchase these.

 

[CEpeep]

Really no difference in performance between HD 4400 and HD 5000 for real world software like games

Well which is it? Real world software or games?

The OpenCL benchmarks between the two are nothing to sneeze at. If I wanted to play games I wouldn't get a Mac anyway. I want better performance in productivity software, and so nearly doubled OpenCL performance on multiple fronts is worth more to me.
HD4400
HD5000

The fact that all interface rendering and most backend math calculations are done completely on the GPU really tips the scales in favor of the HD5000 when OS X is the target platform.

 

[mi7chy]

Benchmarks are useless. Games are real world. If I wanted real GPU compute productivity I'd get one with a discrete GPU. With iGPU if you put it under load it'll throttle your CPU plus Intel iGPU compute performance is near bottom to begin with.

 

[wonderfield]

Benchmarks are useless.

You posted a benchmark (result). And not a particularly useful one, either, showing only average frame rate in a game that's likely to be CPU-bound at that resolution and with those quality settings anyway. You don't actually think that graph conveys particularly useful information, do you?

 

[mope54]

You posted a benchmark (result). And not a particularly useful one, either, showing only average frame rate in a game that's likely to be CPU-bound at that resolution and with those quality settings anyway. You don't actually think that graph conveys particularly useful information, do you?

you're responding to someone who just claimed that games should be played on an integrated chip and that productivity apps should be used with a dedicated GPU

 

[wonderfield]

Oh, I know who I responded to

 

[mope54]

heh, just to be clear I was rolling my eyes at his comments not at you for responding to him

tl;dr
I know you know

 

[ythe1300]

Anyone thinking this could be the new emac?

 

[wonderfield]

I suppose it could be considered that. It comes in at the same price point as the original low-end 2002 eMac SKU.

The iMac is, naturally, much more power-efficient and much more recyclable than the old eMac. Despite Moore's Law obstacles, it's nice to see that we've improved things so much within the past decade or so.

 

[westrock2000]

The masses have the pitchforks out on MacRumors, but to me the iMac makes sense.

Those guys are just being pessimists. Complaining about 8GB of RAM just because its soldered in. Let me know when you can use a 1.4Ghz dual core and the 8GB of memory is what ruins the experience....

 

[jbltecnicspro]

Anyone thinking this could be the new emac?

When the eMac came out, it was higher-end than the iMac. I actually miss those old white boxes. I was thinking of getting one second-hand for my kids to play with when they got older.

 

[valve1138]

The Edu market will buy these in droves.

 

[450]

When the eMac came out, it was higher-end than the iMac. I actually miss those old white boxes. I was thinking of getting one second-hand for my kids to play with when they got older.

It had the same specs as an iMac G4 which came out a few months earlier.

It was faster than the iMac G3 though.

That was a weird time period for Apple. They had G3 and G4 machines being sold all at once. So you had the option of G3, G4, or eMac.