iMac Benchmarks!

OK, so we have some new iMacs. Looking back at the older models, we won't find any huge external differences. In fact, not even the new hardware inside won't blow your head off, as I was able to notice by taking a look at some recent iMac benchmarks. First, take a look at the image below, and then we'll move on, all right?

Primate Labs ran its in-house Geekbench test suite on a bunch of iMacs and Mac Minis, and the conclusions are pretty sad. If you didn't get it by looking at the image above, let me say only this - new CPUs only really impact on real speed, as long as they are clocked higher than previous ones. That's true especially with the iMacs, because the Minis got a new, much faster integrated graphics chip.

Just think about these - when talking about same clock speeds, the difference in test scores is very close to zero, with 11 points in the case of the two iMacs running at 2.66GHz. Taking it to a higher level, we find the 2.93GHz iMac, replacing a 2.8GHz model, but only having a 5 percent speed gain, directly connected to its higher clock speed. While the Mac Mini got the highest gain in the test, this was only about 7 percent, but the benchmark used only messed with the CPU and memory, so...

..."You might be better off getting a discontinued (or refurbished) previous-generation Mac rather than one of the new Mac models," at least according to Primate Labs. If I look at the iMac benchmarks once again, I get to think this isn't such a bad idea. What do you think?