Apple iMac Core Duo (20-inch, 2.0GHz)

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http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/desktops/0,39029981,49259300,00.htm

Reviewed 24 March 2006

Reviewed by Rich Brown

The iMac Core Duo is Apple's first desktop computer to result from the company's partnership with Intel. Combining Intel's new 945GM mobile chipset and the Intel Core Duo processor, the Apple iMac Core Duo marks a significant change for the iconoclastic company, perhaps bringing it closer in line with the 'Wintel' world.

More than a perception shift, however, the move to Intel's Core Duo technology allows Apple to keep up with the performance and capabilities of its Windows-based competition. The trouble at the moment, however, is that the iMac Core Duo is experiencing the growing pains inherent to new technologies.

Not every software vendor has completed the necessary reprogramming to ensure full performance on the new iMacs, so some applications, Photoshop among them, run significantly slower than on even the older iMac G5s. Fortunately, it's only a matter of time until the software catches up (most major vendors have committed to the transition). And because the new iMac retains and expands on the features of the older models without a price increase (our 2.0GHz, 20-inch review unit costs £1,299 with 1GB of memory; the 1.83GHz, 17-inch model starts at £929 from Apple's site), the news on this one is mostly good. We do recommend looking into your favourite apps -- especially if you use them for work -- to see how the compatibility is shaping up before making a purchase. Just want to muck around with iLife and other Apple apps? Then there's no reason to wait.

Software compatibility issues aside, the move to Intel chips is significant to the iMac for reasons beyond the speed increase. First, as its name implies, the Intel Core Duo chip is a dual-core CPU. Not only will you get better multitasking performance, you'll also receive a boost from applications that are multithreaded, or designed to take advantage of two processing cores. This means more efficient, faster computing overall.

But beyond the CPU, the Intel 945GM chipset itself introduces some significant new technologies to the iMac Core Duo. The motherboard supports faster 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM, which results in faster access times between the memory and the CPU than with the iMac G5 and its 400MHz DDR memory. As with the iMac G5, the baseline iMac Core Duo ships with a respectable 512MB of memory, but you can ramp that up to 2GB for an additional £210 at the checkout. The stand has RAM-installation instructions printed on the bottom, but bear in mind that opening the case for DIY upgrades is difficult and will probably result in scrapes and scratches.

The iMac Core Duo also has more advanced 3D graphics capabilities. Apple has upgraded the iMac to ATI's Radeon X1600 3D chip (the 128MB version is standard, and 256MB will set you back £50 more), which supports all the latest 3D techniques. No one would ever recommend that you buy an Apple computer if gaming is your primary objective, but it's nice to know that if you want to play the occasional game, the iMac Core Duo should be able to keep up, as long as you keep your image quality and performance expectations reasonable.

Along with the core hardware change, the iMac Core Duo is a remarkably complete midrange desktop PC. It boasts the same features as its predecessor, such as an integrated iSight camera and iChat software for video-conferencing and a remote control and the intuitive Front Row suite for playing your digital media files.

Both iChat and Front Row have been reprogrammed to run on the Intel chips, as has Apple's Tiger OS X 10.4.4 and the newly announced iLife 06 digital media productivity software, which Apple includes in all new iMacs for free. We're also happy to report that the bundled wireless networking and Bluetooth adaptors are also still part of the iMac package, letting you retain the iMac Core Duo's uncluttered aesthetic on your desk.

As we've said, though, the native software support is the crux of the issue for the iMac Core Duo. Thanks to Apple's transparent Rosetta technology, you can run all Apple software on the new iMac. The question is, how fast? As our benchmarks show, the performance difference between software that has been ported to Intel systems, such as iTunes, and those apps that have not been ported, such as Adobe Photoshop and Sorensen Squeeze, is remarkable.

First the good news. On our iTunes test, the iMac Core Duo was 30 seconds faster than the 2.1GHz iMac G5 at encoding MP3 files. That doesn't translate to the two-to-three times boost Apple CEO Steve Jobs claimed at the iMac Core Duo's introduction -- it's more like a third faster (35 per cent, to be precise). Similarly, the iMac Core Duo showed an improvement on our Doom 3 test, posting 16.2 frames per second at 1,024x768 pixels, compared to the iMac G5's 11.6. That's not a significant increase, nor is it even a playable frame rate, but note that Doom 3 is a non-native application. The speed increase is probably due to the vast leap forward in 3D graphics technology on the iMac Core Duo. And if ATI's newer 3D chip can help Doom 3 running non-natively, we think it's reasonable to expect that if a native version emerges, you'll see an even larger performance gain.

Still, it's not all roses for the iMac Core Duo. Our Mac tests focus exclusively on multimedia performance, so for less-demanding programs such as Microsoft Office, the non-native performance picture might not be as dire. But if you want to run Photoshop or a non-native video-encoding program such as Sorenson Squeeze, we highly recommend you wait until the software catches up before purchasing a new iMac Core Duo.

On Photoshop, the iMac Core Duo was 81 per cent slower than the iMac G5, taking 6 minutes 30 seconds to run our photo script compared to the iMac G5's 3 minute 36 seconds. The Sorenson scores were even worse, to the tune of a whopping 463 per cent difference. The iMac G5 took 5 minutes 11 seconds to complete our test. The iMac Core Duo? An unacceptable 24 minutes.

There's also been some talk online about iMac Core Duo being able to boot faster than the old iMac G5. A video posted on Web site YouTube showed the iMac Core Duo booting faster. Then Apple enthusiast site Silver Mac posted test results showing that the iMac G5 was actually not as bad. Curious, we ran our own boot-time test, comparing this iMac Core Duo to the 2.1GHz iMac G5. Each system started from its fresh-from-the-box disk image, then we updated all of the default software via Apple's auto-update tools. Under those conditions, we ran three clean boots and stopped the clock when every component finished loading. The iMac G5 booted in an average of 46.6 seconds. The iMac Core Duo came up in an impressive 25.7 seconds. Your mileage may vary based upon a number different configurations and installed software, but conditions being as equal as they can be given different chipset and operating systems, the iMac Core Duo has a clear edge in this regard.

But back to core performance, if you find those non-native scores alarming, you're not alone. But you can take heart in the fact that some third-party programs -- Quark, for example -- have already been ported over to the so-called universal binary that will run on both Intel-powered and older PowerPC-based Macs. Canon, Epson and HP have all also announced that full universal binary drivers for their Apple peripherals will come with the iMac Core Duo as part of OS X 10.4.4. Photoshop maker Adobe and other major software vendors have committed to updating all of their Mac products. And in fairness, the iMac Core Duo came out six months earlier than its software partners expected. Whether they're able to complete the updating process before a new iMac comes out we can't say.

Edited by Matthew Elliott
Additional editing by Nick Hide