I had my first encounter with a new 20" iMac Core Duo at my local Best Buy today. I must say that my first impression is that it performed very fast, it instantly felt faster than my Dual 2Ghz PowerMac G5. Everything loaded faster and moved around with ease, just very snappy! That of course is not scientific, but just my first feelings while using the iMac.
The only benchmark I could really run was to download one of Apple's 720p HD movie example and play it in QuickTime Player to see what kind of load it put on the CPU compared to other systems I've benchmarked, using the Activity Monitor as a guide. Using the exact same movie, the 20" iMac was faster than my Dual 2Ghz G5 at playing the file! On my dual G5 it takes between 50-60% total CPU to play the file. On the new iMac Dual Core it only took between 40-50% for around a 10% increase over a Dual 2Ghz PowerMac! That's great to see. I've heard that the new ATI X1600 has H264 acceleration built in to it, but wouldn't that remove almost 100% of the load off the CPU? I've never heard of a Graphics card that helps by only 20-30% of the load for example.
So my first impression is very good for these new machines with Intel chips. I can't wait to run some more heavy CPU based tests with software that I use (Logic Pro, Final Cut Studio) when the UBs ship to see what can be done. I’m not saying that I’m 100% convinced of Steve Job’s claim of 200%, but I do think that in CPU based tests with optimized software that the iMac is in a new class of performance that only the “Pro” Macs were achieving.
Mike
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