[macintologist]

If you look at Intel's processor roadmap

(from wikipedia)

Laptops
Stealey - 65 nm, single-core, 512 KiB L2 cache (mid 2007) [3]
Gilo - 65 nm, multi-core (Q4 2007) [4]
Penryn - 45 nm, dual-core, 3-6 MiB L2 cache (Q4 2007) [5]; will introduce SSE4 instructions [6]

they don't have a new processor coming out for the portable line which the iMac uses until the end of 2007. That means iMacs will NOT be getting any faster than 2.33ghz until then. Apple may bumpt the current 2.16ghz standard up to 2.33, but other than that, you might as well buy an iMac now if you want one, since there won't be any radical upgrades until MWSF 2008.

[ibook_steve]

Uh, what are you talking about? Why couldn't any of these be used in an iMac?

Steve

[macintologist]

Steve,

The stealey is a single-core, there's no way Apple will use a single core processor in a Mac Mini let alone an iMac. That leaves us with the Gilo and then Penryn, both of which are being released at the end of 2007.

[mduell]

While they don't have a new CPU core coming out until toward the end of this year, that's not to say they can't or won't bump up the clockrates on the processors they have out now.

People are overclocking Core 2 Duo by 50% with stock cooling, so the current chips have plenty of headroom for clockrate bumps. AMD isn't challenging Intel for the performance or price/performance or power/performance crown (especially on the mobile front), so there's little reason to push out faster chips today.

I think we may see some marginally increased clockrates (2.4-2.6Ghz) with the Santa Rosa chipset launch in a couple months.

As an aside, do you have any more info on Gilo? I've seen it mentioned a few places, but no one has many details. I'm guessing it will be a low-cost/low-cache part for the low-end (ok, that was kind of redundant).

[jasong]

This Intel thing is no better than the Motorola/IBM thing.

[stwain2003]

Originally Posted by jasong 

This Intel thing is no better than the Motorola/IBM thing.

Yeah, you're right. Except for the fact that its about 100x better.

[Simon]

The iMac could be clocked higher.

The iMac will get Santa Rosa with its 800 MHz FSB which will give a decent kick in the pants even with the same CPU and clock. (it will btw also allow 4GB RAM)

The iMac could (although I doubt it) go Conroe (C2D E6x00).

The iMac could get a GPU upgrade.

The iMac could get a faster/better optical drive, higher capacity HDD, etc.

The iMac could become less expensive.

I think there are more than enough things that could happen to the iMac before Penryn arrives. And I'm pretty certain we'll see another iMac rev before we see the Penryn iMac.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by jasong 

This Intel thing is no better than the Motorola/IBM thing.

Let's just pretend you never said that.