New iMac Has Impressive Speedmark Score of 308

This is how Macworld sums up the new iMac line that was just introduced this month:

“It may sound trite to say that the new iMacs are the fastest iMacs we’ve seen—every new iMac is faster than the previous generation—but there are significant speed gains in this new generation. Let’s start with the fastest iMac, the 3.06GHz 24-inch iMac; it posted an overall Speedmark score that was 24 points (8 percent) higher than the previous 24-inch iMac with the same 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo processor (then available as a build-to-order model). The new entry-level iMac, a 2.66GHz 20-inch model, had a Speedmark score that was 26 points higher (11 percent) than the previous entry-level model, a 2.4GHz 20-inch iMac.

The new 2.66GHz 24-inch iMac doesn’t simply offer a bigger screen, more RAM (4GB versus 2GB), and a larger hard drive (640GB versus 320GB) than the entry-level 2.66GHz 20-inch iMac, which has the same processor speed. For the extra $300, you get a performance boost, too—the 2.66GHz 24-inch iMac posted a Speedmark score that was 14 points (5 percent) higher than the 2.66GHz 20-inch model.

There’s a $400 difference between the high-end 3.06GHz iMac and the 2.93GHz iMac. Looking at the Speedmark score, there’s only an 11-point difference (4 percent) between the two iMacs. But the key difference between the two is the graphics card; the 3.06GHz iMac has a 512MB Nvidia GeForce GT 130, while the 2.93GHz iMac has a 256MB Nvidia GeForce GT 120. The 3.06GHz iMac posted 7 more frames per second (11 percent) than the 2.93GHz iMac in our Call of Duty frame rate test.”

source[macworld]