24-inch iMac Performance (August 2007)

Steve Jobs announced new iMacs on Tuesday and while I'm not sure I like the new enclosure, I do like the other improvements that come with the new iMacs like faster processors, more hard drive space, and the Santa Rosa chipset.

I thought I'd compare the performance of the latest 24-inch iMac against the previous generation of 24-inch iMacs using Geekbench 2. While I don't have any results for the 24-inch iMac with the Core 2 Extreme processor right now, I'll update this article once I receive results for the Core 2 Extreme processor. I've updated the article to include results for the 24-inch iMac with the Core 2 Extreme.

Setup

• iMac (24-inch Mid 2007) New

  • Intel Core 2 Extreme @ 2.80GHz
  • 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.4.10 (Build 8R4031)

• iMac (24-inch Mid 2007)

  • Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.40GHz
  • 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.4.10 (Build 8R4031)

• iMac (24-inch)

  • Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.33GHz
  • 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.4.10 (Build 8R2218)

• iMac (24-inch)

  • Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.16GHz
  • 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.4.10 (Build 8R2218)

I’m reporting the baseline score, rather than the raw score, for each benchmark (where a score of 1000 is the score a Power Mac G5 1.6GHz would receive). Higher is better.

Results

Overall Performance

Integer Performance

Floating Point Performance

Memory Performance

Stream Performance

Conclusions

The latest 24-inch iMacs have two major advantages over the older 24-inch iMacs; they have faster processors, and they use the new Santa Rosa chipset (instead of the Napa chipset used in the older 24-inch iMacs).

The faster processor helps increase both integer and floating point performance, while the faster front-side bus on the Santa Rosa chipset helps increase both memory and stream performance.

So if you're running memory-intensive applications (like Aperture or Photoshop) you'll certainly notice an increase in performance with the new 24-inch iMac. Heck, the fact that the new 24-inch iMac supports 4GB of RAM while the old 24-inch iMac supports 3GB of RAM might be enough to convince you to get one!