First time Mac buyer, 2.93GHz or 3.06GHz??

Question

So I’m a first time Mac buyer, well soon will be and my question is this. Will I notice that much of a difference between the 2.93GHz NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 256MB and 3.06GHz NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 512MB configurations? I went to my local Apple store but they didn’t have both models on display, just the 2.93 one, which I really loved. I don’t plan on doing any major video editing, heck I don’t even currently own a camcorder but in the future I’d like to get one and do my own home videos. But for the time being all I use my current computer for is music, photos, web browsing, etc. On my current computer despite having Photoshop I almost never use it because of how slow it is, so that is probably the closest thing to any type of editing I do. I also watch a lot of video on my current one as well, like the HD trailers on apple.com and YouTube a lot. The current computer I have can’t handle 1080p at all but is ok with 720p, but I’ve seen that even the 2.93 iMac handles it perfectly. I guess my main concern is that I don’t want to go with the 2.93 iMac and then in a few months time feel like I made the wrong choice, but I also don’t really feel that I “need” all the power that comes with the 3.06 GHz model either. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

dwb wrote:
As a user sitting at the computer you are unlikely to notice any difference. (The avid 3D gamer might but then why is the avid 3D gamer sitting at a Mac?) Where you would notice it is in the speed with which the gamer renders a 3D graphic or prepares a video DVD for burning. Even so, the difference would be measured mostly in minutes, at best 10s of minutes for what would likely be an all day or overnight job.
You are incorrect. Preparing a video for DVD has nothing to do with graphics. That would be all CPU crunching, and you are not going to notice any difference between 2.93 and 3.06, except for maybe a few seconds, not minutes. The difference in graphics options might have a difference in frame rate of games, but not obvious in video playback.
Here are the numbers: 3.06 GHz first, then 2.93 GHz
Photoshop: 39 seconds vs. 41 seconds.
Cinema 4D Render: 41 seconds vs 43 seconds
Compressor MPEG Encode: 1:25 vs 1:27
iMovie HD Aged Effect: 37 seconds vs 38 seconds
Quake 4 Frame Rate: 85.6 frames per second vs 81.7 frames per second
Call of Duty 4 Frame Rate: 73.7 frames per second vs 66.4 frames per second (the winner of that test was the iMac (2008) 2.8 GHz model at 78.3 frames per second with the ATI 2600 HD graphics
So most of the tests have a difference of 2 seconds. Even the graphics frame rates were less than a 10 frame per second difference, and one test was outdone by last year's iMac 24". So you are better off saving the money because a 2 second difference isn't worth it or even noticable.