Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 04 March 2009 02:38
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
Memory has been doubled to 4G of the faster DDR3 SDRAM (again expandable to 8G), a Nvidia GeForce 9400M takes the place of the ATI Radeon 2600 PRO graphics controller, and disk capacity has been boosted from 320G to 640G.
The 24 in model is also available with a 2.93 GHz or 3.06 CPUs and a choice of GeForce GT 120, GeForce GT 130, or ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics for greater performance.
The standard configurations are 2.93 GHz with the GT 120 ($A2999) and 3.06 GHz with the GT 130 ($A3699).
As options, the GT 130 adds $A270 to the cost of an iMac, while the HD 4850 bumps it up by $A380.
Support for the HD 4850 had previously been
noted in the developer release of Mac OS X 10.5.7. Apple has not indicated whether the new iMacs will ship with 10.5.7 or a model-specific build of 10.5.6.
In the short term, the main benefit of the faster graphics controllers will be better performance for 3D games and some other other graphics-intensive applications.
But what's coming up that will make you want a faster graphics chip? Please
read on.
