[Macworld]

Post your comments for 20- and 24-inch Aluminum iMacs (2009 Edition) here

[nbuck]

How about some info on the optional ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics card?

[nbuck]

Also, I just checked the online Apple Store, and they want $1000 to upgrade to 8GB of RAM??!

[DocNo]

nbuck said:

Also, I just checked the online Apple Store, and they want $1000 to upgrade to 8GB of RAM??!

Price out 4 gig DIMMs and you will see they aren't far that far off. Yes, more then you can buy two new chips and throw away the ones it comes with, but it's not as outrageous as they have been in the past.

[Philip Michaels]

Just a note that, due to a coding error, the benchmark chart wasn't displaying properly. It's been fixed now.

[MrPlywood]

I was waiting for this upgrade to buy for the family. But I find that the 24" screen is just huge, and I'm concerned about the gloss. Maybe we would get used to it. I have two 20" Cinema Displays running off my MacPro. I love the matte screens, and the screen area feels right, even when primarily using one monitor. That said, I'm probably so used to offloading palettes and other windows to the second screen that going back to one would bother me.
Instead of an iMac, I am considering getting a Mini and a second hand matte Cinema Display, but I'm a bit confused about the 6-bit display on the 20" iMac. Is that color depth (or lack of it) a function of the display, or the video card? I'm assuming the display, since the low-end 24" iMac uses the same 9400 card. And the Mini uses the same card.

[pcharles]

Regarding the keyboard, you can choose the compact or the full keyboard when you order. Price is the same.

[rloyola]

MrPlywood said:

...but I'm a bit confused about the 6-bit display on the 20" iMac. Is that color depth (or lack of it) a function of the display, or the video card? I'm assuming the display, since the low-end 24" iMac uses the same 9400 card. And the Mini uses the same card.

You are correct. It is the display itself, not the video card.

As I mentioned in an earlier article that goes into a deeper analysis of the iMac benchmarks, if you upgrade to 2GB of RAM on a Mac mini and use your own 20-inch display, the graphics performance is close to that of the 2.66GHz 20-inch iMac (as you point out, they use the same graphics card). But the overall performance of the Mac mini is way behind the iMac.

http://www.macworld....0/2009/03/imacs2009benchmarks.html

[montgomery_burns]

So where is the Apple wireless keyboard with numeric keypad?

[jmincey]

Glossy screen and 6-bit dithered display. Premium price. No thanks.
Jeff Mincey

[cottonM]

Roman, yes please do this comparison. All I've seen is a lot of speculation. I'd really like some test data to help me choose.

[hutchbay]

Roman, I hope you can answer a question I haven't seen dealt with anywhere in the press yet. Faster RAM and video are nice, sure, but what's the deal with the high-end iMac processor being unchanged? Still 3.06GHz almost a year later. Is that an indicator of supply problems? Almost reminds you of the late days of the PowerPC... What gives?

[dammarin]

The benchmark chart is still not showing correctly for me in Firefox 3.0.7. It looks OK in Safari, though.

Nevermind, it started displaying correctly after I posted this. Must have scared the little HTML bugs away ;-)

[Lorre]

What do these machines use for a memory controller? I mean, the 9400M is sort of an all-in-one chip, right? With graphics and memory and I/O in one, but the machines that aren't listed with the 9400M, what do those use for memory access and whatnot?