[canyon_Carver]

20" Imac, 1Gb Ram, XT1600w 256mb, 250Gb HD.

First impressions:
I just received this from FedEx last night. Its always a nice surprise. First of all, the Fit and Finish on this model is outstanding. Beautiful design, very compact and surprisingly light.

I had it out of the box and on in less than 5 minutes, setup is dead simple. The 20" screen was clear, crisp and VIVID. DVDs look perfect on the display. It is truly amazing how much display technology has advanced since I previously had a 19" CRT--which I want to shoot with my shotgun now...

Concerns: My old G4-Quicksilver died in August, and since I live without credit cards, it took me a while to set aside extra money. I have already encased my old Harddrives in Firewire housings..but I was worried that all of my programs, files, photos, MP3/AAC libraries would not fully transfer and the programs would not be compatiable. I cannot afford a new G5, and was sick of my gigantic CRT, I wanted to replace my entire set up without spending a lot of cash, the iMac is the perfect solution. In the future I plan on adding DuoCore MiniMac Renderfarms to blow away the G5s performance for much less expense.

The set up assistant automatically found my existing BACKUP of my old harddrive (thank god for backups)-- It automatically imported the entire system, preferences and over 30GB of data in less than 2 hours. All my pre-existing internet settings, bookmarks, iTunes Albums, iPhoto Books...EVERYTHING was imported, and even better is was organized even better than what I had previously organized. **BRAVO apple, your set up assistant is top-notch...No "fixing" the set up necessary.

As announced FCP doesn't run. But I was able to launch DVDSP2, Cinema4DXL v9, Photoshop CS, Illustrator, Fetch...actually every program I had, launched. The Rosetta environment is a bit sluggish off the launch, but once up and running I did not see any performance difference in the programs. I will be waiting for the release of FCP6 at NAB before upgrading to the Universal Code for the full ProSuite.

I will be conducting a higher-level render (HDRI) in C4DXL to test out the speed tonight.

I wanted to see the graphics card performance, Launched Command & Conquer Generals- I was amazed at the sound quality--such tiny speakers really filled up the room, very rich, deep tones. C&C ran flawlessly, even in intense battles filled with hundreds of characters, there were no dropped frames, no lag. Mind you its not a Quake test--but I don't own Quake so you are stuck with this review.

As stated before the audio is amazing quality, the speakers are located at the bottom edge, so they use the desk as a diffusion reflector-- the quality is so good, that you would have to be pretty picky to use external speakers.

The apple remote is very simple to use, and the FrontRow responds instantly, very quick access and presentation of the material.

The iSight camera is as you would expect-- It requires alot of light to operate, but the screen flashes white when taking a photo-- Trick, but Im not into Webcams-- I only have dial up at my house, Phonelines outside are too old to carry DSL, and I get free premium cable --so Im not going to cable modem!

I will install CS2 suite, AE6.5Pro tonight and give a performance review on HDRI generation in CS2 and C4D, along with Rendering on AE6.5Pro.

Overall, Very pleased with the 20" DuoCore Imac so far....its the same price as the old "slower" G5 chip, it runs all of my old programs, all files transfered and organized VERY quickly-- video performance is acceptable & understandable, audio performance is great.

Out of 10 possible for iMAC, I will give this a 10-- Perfect you say? Yes, for what I was "expecting" and I have high expectations-- so far the iMac has fulfilled what I thought it would be. Im not comparing it to the QuadCore G5-- thats a different beast. Mind you this may change once I get my HDRI renders crunching through.

[canyon_Carver]

I would be interested to hear from other 20" Duocore owners...what are your impressions so far...how hard have you pushed it -- Rendering wise.

[SonOfSylvanus]

Thanks for this, canyon_Carver.

[canyon_Carver]

Well my rendering is complete.

I used my 1.7ghz G4 Laptop- 512mb Ram as my baseline.

My C4Dproject involved a very simple Platonic, with Glass texture 2.416 refraction index (diamond), set in a scene with 3 round spots. No shadows were mapped, but each of the lights were enabled with Caustics both surface and volume. 50K Protons per light, Keylight set at 100K protons. Radiosity render set at default, Ray Depth set at 8, Reflection depth set at 8. 720x486.

I made sure no other programs were running and network was shut off, to clear the CPU of any interference.

I rendered one frame.

G4 Laptop- 1;56;06

--
20' Imac 2.1 ghz Duocore (1Gb Ram): 52;03

Screaming fast: Mind you that his isn't even the Universal Binary version of C4D. This was running in the slow Rosetta environment.

At first I was worried, I opened the activity monitor on the IMAC duo to see if both CPUs launched-- During the Proton Tree calculation, only one processor turned on...so I left it alone, and when I came back I noticed that the render-frame was showcasing dual processing-- turned on the CPU monitor and indeed both cores were at 100%.

Looks like I have a winner...now I just need to get those DuoCore MiniMacs and another Gig of RAM.

I highly recommend the new 20" IMac DuoCore, I will continue to post my observations!

[bostongeek]

Thanks! Its nice to hear actual reviews from people actually using the computer, rather than a lot of hearsay, etc. I, myself, plan on ordering a MacBook Pro as soon as the wallet allows me to.

[Windowsrookie]

Originally Posted by canyon_Carver I used my 1.7ghz G4 Laptop- 512mb Ram as my baseline.

I wish I had a 1.7ghz g4, But I'm stuck with 1.67

[Brave Ulysses]

Finally shipped today from Amazon.

Little info on Amazon and their free shipping...... If you choose free shipping with amazon they hold your shipment off and put you at the back of the order list. The website said ships within 24 hours, but because I chose free shipping it would ship Feb 3-5 (I ordered January 24). This is the 2nd time they have done that to me. It's very frustrating and not how shipping should work, free or not, I eventually gave in last night and paid 7.99 to upgrade to standard shipping and voila, my computer shipped this morning. Crappy policy.

Anyways, it should be here by Feb 3. I'm really looking forward to it. Seems like a great product from everyone's comments.

[Franz Josef]

Thank you for taking the time to review this canyon_Carver, it's been useful.

[Chinney]

Thanks for the review. I am happy with my G5 iMac, but it is nice to know that the new machine works well in practice. No resentment on my part. Apple has to keep moving forward.

[torifile]

This is exactly the type of review I've been looking for because comparing the iMac G5 to the iMac duo isn't very helpful for me - I've got a G4 powerbook. So, how well does photoshop run? I also wonder if games would run the same or slightly better than on my powerbook. If you get a chance, could you do a PS comparison?

[powerbook911]

Originally Posted by torifile This is exactly the type of review I've been looking for because comparing the iMac G5 to the iMac duo isn't very helpful for me - I've got a G4 powerbook. So, how well does photoshop run? I also wonder if games would run the same or slightly better than on my powerbook. If you get a chance, could you do a PS comparison?

I have a 1.5 GHZ Powerbook G4, and the 17-inch Core Duo iMac. Once Photoshop is running (it loads slower on the iMac) it is very close to the performance of the Powerbook they are about equal. I've done some blurs and whatnot, and that is what I've found, from my little comparisons.

You really need a lot of memory to use Rosetta with these intensive applications.

[arnoct]

Originally Posted by Brave Ulysses Finally shipped today from Amazon. Little info on Amazon and their free shipping...... If you choose free shipping with amazon they hold your shipment off and put you at the back of the order list. The website said ships within 24 hours, but because I chose free shipping it would ship Feb 3-5 (I ordered January 24). This is the 2nd time they have done that to me. It's very frustrating and not how shipping should work, free or not, I eventually gave in last night and paid 7.99 to upgrade to standard shipping and voila, my computer shipped this morning. Crappy policy. Anyways, it should be here by Feb 3. I'm really looking forward to it. Seems like a great product from everyone's comments.

I had a similar experience to that; just note that in the future if you e-mail CS and complain about it (civilly, of course,) there's a VERY high chance they'll upgrade your shipment to the fastest possible free of charge.

[canyon_Carver]

I put Photoshop CS through its paces this weekend. Stable and Strong. It was much faster than my G4 Laptop...

But with 2 processors, and more RAM you would hope it would be faster. I have not seen any performance changes in Photoshop.

I had my first Lockup this weekend also. I was creating a fence in C4DXL v.9 using the replicating command for the fenceposts...I kept entering in numbers, recalculating-- when it locked up. I was able to drop down to the Dock and Force Quit C4D.

I would estimate that the Rosetta environment is a bit sluggish, and when you are feeding in massive amounts of information to the CPU, you might need to slow your pace of working, either that, or its just a bug that will vanish once they rewrite C4DXL in Universal.

I really tried to push the Duo this Weekend...I backed up all of my data (100Gb+) to two external firewire drives, while listening to Itunes, Scanning in CS, and Printing a PDF and watching a video.... It handled everything wonderfully.

I believe that I will invest in another GB of RAM quickly however. I agree that the Rosetta environment wants alot of RAM--

[Grip]

Great post canyon_Carver.

Is it possible to use something like Menu Meters to roughly estimate (just ballpark) how much RAM Rosetta uses in a particular situation/application?

[canyon_Carver]

I was using the Activity Monitor, but I did not write down the Memory usage results when I was rendering in C4D. That is something I will look into this weekend.

[Brave Ulysses]

I got mine yesterday. Upgraded the RAM to 1.5GB right away. Set it up.

Few observations....
1. The packaging is different than the Revision B and C iMac G5s. The Mouse, remote, manual, and restore disc now come in a sleek white "Designed by Apple in California" cardboard box that reminds me of a jewelry box. Very nice. The power cord is packaged beneath the actual computer at the bottom of the box which also has slots for other cables it seems but I can't imagine what.

2. The Core Duo is FAST. iLife apps, Safari, iChat....everything launches in half an icon bounce. Safari's page is loaded literraly before the icon completes a bounce.

3. As has been said, window resizing is much better than any previous mac I've used.

4. iPhoto runs very very smooth. Loaded it with several hundred photos, and it handles browsing and loading and editing with ease.

5. Web surfing seems faster than any other mac, but it's hard to really gauge since web servers differ but definitely seems faster.

6. VLC ran downloaded HD content with DD5.1 audio track flawlessly for me. Keep in mind this is Rosetta playing back HD content. I think it was in xVid format (downloaded episode of 24)

7. PPC apps do take a long time to open. BitTorrent took at least 10-15 seconds which was a bit dissapointing. Once they are actually running you don't really experience any lag or noticeable slow down but then again I'm not doing anything processor intensive.

8. Quicktime was able to play back 3 1080P HD videos without a dropped frame. Quite amazing. Playing 1 video took just 50% of the 200% processor power. I don't know what the cause of this over the G5 which couldn't even play 1 is but I'll assume it's hardware decoding in the GPU.

9. The screen seems to have better color contrast and is slightly brighter than previous iMacs but it could just be within the tolerances within the manufactering process.

10. There's nothing useful that is Universal unfortunately :-\

[Leonis]

The universal binary version of Cinema 4D has been out for a few days. It's v9.5 though

[LudwigVan]

A list of Universal binary apps (released or announced)

A list of Rosetta-(in)compatible apps

Both links courtesy MacInTouch.com.

[opuscroakus]

Originally Posted by Brave Ulysses 10. There's nothing useful that is Universal unfortunately :-\

This is. http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/02...2004/index.php

[canyon_Carver]

Man-- you spend close to $2000 for a program C4dXl bundle v.9-- and they release the universal in only 9.5....rasifrippin-snagglemash! So now they want another $300 for me to purchase the update to 9.5....ARRGH.

ANYWAY-- I think I will keep working with v9 in Rosetta.

To the memory issues- I have 1 GB of RAM installed--when rendering I have only 30-100 mb unused 700Mb allocates to C4D and over 1GB -3GB of Virtual memory allocated- with the CPU usage jumping from 100-200% usage for C4D.

I can say that this new iMAC is great.

I have enjoyed everyday using it...a few querky issue with the mouse, but I think those are very minor.

Don't know when you purchased v9 but they offer a free upgrade with some restrictions:

"New customers who purchased a full CINEMA 4D R9.x license later than July 1st, 2005 are eligible for a free upgrade to R9.5."