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Apple iMac (Nvidia GeForce 9400M)
More iMac for your Money The all-in-one desktop market that Apple pioneered has been dominated by the iMac. Although technically there were “all-in-ones” long before the iMac, none has survived as long. And with the latest iMac (with Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics), that history of dominance is not likely to come to an end any time soon. On the outside, the new iMac looks much like the older iMac 24-inch. There’s the brilliant 1,920-by-1,200 widescreen LCD, the aluminum, glass, and plastic case, and a slightly smaller keyboard. Inside the case are some notable improvements over last year’s models. For example, the addition of the Nvidia 9400M chipset makes the new iMac fully DX10-compatible, so it can run the latest 3D games and apps as well as supporting DDR3 memory. This iteration has also bumped up
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the standard memory to 4GB (from 1GB) and the hard drive from 320GB to 640GB. The iMac performed pretty well on many of our benchmark tests. It finished the Photoshop CS4 test in a spritely 1:46 running 64-bit Vista. On PCMark Vantage (which measures the ability to perform day-to-day tasks such as multimedia, Web browsing, and more), the iMac scored 4,246—notable because it’s a significantly higher score than that of the quad-core Cybernet iOne-GX31 (3,919). The iMac’s less-impressive scores on 3D tests indicate that although this system is very good at multimedia/content creation, it’s less effective at 3D gaming. Greenies will be happy to hear that this model received EPEAT Gold certification. For these reasons, this iMac wrests back its Editors’ Choice from the Sony VAIO VGCJS130J/P.—Joel Santo Domingo >>CLICK HERE FOR MORE
SPECS 2.66-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E8135 processor, 4GB 1.06-GHz DDR3 SDRAM, 640GB 7,200-rpm SATA hard drive, 256MB Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics, dual-layer DVD±RW drive, integrated 24-inch widescreen LCD monitor, four USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire 800 port, integrated stereo speakers, Mac OS X 10.5.
14 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION MAY 2009
