Apple iMac - Core i5 3.1 GHz - Monitor : LCD 27" > Reviews (1)

This latest version of the iMac, particularly this model being it is the upper end iMac of the 2011 series is mind blowing. You can run Final Cut Pro X on it in one desktop space and go over to another in Safari and you will not even notice that FCPX is open, with absolutely no performance loss in Safari. So running Safari, iTunes, and FCPX is a breeze. Plus if you want to do more on the iMac you can go to Apple's website and customize it with more Ram, CPU, Graphics, and hard disk space. So, as far as CPU goes I think it speaks for its self. Normally this model of the iMac Ships with an quad core 3.1 GHz i5, but you can customize it to have a quad core 3.4 GHz i7, which is smoking fast. In the land of Ram, 4 GB of DDR3 1330 MHz is plenty, and handles all three applications I mentioned above.

On hard disk space, the thing ships with a 1 TB 7200 RPM hard drive. That is both fast for a hard drive and more than plenty of space for you to go possibly the entire iMac's life without needing more space. But if you do in fact need more space on apple's site again you can opt in for a 2 TB hard drive. By the way, if it catches your fancy, online ordering allows you to get a 256 Gb solid state hard drive which has no moving parts and is super fast, way faster than the regular hard drives. This will help in boot time, application loading, file opening, and finally coping files. Or you can get a 1 or 2 Tb hard drive with a solid state drive for maximum performance. Thats up to 2 TB of 7200 RPM of hard disk built right in with a 256 GB Solid state drive. Awesome!

Now on graphics, this iMac ships with a 1 GB Radeon 6970M with GDDR5 memory. That is one of the most powerful graphics cards available from Radeon, and it handles all of those applications I talked about at the beginning of this review. In general, you probably won't ever need anything more. But if you have to have it, Apple's site offers a 2 GB version of the same card. I only recommend this if you are doing major multitasking or intense gaming over gybe multiple screens.