Ladies and gentlemen, the fastest Mac we’ve ever seen is currently sitting in the Macworld Lab. It’s the 27-inch 2.93GHz quad core Core i7 iMac, equipped with a solid-state drive (SSD). This built-to-order (BTO) model posted the highest Speedmark 6 score of any iMac we’ve tested—for now.
The 27-inch 2.93GHz quad core Core i7 iMac with SSD isn’t one of the four standard configurations Apple offers, and Macworld doesn't mouse-rate BTO models. To get the Core i7 CPU and SSD, you have to customize a 27-inch 2.8GHz quad core Core i5 iMac () when ordering through the online Apple Store. Upgrading to the 2.93GHz Core i7 adds $200 to the $1999 base price. Substituting a 256GB SSD for the hard drive adds another $600. So the total price of the iMac we tested (with 4GB of RAM) is $2799.
We used our Speedmark 6 test suite to gauge the performance of the 2.93GHz quad core Core i7 iMac and to see how well it performs compared other current iMacs. Overall, the 2.93GHz quad core Core i7 iMac with an SSD is impressive, posting a Speedmark 6 score of 254, currently the highest Speedmark 6 score posted by any Mac. (We just received two of the three new Mac Pro models, and we'll test them and provide results soon. We think that the new Mac Pros will beat the Core i7 iMac, but the story will be the margin of difference.)
Though the SSD-equipped 2.93GHz quad core Core i7 iMac is impressive, we suspect that it won’t hold the title of World’s Fastest Mac for very long.
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