Quad-core iMacs coming in two months? How about a quad-core Mac mini?
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Nov 20, 2008 at 6:00am
I’m getting jazzed about January’s Macworld Conference & Expo. And speculation on what Apple will announce at the Big Show has commenced. One of the first bits of speculation (which is based on some reliable reports): quad-core iMacs.
According to DigiTimes, Intel is planning to launch three 65W low-power desktop CPUs (central processing units) targeting small form factor (SFF) computers (such as the Mac mini) and all-in-one computers (like the iMac) in the middle of January next year. That would make a Macworld announcement very feasible (the show runs Jan. 5-9 in San Francisco). The article says that vendors including Apple, Acer, Hewlett-Packard and Dell have already decided to launch products based on these CPUs.
There will be a total of three new chips, according to DigiTimes including the Core 2 Quad Q8200 (2.33GHz/4MB L2), Core 2 Quad Q9400 (2.66GHz/6MB L2) and Core 2 Quad Q9550 (2.83GHz/12MB L2), which will cost US$245, $320 and $369, respectively, in lots of 1,000. Those prices would make it feasible for Apple to use them in its consumer/prosumer desktops. It would certainly make sense for the iMac, though I’d think Apple would still use older technology in the Mac mini to keep prices as low as possible.
The new chips purportedly share the same specifications and model number as Core 2 Quad processors that were launched in March and August. However, they’ll see their TDP drop from 95W to 65W.
Moving to the quad-core chip would be a pretty major change for the iMac as it’s always used, for the most part, laptop technology. However, as Electronista points out, an optimized processor potentially mitigates these problems while letting Apple either trim costs or upgrade other components of the system. And as HardMac notes, “the iMac has passed from the role of a toy machine—a poor man’s Mac—to that of machine of the main office, while the Mac Pro has climbed more and more in the range so as to appeal only to the most demanding of the professionals.”
So I think the announcement of a quad-core iMac announced during CEO Steve Jobs’ keynote (it’s not official yet, but I’ll be amazed if he doesn’t do the keynote) is very likely. A quad-core Mac mini—I’m less convinced of that.
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Resuna Says:
I really don’t care what CPU goes into the Mac mini, I just want an nVidia or ATI GPU before I’ll upgrade from my G4 mini.
Possibly a “mini pro”, with “only” two cores, but a real GPU and a 3.5” hard drive and room for more than 2GB of RAM.
But the CPU? That hasn’t been the bottleneck for the mini since the Core Duo.
Posted on November 20, 2008
Frank Petrie Says:
I agree with Resuna. I need something that I can render with yet not start liquidating the retirement funds.
Posted on November 21, 2008
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
J.B. Zimmerman Says:
The Mac Mini has always lagged behind in number of cores, holding on to the Core Solo chip beyond the rest of the Mac line. In any case, it seems quite unlikely that a $270 chip would go into a $600 machine. I’d much rather the Mac Mini get the cheapest working Core Duo available and keep its price low, in any case. Differentiation (pricewise) is a better selling point for the Mini than power.
Posted on November 20, 2008