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Following up on Wai's last post, has anyone managed to get hold of an
intel iMac yet and have any compilation reports/benchmarks for CCP4/
CNS/Pymol etc? Do Intel supply compilers as part of the Apple
developer distribution? When can we expect CCP4 (universal?) binaries
etc?
Thanks
Ashley
On 19/01/2006, at 12:37 AM, Yu Wai Chen wrote:
Dear all,
Here is a summary of all the responses (not a lot):
Original post
The dual-core intel iMacs are now out. I think the 20" screen one
is quite a good value for money and am considering to buy one for
general crystallographic computing and light molecular graphics.
Does anyone have any comments about the pros and cons of
implementing crystallographic softwares on these new machines and
what problems shall we anticipate in the near future? Has anyone
actually get their hands on this and tried these out?
Ashley Buckle, Juergen Bosch & Warren DeLano commented in general
Macs (e.g. G4) running OSX are good for general crystallographic
computing (no stereo graphics). David Schuller has the most
comprehensive comments:
The "Core Duo" is Intel's new laptop chip, so integer performance is
impressive but floating point performance is not the best. Still, it's
really not that bad either. The processor is cool and probably quiet.I
believe it is dual core, but 32 bit.
It's good to see that, unlike previous iMacs, this one has a gigabit
ethernet interface. Previously, Apple has limited features on the
iMacs
to avoid cutting into sale of PowerMacs, but they don't have any Intel
processor PowerMacs available yet.
The "8x SuperDrive" is a little slow compared to what's available. 16x
DVD burners are down to $40 on the open market.
Probably the biggest limitation will be lack of expandability. If
it has
the features you need, fine, but there is little hope of significant
upgrade. That includes the monitor, which is built-in. The display
says:
1680x1050 pixels. It's wide, but not that tall. Note there's a lot of
blank plastic below the display area.
The Radeon X1600 graphics are not top of the line, but if you're not
using this as a full-time modeling station, that might be OK.
[the rest is price/performance comparison with other hardware...]
Thanks to you all. I have ordered a 20" iMac intel Core Duo.
Wai
--
Yu Wai Chen, PhD................................................
King's College London, Randall Division +44-207-848-8206
New Hunt's House, Guy's Campus, London SE1 1UL, U.K.
Ashley Buckle Ph.D
Research Fellow
The Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
School of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine &
Victorian Bioinformatics Consortium (VBC)
Monash University, Clayton, Vic 3800
Australia
http://vbc.med.monash.edu.au/~abuckle
Tel: (613) 9905 3781 (office)
Tel: (613) 9905 1653 (lab)
Mobile: 0400 206069
Fax : (613) 9905 4699
