The 24″ comes to life

Here are the ‘after’ and ‘before’ System Profiler screen shots reflecting the change to the new GPU card:

So while they appear almost identical physically (see yesterday’s piece), there’s no denying the doubled video RAM in the new card.

Diagnostic comments will have to await an extended test period, but the spinning beachballs are gone, for now, and performance in Lightroom 2.4 is exemplary. For example, in full screen mode, holding the right arrow key on the keyboard depressed has 150 images zip by the screen (these are 1:1 previews) in 5 seconds. Faster than the eye can make sense of. A promising start.

And yes, a lot of heat can be felt pouring out of all those holes I drilled. No surprise there.

Further, this is confirmation that owners of 24″ iMacs with the Nvidia 7300 GPU can upgrade to the improved Nvidia 7600 variant without any system issues. The 7600 was available in Apple’s premium machine as a Built To Order model (meaning Apple’s costs went up 50 cents and yours went up $500) which, at least in the US, seems to have included a faster CPU as well, the Intel 2.33gHz Core2Duo. As I have discussed before, for photographers CPU speed is not a major consideration. It’s the graphics, stupid.

What I did not realize when I wrote that earlier piece is just how heat challenged Apple’s poor engineering is. Those of you who like to waste your time and make schmuck class action lawyers rich can start a suit to recover your $4 in damages from Apple two years hence. Me? I’ll be taking pictures and, hopefully, still processing them on my 24″ white iMac. You know, the last one with a matte screen.

True cost of doing this:

“Ah!, Thomas”, I hear you lament,” you are a moron when it comes to economics. You are clearly clueless about opportunity cost – what your time and trouble cost because you could have been doing other things rather than messing with your iMac to make it run”.

Well, let’s look at the alternatives.

1 – Buy a new iMac. Let’s put aside the fact that you can’t get one with a matte screen. Base 24″ iMac with 2.66ghz C2D and (overheating) Nvidia 9400 GPU – $1,500. Scrap value of your old iMac – $400. Net cost – $1100. Time to order, unpack and install, including moving all your data over – 4 hours at, say, $100. Satisfaction quotient – “This is the last Mac I will ever buy; after that it’s back to crappy PCs and the horrors of Windows.” Total cost – $1,500.

2 – Send your old iMac for repair to Apple. Repair $950. Shipping + materials $100. Time to pack and unpack – 1 hour. Satisfaction quotient – Disgusted. Plus what do you do during the month your iMac is out for repair and it still runs too hot when you get it back, if it runs, that is? Total cost – $1,150.

3 – Repair it yourself. New GPU $260. Tools – $50. Time to gut and reassemble – 3 hours. Time to drill holes and install mesh – 3 hours. Time to read manual and prepare – 1 hour. Given that you can hire a laborer to work in your garden at $20/hr rather than doing it yourself while you repair the iMac, you just saved $560 (7 x $(100-20)) in time value. Time to read my blog – sheer joy and free; you are going to do that anyway so it’s not an opportunity cost. Satisfaction quotient – enormous. Total cost – $450.

Hey, seems that I do get it after all. Why, maybe I’ll buy that blown one from you for $400 and fix it up as a back-up? Drop me a line if it’s for sale.