An unconfirmed source from China is claiming that Apple is preparing a 30" iMac as well as an updated Mac mini.

The unexpected news from the Asian website roughly translate to something about a quad core CPU in the iMac, so that must either be a Core 2 Quad or a Core i7. Not much was said about the Mac mini, but dedicated graphics, a higher memory ceiling, and larger starting HDD are speculated. These updated models will be coming out around the release of Snow Leopard.

Editor's note: A Core i7 seems unlikely, because of the high energy requirements and too much heat in the limited space of the case. They may possibly go back to something similar to the iMac G4 form factor.

Seems doubtful to me.

The Mini has not long been updated with the 9400m graphics which is OpenCL compatible.

30" iMac may be plausible, and my guess would be on a C2Q processor.

Are there any i7 mobile CPUs out at all? I don't think so. You're right, they will stuff the new iMacs with C2Qs, giving them the ability to further differentiate the iMac from the mini line via hardware configurations (C2D vs. C2Q). The mini will see a i7 CPU the earliest in 2011 or so, lol. They won't even get a C2Q this time imho. Maybe 2,4GHz C2Ds tough.

Here is an answer, the New Core i7 (codename: Lynfield) has a siginificantly low power consumption and low heat.

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your ignoring the i5 and i3 chips aswell which are a more likely upgrade since the i5 is designed to be in the mid range mark

The i3 is nothing different from the core 2 series. So if it's just that, then they're just changing logos.

I doubt it'll be the i7, so if it's not a logo change, then most likely it's the i5 series. Apple has always gotten intel products before other places have.

Well, someone has no idea what they are talking about. The core i3 is a dual core Nehalem, which, in and of itself, is a significant departure from the core 2 series..

Nehalem has no Front side bus, instead an intergrated DDR3 memory controller. (Core 2 has both the FSB, and a DDR2 Memory controller integrated into the chipset... can we say holy {censored} latency?!). Nehalem has a level 3 cache shared between all cores, Core 2 does not. Nehalem has the Quick path interconnect for interprocessor communication.. Core 2 does not, everything goes through the FSB... (again, WTF Latency..) Also, Nehalem has Hyperthreading (which pretty much means a quad core acts like an octocore, at a rudimentary level), Core 2, again, does not.

hmm.. right there i see HUGE differences in the nehalem line, compared to core 2.. i could go on and on about the specifics of the architecture... but you wouldn't understand very much of it.


As for the OP... I would love to see a 30" i7 or i5 based iMac.. I would be first in line to buy one.

Rofl, are you kidding me? Nehalem is being dropped. The i3 is nothing more than a rebrand scheme from Intel. It's the same wolfdale and Yorkfield core used in the Core 2 series. There's only 3 i3 models that are going to be based on nehalem, and to be honest all it is is just quad core cpus with 2 cores and 4 threads disabled. Which only has a dual channel memory controller. The only thing you're doing, is looking like you're copying an article or something.

By the way, the only intel cpus that will have tri channel memory controllers, are the i7 and i9. And no, it doesn't act like it has 8 cores. It has 4 logical cores, and 8 threads. It's different from acting like an octocore.

And here's my source.
http://www.guru3d.com/news/more-details-on...-i5-processors/

Ok, first of all, How is Nehalem being dropped? The only thing they are doing is changing the naming scheme to be more in line with current product models, with less SKUs to attempt to alleviate confusion for customers.

Secondly, I said nothing about memory channels, and everything about type of SDRAM. the DDR3 SDRAM IMC is on all Nehalem processors. Be that as it may, some of them are only dual channel, that really isnt the point. (Thats the mainboard manufactureres decision.)

Third, a Nehalem quad core with HT has 4 Physical cores, and 8 Logical cores. Meaning, it acts like an octocore. Granted, it doesnt have nearly the performance of a true octocore, but a single threaded 8-core will likely only have a 10-20% speed increase over the same architecture with 4, dual threaded cores.

Hello.. see the 8 cores? 8 Logical cores.

I will conceed that not ALL Core i3 are Nehalem based; but, from Core i3 540 up through Core i9 (God I want a 12 core 2.83... *Drool*) are all Nehalem based, which all hold to my first post. (Which was to say that a Core i3 in an iMac could be a Nehalem.)

WHy would china know?