Just yesterday Apple released the updated line of iMacs and Macworld already published the first round of benchmark of the new desktops. Macworld Lab owns all four standard configuration models and they posted results for the $1999 27" iMac. According to them the results do not disappoint, with the new iMac besting the previous generation of standard-configuration iMacs. The new quad-core 3.1 GHz i5 iMac outperformed the previous high-end model (a quad-core 2.8 GHz i5 iMac), in every test - it was 16% faster in the Speedmark 6.5 test and 22% faster in Macworld's iTunes encode test.

Less of a difference in performance can be observed while comparing the new system to last year's BTO models: "Just two Speedmark points separate the new 3.1GHz Core i5 iMac from the 2.93GHz Core i7 quad-core BTO iMac. The 2.93GHz model, like all 2010 iMacs, does not use Sandy Bridge processors, but it does support both Hyper Threading and Turbo Boost. In applications such as Cinebench and MathematicaMark, which can take advantage of eight virtual cores, the 2.93GHz BTO iMac outperformed the new 3.1GHz iMac".

As written by tuaw.com, when compared to a dual-core 3.6 GHz i5 BTO iMac from 2010 the current 3.1 Ghz iMac edged out its older relative by 14% in overall performance and finished tasks in Mathematica (an app that makes use of multiple processing cores, up to 67% faster). In many cases, however, the faster clock speed of the older machine helped it complete certain tasks more quickly.

Below you can see the new 2011 Thunderbolt iMac playing Full HD movies on three screens simultaneously without any hiccup:
 

Source: http://www.pcworld.com | http://www.cultofmac.com | http://www.cultofmac.com