Recently my dad asked me what he could do to make his 2007 iMac faster. The machine is running a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor which by today’s standards is woefully outdated. We had already maxed out the RAM at 6 GB (specs say it can handle 4 GB, but 6 GB are recognized) and it had a 500 GB 3.5″ spinning hard drive (7200 RPM, I believe).
As we were looking for the most cost effective solution, I said that we should try an SSD drive in it. I told him to purchase the Samsung 850 EVO and a Newer Technology AdaptaDrive Bracket. The items arrived and then I was tasked with installing it (I actually had my dad get a different bracket which was wrong, so it was extra work, but let’s just pretend he got the right bracket). Since the iMac didn’t recognize my USB 3 docks to copy the data from his iMac to the new drive, I had to put the iMac in target disk mode, hook it to my Thunderbolt display via FireWire 800 and then copy the data to the new SSD hanging off my MacBook Pro. This process was long, but required no effort.
Opening up an iMac of this vintage was relatively straight forward, and I installed the new drive. After putting the machine back together, I booted it up to test it and was surprised at how well the machine performed. Before the drive replacement, the machine was far too slow for me to use. Boot time was long and opening up applications took too long. Now, the machine booted up a lot faster and applications opened quickly which seemed similar to my 2012 Retina MacBook Pro with a Quad Core Intel i7 processor.
So now I was comparing a nine year old computer to my 3.5 year old computer. My computer has a significantly faster processor and lots more RAM (16 GB), but the performance in opening apps (startup is still faster) and day to day operations seems reasonably close. Of course, I didn’t do any benchmarks on the 2 machines, but here you have about 6 years separating 2 computers and in everyday tasks, the performance seemed acceptable on both.
My dad runs VMWare Fusion on his iMac (for his accounting) and that is a pig; for that (Windows 10 running on 1 core of a 9 year old iMac is a recipe for pain). Other than that, my dad has been quite happy with his upgrade.
So the question I have to ask is if the processor speed in Macs matters much anymore for everyday tasks. It seems that the limiting factor may be drive speed. I’m not talking about compiling, running virtual machines, or transcoding video, but for web browsing, email, etc., how much speed do we really need? I’m not giving up my machine any time soon and if I can get my hands on a faster machine, I’ll definitely do that.
I think for regular folks, the biggest speed bump for older machines is exactly what you did: put an SSD in the machine.
I did this with older MacBook Pros before they went all solid state and the difference was incredible and the speed boost gave me at least an extra year of use on machines I used to trade in in 2 years.
Now that everything is solid state this is less of an issue although I’m a believer in buying a bigger storage space than one needs: OS X can get very slow as one approaches full. More RAM helps all of this too as you know (less disk swapping).
I agree on processor speed although for using applications like Lightroom and Photoshop a fast graphics processor with some extra memory is useful. Usually these things come in packages: fast processor, fast graphics processor, extra RAM.
My current mid-2014 MacBook Pro 15″ retina has a 2.8 GHz i7 and 16GB of memory, 1TB SSD. It’s a terrific machine and unless its replaced with something really special, it’ll be my machine for another year.
I don’t expect to replace my 2012 MacBook Pro this year as it is humming along quite well. I still have drive space on it (512 GB SSD) and I think running out of drive space will be what pushes me to get my next machine.
@Scott – or you could replace your DVD for a 2nd SSD?