All four models (17″ 1.83 GHz and 2.0 GHz, 20″ and 24″ 2.16 GHz) have a 667 MHz system bus, three USB 2.0 ports and at least one FireWire 400 port, gigabit ethernet, and AirPort Extreme.
There’s more variety than ever before in the iMac line. The 2.0 GHz 17″ iMac ships with 1 GB of RAM and a 160 GB hard drive, an 8x SuperDrive, AirPort Extreme, Bluetooth 2.0, and Apple’s USB keyboard and Mighty Mouse. It uses the ATI Radeon X1600 graphics processor with 128 MB of dedicated video memory. Although you can install two 2 GB modules to achieve 4 GB of system memory, the computer can only access 3 GB of RAM, making that a smarter, lower cost upgrade option.
Apple offered a 2.16 GHz CPU as a build-to-order option.
The entry-level 1.83 GHz model uses Intel GMA 950 graphics, carried over from the education iMac introduced in July 2006. Because this model dedicates 80 MB of RAM to video, we strongly recommend at least 1 GB of RAM.
This was the last time Apple offered a 17″ iMac.
With 1 GB of system memory, this iMac is well suited for OS X 10.4 Tiger, and going to 2-3 GB further improves things. Base memory is enough to run OS X 10.5 Leopard decently, and 2-3 GB really improves things. OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard can run on a 1 GB Mac but really cries out for 2 GB of memory and is unleashed with 3 GB. OS X 10.7 Lion wants 2 GB minimum and is much happier with 3 GB installed.
The CPU is mounted in Socket M, allowing upgrades as high as 2.33 GHz.
