Adobe CS6 & Resolve: iMac or MBP Retina?

[Weston Heflin]

Time to upgrade the edit suite and I can't decide between these two:

iMac 27" 3.4GHz i7 - 32GB RAM - NVIDIA GTX 680MX 2GB

Macbook Pro Retina 2.6GHz i7 - 16GB RAM - NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1GB

This system will hold me over till I get a proper Mac Pro setup in 2014 if Apple steps up. Looking to sell and replace it in a year (ish) - what do you think will hold it's value better?

Which is a better/faster setup for transcoding/editing? Is the iMac screen good for color correction (if calibrated)? Are there any semi portable solutions for a 27" iMac (I've seen the DIT's with 21" but not 27")?

Any advice would be much appreciated!

 

[Matthew B]

Do you need it to be portable? If not, the imac. The current MBP retina has too little VRam for the amount of pixels. If you use any CUDA stuff the imac should be quite a bit faster.

With apple hardware, it seems the top of the line never holds value as well as the mid-range. The 27" LED is great when calibrated, close enough for srgb/rec709 I haven't yet seen the new version yet with reduced glare.

A used 3.33 six core mac pro would be a contender too depending on what happens in the mac pro GPU market in the next 2 months.

 

[Weston Heflin]

Thanks. Portability is nice, but not essential - looking for best performance overall.

Anyone working with the MPB Retina and wishing they had the iMac?

 

[Matthew B]

I think Jeff Kilgroe will know - I do believe that the 2gb of vram in the iMac over 1gb in the mbpro will be a significant difference.

 

[Robino_J]

I'm upgrading from Retina 2.7 16Gb Ram to an iMac 27" 3.4 with 32Gb ram. I know that CPU wise it's a very little upgrade but I hope for better performances with the 2GB 680MX and the extra 16GB of ram. My new iMac is coming this Thursday.

Currently Premiere Pro 6.02 plays back 4K footage at 1/4 resolution for a couple seconds before dropping frames which drives me absolutely crazy. 1/8 is too blocky for me and I refuse to spend $5000+ on a RR. I hope for the best until the new Mac Pros arrive next year. All my drives and I/Os are thunderbolt that's why an older Mac Pro is not good for me right now.

I will report with sad or good news.

 

[Robert Bluemke]

How often do you need to transport the iMac? I have a 27" and I use this to haul mine all over the place.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/561441-REG/Pelican_1730_000_110_1730_Transport_Case_with.html

And, if you do pick up the Mac Pro, the iMac can be used as a monitor that can run transcodes or whatever else in the background.

 

[Brian Merlen]

I too am in the market for a new Mac. Its like all my options suck though, they are all islands. I have no honest clue what to buy... Even the Mac Pro is an island, sure I get some legitimate pci slots, but sata is slow, no usb3, no thunderbolt. I feel like this is a bag of hurt so I keep putting off buying anything but at this point I am not sure how much longer I can pull that bs for, I need to get better support systems data wise for my own Red at this point and stop dealing with slow ports, old drives, and things taking far too long to be viable

 

[Robino_J]

The new iMac is calming me down until the mac pro. It's really good.

 

[Timo Teravainen]

The new iMac is calming me down until the mac pro. It's really good.

Do you have hands-on experience with the new iMac? I'd be especially interested how it performs with Resolve, with the 2GB VRam option..

 

[Robino_J]

Do you have hands-on experience with the new iMac? I'd be especially interested how it performs with Resolve, with the 2GB VRam option..

Yes I do.

I have the 27" 3.4 with 32Gb ram and GTX 680mx 2GB. I'm working on a project right now and some 4K shots (at 1/4) have over 10 nodes and it plays real time. Absolutely Rock Steady.

There's an error message when you start Resolve but it makes zero difference. Says that my hardware can't handle real time performance... it's not true

A benefit of the fusion drive is that you can un-fuse it to use your SSD for OS and Apps and the Spinning HD for Scratch. It's actually a pretty fast spinning disk, it gets around 130MB/s read and write.

I'm VERY happy with this computer so far. It will def hold me until the Mac Pro.

 

[Paul Gotham]

i prefer a macbook pro for the portability, but it really depends on your needs. also, DONT FORGET THE COUPONS!