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Full Spec iMac vs Standard MacPro

Phil Moreton

Phil Moreton

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Hi everyone,

Just wanted to get some feedback from guys and girls on here that would know more about specs than me regarding the best setup I could get for my price bracket.
Essentially I'd love to be able to edit at 4K and grade at 6K Raw with one of these setups. My price bracket is £2500.

My current editing route is working with proxies in FCPX and grade at 4K Raw in FCPX on a 3.06ghz intel core 2 duo iMac with 12gb of ram and a ATI Radeon HD 4670 256 MB.
The two options below come in at that approx price. Feedback and thoughts on this would be much appreciated. I'd love to get an idea of what workflow I could achieve with these options.

My two options are:

[TABLE="width: 606"]
[TR]
[TD="class: xl24, width: 300, colspan: 4, align: center"]New iMAC 2013[/TD]
[TD="class: xl26, width: 6, align: center"]
[/TD]
[TD="class: xl24, width: 300, colspan: 4, align: center"]New Mac Pro 2013[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: xl25, colspan: 4, align: center"]3.5GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz[/TD]
[TD="class: xl26, align: center"]
[/TD]
[TD="class: xl25, colspan: 4, align: center"]3.7GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5 processor[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: xl25, colspan: 4, align: center"]16GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2X8GB[/TD]
[TD="class: xl26, align: center"]
[/TD]
[TD="class: xl25, colspan: 4, align: center"]12GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: xl25, colspan: 4, align: center"]NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB GDDR5

3TB Fusion Drive[/TD]
[TD="class: xl26, align: center"]
[/TD]
[TD="class: xl25, colspan: 4, align: center"]Dual AMD FirePro D300 with 2GB GDDR5 VRAM each
256GB PCIe-based flash storage[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: xl25, colspan: 4, align: center"]
[/TD]
[TD="class: xl26, align: center"]
[/TD]
[TD="class: xl25, colspan: 4, align: center"][/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

Thanks!
 
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I have the iMac andere althougt the Video Card has 4gb, it is still a mobile Card....i am pretty sure the macpro, even in that low end kit will handle 4 and 6k better....how much? I would expect a considerable jump in raw numbers and still a noticeable jump in actual work....neither one will do real time but I really only expect the high end to be able to do that anyway.....fcpx and rcx run great on the iMac, resolve wants more....hope that helps.....
 
Thanks Paul, I guess I will wait for the entry level Mac Pro. It is only $450 more than the iMac I was looking at and I would get an extra 4GB of RAM included. Eventually I would need to drop 1k on a 4k screen but that will probably not be till next year.
 
Personally, the lack of a second CPU makes the new MacPro that less appealing when comparing it to an iMac. It also makes the point of a Xeon that less of a big deal as well.
 
Would you say that the mobile card in the iMac is susceptible to burning out under 4k grading with power windows etc.
The main problem would be forking out for a screen when purchasing the MacPro.

I wish there was a website where you could input a computers specs that would do a estimated test on performance.
 
the imac performs great....of course there are limits to what it can do....to me honestly it makes no difference if i can get 1/4 or 1/2 res 5K....i shoot mostly 50-60fps 5k and the imac can handle that at 1/4....it can do full much better then my mbp, but that is a different story.....fcpx rips through 5k anyway and that will only get better with the new version....resolve needs more...i guess that will change a bit as well but still a ton of nodes will slow everything down....
to me the imac is a great machine right now....when i know what the price of a medium-upper level Mac Pro will be and what kind of performance boost i can expect, i might get that and use the imac as a screen....the nice thing about that is that it can still run and you can switch between that and the cpu attached.....and with thunderbolt networking now enabled there might be some other tricks we don't know of yet....
in other words....i do not need to scrub through full 60fps 6K in real time, i don't have 15 nodes in resolve and i don't need output in real time....so i won't spend 15k on a Mac Pro (if that price point even buys me that performance....which i somehow doubt...)
 
Hi Paul,

thanks for replying. Do you have a full spec new iMac? You mention FCPX, can you edit at 1/4 fine with the raw files?

Cheers!
 
Yeh my Mac Pro died early this year. So whilst waiting for the new Mac Pro and as a "tie over", I got a top of the line I Mac with 32 GB ram.

Works fine with R3D's and Resolve, sort of leaves me wondering if I need another Mac Pro. Plus for the price of the I Mac's you can upgrade yearly.

My only real frustration with the current I Mac is two thunderbolt ports only : (
 
Phil Moreton said:
Would you say that the mobile card in the iMac is susceptible to burning out under 4k grading with power windows etc.
The main problem would be forking out for a screen when purchasing the MacPro.

I wish there was a website where you could input a computers specs that would do a estimated test on performance.
Click to expand...

http://www.barefeats.com
 
Mike Garrick said:
Yeh my Mac Pro died early this year. So whilst waiting for the new Mac Pro and as a "tie over", I got a top of the line I Mac with 32 GB ram.

Works fine with R3D's and Resolve, sort of leaves me wondering if I need another Mac Pro. Plus for the price of the I Mac's you can upgrade yearly.

My only real frustration with the current I Mac is two thunderbolt ports only : (
Click to expand...

How did your MP die? If you don't mind me asking.
 
@ Jett,
I'm not a tech head . But woke up one morning & it was dead ......something about a new board which was going to be some where around $1500 to replace. ( I know some ubber geeks types are going swear they can do it cheap but I have better things to do)

Given it was a late 2008 Mac Pro I thought it was time to let the beast die....trying to revive old tech IMO is a losing game.

So spent another $800 a got a new Imac.....for now ..maybe..maybe not.
 
Phil Moreton said:
Hi Paul,

thanks for replying. Do you have a full spec new iMac? You mention FCPX, can you edit at 1/4 fine with the raw files?

Cheers!
Click to expand...
Yes, I have the top of the line with 4vram and 32ram....same as others here have said....unless the macpro can give me a serious bump in power for not too much (under 6000$), I probably won't go that route.....fcpx just sings with red files and it will be even better with the new version....resolve is more demanding but I expect some improvement there as well....
i think if they would have put in TB2 as well (which would really allow external gpu) there would be even less reason to go the macpro route....
i get the top of the line iMac every year and sell the old one for about 15-20% less then what I bought it for....works well for me...
 
paul schefz said:
Yes, I have the top of the line with 4vram and 32ram....same as others here have said....unless the macpro can give me a serious bump in power for not too much (under 6000$), I probably won't go that route.....fcpx just sings with red files and it will be even better with the new version....resolve is more demanding but I expect some improvement there as well....
i think if they would have put in TB2 as well (which would really allow external gpu) there would be even less reason to go the macpro route....
i get the top of the line iMac every year and sell the old one for about 15-20% less then what I bought it for....works well for me...
Click to expand...

Hi Paul,

thanks for your reply. Some good advice there.
Do you have a fusion drive or the flash drive storage option?
If it is the fusion, does the 128gb flash actually work well?
 
I also have to decide between an fully speced iMac and a standard MacPro soon, what i don`t like about both options is that they are basically not upgradeable unlike an windows workstation (ie switching out the gpu or cpu). Although if the iMac can be used as a second monitor or to add some power to another system in the future it sound like an nice option...

Do you think the actual top of the line iMac will still be good for editing 6K Dragon footage? And how big of a deal do you think is the "missing" Thunderbolt 2 port?
 
Phil Moreton said:
Hi Paul,

thanks for your reply. Some good advice there.
Do you have a fusion drive or the flash drive storage option?
If it is the fusion, does the 128gb flash actually work well?
Click to expand...

i have the 3TB fusion drive but actually use my retina via TB as start-up/system/main....that way i have the same info/apps/system/userfolder on both the retina and the imac...if i need to go mobile, i just take the retina and have the exact same set up as on the imac (only of course using the retina cpu and gpu)....i only have the "old" retina with a 750gb SSD which runs quite a bit slower then the latest pcie models....
i think the TB2 is really only useful for external gpu (or rocketX) and such...for storage/raids TB is fine...

what is really interesting is the TB networking feature which is new with mavericks....any machine can be connected at all times and use all connected TB devices....i guess this is still new and all options haven't been explored yet but with TB2 this could be insane....connect your retina and imac to the Mac Pro, use the strongest cpu (mac pro), use the screen (imac), use all gpus and maybe even the other cpus for back up, rendering,....and everything is connected with TB cables and can access all storage at all times from any machine....at full speed of course....who knows?
 
For 5k and 6k wouldn't the thunderbolt 2 play a role in speed of drives/raids off of your scratch disk, as well as adding some sort of upgrade options?
 
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