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27" iMac vs. 2006 Mac Pro (1st Gen)

D

DonMega

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 8, 2007
119
0
I've got an opportunity to sell my 2006 Mac Pro and get enough from it to completely fund a REFURB iMac 27" i7 with enough left over to bump the RAM to 8GB. My simple question is: would you do it?

I use my Mac Pro for database crunching, Aperture 3, Photoshop CS4, driving my Epson 9800 for poster printing, Call of Duty 4 and really not much more.

Thanks for any replies in advance.

Don
 
Depends on whether or not/how much you have upgraded your Mac Pro at all. If you didn't then go for it.

Edit: Looking at your sig it seems like you have upgraded it. I'd say wait for the new 6 core Mac Pro.
 
Is your Mac Pro quad or octo? iMac will beat quad in terms of CPU power but as aiqw9182 said, you would lose upgradeability and connectivity (iMac has very limited amount of ports).

I would stick with Mac Pro
 
Hellhammer said:
Is your Mac Pro quad or octo? iMac will beat quad in terms of CPU power but as aiqw9182 said, you would lose upgradeability and connectivity (iMac has very limited amount of ports).

I would stick with Mac Pro
Click to expand...

It's a quad. Connectivity is not that big a deal to me. Right now, I've got a Drobo, a Wacom tablet and another external drive connected to my Mac Pro. My printers are networked and I could really use the CPU power. My databases/variable data solutions are getting more and more complex and running slower and slower on my Mac Pro. None of the software that I use for database work utilize more than one processor, not even Filemaker! What I need right now is raw power that I can throw at these databases, because for me, time is definitely money.
 
DonMega said:
It's a quad. Connectivity is not that big a deal to me. Right now, I've got a Drobo, a Wacom tablet and another external drive connected to my Mac Pro. My printers are networked and I could really use the CPU power. My databases/variable data solutions are getting more and more complex and running slower and slower on my Mac Pro. None of the software that I use for database work utilize more than one processor, not even Filemaker! What I need right now is raw power that I can throw at these databases, because for me, time is definitely money.
Click to expand...

Then it's worth it. Quad core iMacs have Turbo feature which will shut down other cores and overclock one or two cores temporarily so you get better performance in single-threaded apps. Bear in mind that you lose the possibility to add HDs and GPUs plus iMac only has 4 RAM slots compared to Mac Pro's 8
 
Hellhammer said:
Then it's worth it. Quad core iMacs have Turbo feature which will shut down other cores and overclock one or two cores temporarily so you get better performance in single-threaded apps. Bear in mind that you lose the possibility to add HDs and GPUs plus iMac only has 4 RAM slots compared to Mac Pro's 8
Click to expand...

Thanks Hellhammer. That's what I thought. 16GB of RAM will be plenty for the database crunching and Aperture and Photoshop work. I'll work with 8GB for a while and then when I get paid end of next month I'll upgrade to 16GB.
 
I'm attempting to sell my Mac Pro 1st gen (Quad 2.66) to get an iMac 27" i7. I have dual 24" displays as well, and if I could sell it for what the iMac sells for, I would.
 
I just did the same thing you want to do, and could not be happy. I had to put out just a couple hundred bucks to get a refurb 27" iMac from the sale of my Mac Pro 1,1 and once I sell the monitor I had for my Mac Pro then it will have costed me nothing more.

I mostly wanted it for the 27" screen since I do a lot of photoshop and coding. But I could not be happier with the performance of this iMac over my previous Mac Pro.
 
dlewis23 said:
I just did the same thing you want to do, and could not be happy. I had to put out just a couple hundred bucks to get a refurb 27" iMac from the sale of my Mac Pro 1,1 and once I sell the monitor I had for my Mac Pro then it will have costed me nothing more.

I mostly wanted it for the 27" screen since I do a lot of photoshop and coding. But I could not be happier with the performance of this iMac over my previous Mac Pro.
Click to expand...

Thanks dlewis, that's what I was hoping to hear.
 
I have an octo 2.8 Mac Pro (twin Xeons) and also desperately want the 27" imac as it has an awesome display but I have 16gb ram (ok I dont really use it all) and 5TB in HDD space so for me to jump to an imac would cost me more as I don't think I would get much for it and end up having to buy a drobo.
The combination of sheer grunt of the pro and Apps finally coming out to fully utilise all 8 cores keeps me happy.
Just need Apple to bring out the 27" high res display and this setup will last me a fair few years to come.
 
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