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How much difference between high end iMac and low end nMP?
- Thread starter td2243
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This is not true of the 2012 or 2013 imacs. Light use temps are in the mid 30's to mid 40degC range and 50% CPU use is in the mid 60s. I will be surprised if the nMP is much better
As far as reliability 24/7 - on what would you base your failure estimates for imacs being worse than the nMP? Or the mac mini for that matter. We just have no data yet! Old MacPro yes... new one -- don't know yet.
_ I owned mac towers for 14 years before buying the latest imac
....nMP
I speak of the iMac from personal experience. I have a 2011 27" 3.4 i7 with an SSD and 2tb HD plus a Pegasus R6 for video, photos, and system backup.
That iMac runs hot. All the time. Sure, I understand the case itself is a heat sink, but just recently the 2gb ATI 6970m on my iMac just went kaplunkt. Good thing is there was an issue and a bulletin from Apple regarding failure of this particular configuration. When I talked to the tech at the Apple store, it was very clear to me that heat dissipation was an issue faced by all iMacs. I hope most people never see the screen of death which I faced, but the high temperature, and my personal experience, make me lean to MacPros as opposed to iMacs as my workhorse.
I was without my iMac for about a week, and let me tell you, it was not pleasant. Fortunately, my 2008 3,1 was humming along and I was able to continue working without any fuss.
So in short, maybe the 2008 3,1 MP is older hardware (it has 4 micron m960 1tb SSD in RAID 0 and it is maxed out with memory plus a modded GTX Titan), but this beast has been on for the better part of 5 years and it has never gone down except for upgrades.
Uptime, priceless. Downtime, unacceptable. The turtle always wins the race because it never rests.
And the new trash can MacPro is built with better components than any iMac currently in production. MacPros were designed to be on and functional all the time. I don't think I could confidently say this about any iMacs.
So when the nMP comes out, I will be one of the first ones to get a fully loaded machine. I plan to keep it running for the next five years until it fully depreciates.
I speak of the iMac from personal experience. I have a 2011 27" 3.4 i7 with an SSD and 2tb HD plus a Pegasus R6 for video, photos, and system backup.
That iMac runs hot. All the time. Sure, I understand the case itself is a heat sink, but just recently the 2gb ATI 6970m on my iMac just went kaplunkt. Good thing is there was an issue and a bulletin from Apple regarding failure of this particular configuration. When I talked to the tech at the Apple store, it was very clear to me that heat dissipation was an issue faced by all iMacs. I hope most people never see the screen of death which I faced, but the high temperature, and my personal experience, make me lean to MacPros as opposed to iMacs as my workhorse.
I was without my iMac for about a week, and let me tell you, it was not pleasant. Fortunately, my 2008 3,1 was humming along and I was able to continue working without any fuss.
So in short, maybe the 2008 3,1 MP is older hardware (it has 4 micron m960 1tb SSD in RAID 0 and it is maxed out with memory plus a modded GTX Titan), but this beast has been on for the better part of 5 years and it has never gone down except for upgrades.
Uptime, priceless. Downtime, unacceptable. The turtle always wins the race because it never rests.
And the new trash can MacPro is built with better components than any iMac currently in production. MacPros were designed to be on and functional all the time. I don't think I could confidently say this about any iMacs.
So when the nMP comes out, I will be one of the first ones to get a fully loaded machine. I plan to keep it running for the next five years until it fully depreciates.
You should check out the new iMac's in this case, cause I was able to see both next to each other in the store and I can tell you the new ones don't get even 1/3 of the heat as the 2011 model you have. They have fixed that issue compared to the older iMac.
It's easy to 'beat' the iMac display. Just buy a high-end 27" monitor from Eizo, NEC or Dell.
Very true, let me clarify. It's hard to beat the price of the display included with purchase. One of those monitors is going to run you up another $600+, depending on quality. That being said, we again don't know performance on the baseline nMP, so it's very unknown how much value the screen will add for the user's experience.
The nMP has been troublesome for me to accept, but I'd take it over the iMac any day. Doing a BTO on the iMac with the minimum I'd accept (i7, SSD, 4GB GPU) puts me over $2,500, and I've got an extra display that I don't want. For that price I can spend an extra few hundred dollars and get a much more capable machine.
Otherwise I have a lot of macs, several MBP's, a MP, two Mini's and have owned iMacs in the past. My 2009 MP still keeps pace with the more recent (2012) MBP's. The MBP will pull ahead on a short CPU intensive task such as transcoding, but then the fan will kick in and it gets hot and slow. In general use (my main use case) the 2009 MP still wins. I have it loaded up with applications, 16 Spaces, Linux & Windows in VMWare and it handles it all without breaking a sweat.
Given the performance tuning they've done - fast RAM, fast Flash, Xeon etc I'm sure that the nMP will beat the pants off the iMac in general use, and will also outperform it for heavy duty tasks like transcoding and rendering. The only caveat is that the D300's are fairly pokey for that machine and are just there to bring the entry price down to $3k. If you're getting the MP, unless you absolutely have no need for better GPU's, you'd be better served by upgrading to the D500's.
Otherwise I have a lot of macs, several MBP's, a MP, two Mini's and have owned iMacs in the past. My 2009 MP still keeps pace with the more recent (2012) MBP's. The MBP will pull ahead on a short CPU intensive task such as transcoding, but then the fan will kick in and it gets hot and slow. In general use (my main use case) the 2009 MP still wins. I have it loaded up with applications, 16 Spaces, Linux & Windows in VMWare and it handles it all without breaking a sweat.
Given the performance tuning they've done - fast RAM, fast Flash, Xeon etc I'm sure that the nMP will beat the pants off the iMac in general use, and will also outperform it for heavy duty tasks like transcoding and rendering. The only caveat is that the D300's are fairly pokey for that machine and are just there to bring the entry price down to $3k. If you're getting the MP, unless you absolutely have no need for better GPU's, you'd be better served by upgrading to the D500's.
The iMac may be close on paper terms to the nMP specs but in terms of TDP doing hard, long render work I would be very surprised if the Black Can didn't stomp all over it in real life scenarios.
Basically yes, while the old iMac was so hot that it started to hurt after a few seconds, the new iMac is cold like the rest of the housing. You don't feel anything!
When I checked them both it was in an Apple store side by side and they were running the entire day in the store with full lights on them.
I find myself in the same position trying to figure out high end iMac vs low end nMP. I have a late 2009 27" 2.8 GHz i7 iMac w/ 20 GB RAM that I am looking to replace. For simplicities sake let's say I'm a software developer/photographer who uses this machine 16 hours a day for business. Common applications are Xcode, Photoshop, Lightroom, Virtual machines, and usual mail, web browsers, text editors, etc. I do not do a lot of video rendering and such that would definitely favor the nMP. I have a difficult time trying to determine if I will really see much improvement with a nMP over a high spec'ed iMac with an SSD. As far as reliability, up-time, etc. I have had no issues with my current iMac.
Any thoughts?
Any thoughts?
You should not be touching the back of your computer and then proclaiming to the world that it is too hot. Do you get out and touch your engine block to see how hot your car is running? No, you check the temperature gauge. There are apps that will show you the temperatures of the internals. How hot the back of a computer gets is irrelevant.
Exactly - in fact, the back of the iMac is MEANT to be hot given its heatsink function...otherwise, its internal components would be melting in no time...
Here I agree! If your work is 50% CPU loads and higher the nMP is supposed to be the better machine (waiting till people have them to be sure). I "assume" this IS what it is designed to do! The TDP of the nMP is 2X the imac i7. For hard core driving a machine this is what you want (with great heatsinking).
Now for less than 50% CPU loading - the difference becomes much less (at least top end imac to base nMP) ...
He new imac has decent heat sinking. Expect CPU temps in the 70's for constant 50% CPU load. In my work this is the normal peak loading so the machine works well for me.
How do you expect me to install a program on a Mac that sits in a store to check the temperature?
If this isn't scientific enough for you, that's fine with me. But personally if I don't burn myself on the new one while the old one was hot enough to make eggs sunny side up on the back, that is totally sufficient for me to judge that the new one isn't running as hot as the old one is/did!
cheers
Let me get this straight:
1. You don't actually own an iMac (I assumed from your post that you did)
2. You think that touching what is effectively designed to act as heat sink with your bare hands is a good way to judge how hot something is
3. You apparently can tell the difference in temperatures accurately by just using your bare hands
4. You feel that your method and knowledge of the topic gives you the authority to give others advice on how they should spend thousands of dollars
I got it.
Well, that doesn't sound all that encouraging. I have a 2011 ("old" case) 21.5in i5 iMac that I use every day for video editing and with the CPU being quite heavily utilized all that time and an external monitor plugged in which stresses its weak GPU I still peak around 80 degrees. And that's mostly power supply temp, sometimes the GPU.
That said, the new design iMacs aren't that much more heat resistant and still tend to get hot. I surely expect Mac Pros to be way way cooler than that.
One of the hands on reviews from last month said that the outside of the nMP got quite warm, or even hot (I forget the exact wording, it might have been from Gizmodo). Makes me wonder black was purely a design decision or partially to help radiate heat.
I find the conclusion above opposite from my experience.
The new imac runs 70degC CPU temp (by istat) at 50% load. The rest of the components are all much less and the case is always cool to the touch - period. Even at 75% load the CPU finally gets to 90degC, the fan ramps up and the case is still cool to the touch - period. I own it, I tested all of this before deciding to keep it.
Every Mac designed in the last 5 years runs at 90degC CPU temp at some load and then starts ramping fans. (my 2011 MBP hit this at 15% load, my 2012 mac mini hit it at 25% load, the late 2013 imac is the best (75% load) since my old cMP (that never went over 70degC - ever-). This is Apples design approach. I don't like it and the only potential mac that might not run this way is the nMP - but I am guessing it will also run exactly this way.