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iMac 3.06 or MacPro 2.8 Quad - for Photoshop?

I understand that the money is a concern but consider the amount of time that you want this machine to be viable. The mac pro can be expanded with more HDs and a TON more ram. The imac is a great machine for right now, but will it be a great machine for your needs in 2-3 years? It might, it might not.

If it were me, I would go for the mac pro and plan on keeping the machine for the next four years or more. Just wait for snow leopard and cs4 and you will see major bumps in speed hopefully.
 
jashic said:
By that logic, he would spend $1000 more today, then another $400 when CS4 comes out, then another $150 when snow leopard comes out, just to get a few seconds more performance...in 2 years?!?!?
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It's not for everyone. Doesn't change the fact that what I said is true.
 
jashic said:
By that logic, he would spend $1000 more today, then another $400 when CS4 comes out, then another $150 when snow leopard comes out, just to get a few seconds more performance...in 2 years?!?!?
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Indeed, that is why I'll keep my iMac for a little while ;-). But that is great info to know that Mac Pros WILL be a real good option for photoshopers sometime soon :). Cheers!

A bit off topic but not quite: I wonder if Bridge is not the one that slows down the rest. I will have a try with lightroom (lightroom 2 will use multi core, I read). Anyone experienced better performance with this?

And last but not least I suspect Firefox is screwing my system up, crashing all the time, could Firefox cause the whole sustem to be slow? Anyone experienced that too?
 
I am in a similar dilemma but have come to the conclusion I am getting the 3.06GHz iMac with the GS card and maxing it out to 4GB.

It is mostly a cost issue right now for me. However, I have been running a 17" 2.33GHZ MBPro at work with 3GB for almost two years now, and it is quite a workhorse in itself. I use the full Adobe CS3 suite daily.

I just sold my DP 2.5GHz PowerMac G5 with 6GB RAM as one of the processors is starting to have issues (second time in less than 3 years). I will miss that machine as it was an awesome workhorse and still very expandable, same as the MacPros.

However, I am looking very forward to this new iMac as it will be undoubtably be faster than my MBPro and PM. Would I like a MacPro? Absolutely! However, I just can't justify the cost difference right now in my situation.

Have no worries about going with the iMac for the work you are going to do on it. I expect this machine to hold me over for at least 1-3 years, at which point my finances will have bettered themselves and I can pass this machine off to my wife (simple basic user) in which case, the iMac will be around for a good 4-6 years total!

I say, save the $1,000 and put it elsewhere in your iMac or office setup. Some nice external drives, extra monitor, speakers, desk, applications, etc.

Good luck with your decision. Either machine will be awesome whichever route you take.
 
OK... I've come up with my gameplan.

I'll buy an off-the-shelf 24" iMac 3.06 GHz for the following reasons:

1) I don't need any internal space for additional drives, as I prefer external drives and have plenty of them. Nor do I need a super fast graphics card for games or video specialists.

2) The speed of the iMac 3.06 with 4 GB of RAM will be very good for the PS3 work I do. And in a year I'll add another Mac, perhaps a Pro, depending on offerings available at that time, relegating this iMac to a secondary position in my studio.

3) My major hesitation with the iMac was potential screen issues, but since I have an Apple Store near me, I will buy from them to be able to return the machine quickly and easily, should any screen issues be evident.

And most importantly, I'll hold off, for a time, from setting up and copying apps & data to the iMac's internal drive. I'll use one of my external drives as the drive for applications & data for the evaluation period of the iMac. This way, if I have to return the machine, I won't have any time or data invested in "set-up" on the internal drive. I've got several other Macs to use until I confirm that the new iMac I get is right.

Ease and speed of returning/exchanging the machine is really important to me and this approach will make it easy & quick to return the iMac for exchange or going with a MacPro if necessary.

I will definitely go with the full 4 GB of RAM (purchased from OWC, of course).

Many thanks to you all for your thoughts and suggestions!
 
DHart,

I'm a graphic designer and I do a lot of re-touching and photo manipulation in Photoshop CS3, admittedly I have a quad core Mac Pro at work but I just got a 3.06GHz iMac for home and I can honestly say that it's brilliant. I maxed it out to 4 gigs of ram and I put a 750Gig h/drive in it (I have about 1.5tb worth of external h/d space as well), also got the Nvidia 8800 card and I have had no problem running CS3 on it at all.

It does stutter a bit every now and again (if I have a few apps open) but other than that it does what I want it to considering I'm not using huge files at home, they get up to 80 or 90 megs, so they're not that large.

I would have no problems recommending the 3.06 iMac.

Hope that helps.
 
andychris02... thanks for the info... nice confirmation to hear.
 
andychris02 said:
No problems at all mate.

Another thing, I thought the glossy screen may be a bad thing but it's not also I've not had any gradient issues and the screen bleed issue seems to be pretty much non-existent on my iMac.

Enjoy your new iMac.
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Good to know... and encouraging. Thanks!
 
andychris02 said:
No problems at all mate.

Another thing, I thought the glossy screen may be a bad thing but it's not also I've not had any gradient issues and the screen bleed issue seems to be pretty much non-existent on my iMac.

Enjoy your new iMac.
Click to expand...

This is great to hear as I will be ordering mine this week. I'm getting very excited about this new machine and the positive things I have been reading about it.
 
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