iMac vs. MacBook Pro

[Joe2000]

Hello, I'm looking for some advice as to what is the more powerful machine?

I do music production and currently have a mid 2011 iMac. It has the 3.4Ghz Intel Core i7 processor and 20GB of Ram.

Lately it has been struggling to run some pretty intensive plugins within big projects using logic. I am ready to upgrade as the machine is now 5 years old.

The new MacBook pros look very nice and to be fully portable would be a big advantage... But what is the more powerful machine?

I would love the new MacBook Pro but the iMac is configurable with a 4.0Ghz processor which would surely run the software I use better? Or am I wrong?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks, Joe.

 

[satcomer]

I would wait a small bit and see if Apple releases the Thunderbolt 3.1 iMac before Christmas!

 

[vmachiel]

I would wait a small bit and see if Apple releases the Thunderbolt 3.1 iMac before Christmas!

That is not happening. If they are gonna update the desktops it'll be in the spring. New Xeons are out then, so they can bundle a new iMac with a new Mac Pro

Hello, I'm looking for some advice as to what is the more powerful machine?

I do music production and currently have a mid 2011 iMac. It has the 3.4Ghz Intel Core i7 processor and 20GB of Ram.

Lately it has been struggling to run some pretty intensive plugins within big projects using logic. I am ready to upgrade as the machine is now 5 years old.

The new MacBook pros look very nice and to be fully portable would be a big advantage... But what is the more powerful machine?

I would love the new MacBook Pro but the iMac is configurable with a 4.0Ghz processor which would surely run the software I use better? Or am I wrong?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks, Joe.

4 GHz is just a a number, one measure of performance. A 2016 Macbook Pro has a way newer processor generation, but it's a mobile chip, which are generally slower that desktop chips. Looking a benchmarks (Geekbench 4), a 2011 iMac that you have has a score of around 3600 in single core performance and 10000 multi core. Wait until the new Macbook Pros are out to see what their scores are.

But those are just one comparison. There are many ways the machines will differ (CPU, RAM, GPU, storage). But 5 years is a lot of processor generations... it's just to hard to predict without benchmarks and real world testing.