I've been considering an iMac purchase next month, but I keep coming back to the Mac Pro. I like the better GPU option it has. I've read the buyers guide and it says NOT to buy. Really though, what do you guys think? I'll be ready to pull the trigger mid February.
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I've read the buyers guide...
- Thread starter Tonecrafter
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We may see a new Mac Pro in Q1/2012, but that is not sure.
Have you looked at any of the articles about the Xeon CPUs for 2012 (E5)?
Have you looked at any of the articles about the Xeon CPUs for 2012 (E5)?
You should also note that the top of the line iMac with SSD is actually faster than the Mac Pro - so unless you're really pushing for that extra graphics capability on the Mac Pro, you should definitely get the iMac (assuming the Mac Pro doesn't get refreshed in time).
Faster than the base Mac Pro, maybe.
The top of the line Mac Pro is almost twice as fast as the i7 iMac.
Apparently we will be seeing a new Mac Pro soon. But if you can't wait then I would say buy the iMac for now and get the new mac pro later. The iMac is plenty fast these days and the graphics are perfectly capable. You can get an upgraded GPU with the high end 27" model.
My mistake, looks like you're right.
However, the i7 iMac is faster than the 6-core Mac Pro, probably due to the SSD tipping the balance.
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/06/15/27-inch-imac-core-i7-with-ssd-is-fastest-mac-ever/
It depends on the benchmark software one uses.
Geekbench does not take the HDD and SSD into account, only CPU.
Others like XBench do take the storage device into account, thus an SSD is favourable.
I find it a little goofy to upgrade to an SSD in the iMac, but then only use a typical HDD in the Mac Pro. Sure the Mac Pro is already more expensive, but a reasonable sized SSD is now $100-200. So this isn't really a cost prohibitive upgrade when you're already spending >$3K on a computer. Plus, you have the ability to put massive amounts of scratch space in Mac Pro under a RAID configuration, with the SSD as a boot drive.
They are just two very different beasts. For that article to put an SSD in the i7 iMac and claim it is the "fastest Mac ever" is pretty deceiving. The reality is that for most light work loads the i7 iMac will be roughly as fast as the Mac Pro hex 3.33, maybe a little faster or a little slower here or there depending on how well a program can use >4 cores. But for heavy work loads, that push a lot of data and scale very well with increasing cores, the Mac Pro pretty handedly beats the iMac, even with an SSD. Then there are even good chances the iMac wouldn't even be capable of doing the tasks at hand, due to RAM limitation or because of HD space requirements. I guess you could get a thunderbolt RAID system, but 6 TB will run you almost $2K in those. Now that's more of a cost prohibitive purchase than the SSD. Especially when 3x2TB HDD cost about $600, and will only go back down when this shortage finally ends. I see little sign of TB RAID systems dropping in price in the near future.
The upgraded one vs the standard means very little there. You look at it and see more video ram. That doesn't mean much. It's one of several things that affects the performance of the card. Plenty fast doesn't mean anything at all. Computers could be considered "plenty fast" a decade ago, yet software beyond spreadsheets and word processing has become more cpu and ram hungry over time.
If everything is held in ram or paged to a fast scratch disk, and the applications in use scale past four cores, the six core should remain ahead. SSDs hasten loading things, and speed things up overall when you don't have enough ram or must deal with 32 bit applications. Also barefeats showed up to a 30% lead by the mac pro in some of their tests, but really it's all over the place. It's close enough that OSX version, ram, file sizes, application, etc. make a difference in trying to determine the fastest. Regarding the imac, the cpu speed isn't the primary reason I'll never purchase one.
Assuming you can wait, I would do so in order to see what the new MP is like. You are comparing an iMac with very modern hardware to a MP that is essentially unchanged since 2009 except CPU/GPU speed bump.
Personally I wouldn't get the iMac under any circumstances, but those are due to my own personal preferences. You haven't said much about what you need the computer for or what your needs are. For example, if you don't like non-ergonomically adjustable glossy screens with only 1 input that can't be swapped out for a bigger/better screen later, then the iMac is out of the question right there.