Mac Pro or Imac 27 2012?

[jpmorais]

Should i get the base mac pro 3.2GHz or the 2012 imac 27 i7 fusion 680mx?

i like being able to open my computer and replace parts?

My only concern is that the mac pro is 2 old, but i cant wait anymore i gotta get one of the two, what do you guys think?

 

[Altemose]

To Be or Not To Be Pro?

The Mac Pro did receive a minor refresh this year.

If you answer yes to any of these questions you need a Mac Pro!

- Do you need to run Snow Leopard and/or PowerPC apps under Rosetta?
- Do you need more than 16 GB of RAM?
- Do you need more than one INTERNAL hard disk?
- Do you have a desperate need to drive multiple video cards?

If you answer yes to any of these questions you need an iMac!

- Will you use Thunderbolt peripherals and/or displays
- Do you want a built in display?
- Do you have USB 3.0 compatible devices?
- Do you want the simplistic look on your desk?

It really is a tough call! The iMac boasts newer and faster hardware, while the Pro offers expandability, but at the cost of legacy hardware!

 

[brand]

If you answer yes to any of these questions you need a Mac Pro!

- Do you need to run Snow Leopard and/or PowerPC apps under Rosetta?
- Do you need more than 16 GB of RAM?
- Do you need more than one INTERNAL hard disk?
- Do you have a desperate need to drive multiple video cards?

The 27" 2012 iMac supports 32GB of RAM. The Fusion Drive is technically two separate drives.

If you answer yes to any of these questions you need an iMac!

- Will you use Thunderbolt peripherals and/or displays
- Do you want a built in display?
- Do you have USB 3.0 compatible devices?
- Do you want the simplistic look on your desk?

You can add a USB3 card to a Mac Pro.

 

[bsbeamer]

What type of use do you need the new machine for?

 

[derbothaus]

The Fusion Drive is technically two separate drives.

Yeah but you can't do anything with them other than break the logical volume and then have a 128GB SSD and whatever size HDD you bought. Thermal sensors and glue really put the brakes on wanting to mess around too much beyond that. I would consider the "Fusion" drive a 1 drive affair. Now on a Mac Pro you can have 3 Fusion Drives if you were so inclined. (I know it does not make sense to do so but still...)

 

[jbg232]

To me, the only "real" reason to get a mac pro is because of the hard drive options which are really limitless. If you need over 32gb of RAM or 12 cores you know who you are and what you are doing. For most other people, an iMac is great EXCEPT for the hard drive limitations.

 

[brand]

To me, the only "real" reason to get a mac pro is because of the hard drive options which are really limitless. If you need over 32gb of RAM or 12 cores you know who you are and what you are doing. For most other people, an iMac is great EXCEPT for the hard drive limitations.

If hard drives are the only real reason to get a Mac Pro does that mean that the 32GB+ RAM and 12 cores of Xeon processing power that you mentioned is not a real reason? What about better graphics processing? What about PCI Express? What about the ability to have more than two monitors?

 

[deconstruct60]

To me, the only "real" reason to get a mac pro is because of the hard drive options which are really limitless.

They are limitless because can leverage external drives if necessary ( very high speed SAN (FiberChannel, aggregated 1GbE, 10GbE, etc.) or SAS/eSATA connectors direct attach storage connections ) . The current iMacs largely leveled the playing field on that functionality. There are some gaps on cost effectiveness and breadth of coverage, but it isn't that hard to attach 10-20TB to an iMac anymore and get multiple 100MB/s out of it.

If restricted to just internal drives it is quite limited because there are limited number of bays to put drives in.

If you need over 32gb of RAM or 12 cores you know who you are and what you are doing. For most other people, an iMac is great EXCEPT for the hard drive limitations.

What the Mac Pro is sorely missing is 4-6 cores and marginally higher than iMac GHz throughput. There are a sizable set of folks who have mixed workload. Some subset choked on legacy software (or somehow necessarily scalar, but that's a smaller subset ) and other software that can scale past 2 and at least to 4-5 cores comfortably.

The dual pacakge set up isn't quite as old as the 4 core offering which pretty ancient at this point ( on the verge of being two Intel tick/tock cycles behind.... ). Without a healthy single package offering the whole Mac Pro line-up is in jeopardy. Both are likely needed for a viable offering.

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My only concern is that the mac pro is 2 old, but i cant wait anymore i gotta get one of the two, what do you guys think?

I think that budgets make a big difference in deciding between the two. Depending upon the system you need for your workload the overall system costs won't be the same. For example, highly storage skewed the Mac Pro may work better. If lightweight local storage then the iMac has traction.

It far more depends upon what the workload mix is going to be rather than the hardware. Especially if primarily just dealing in the intersection in the border area between the BTO iMac and the entry level Mac Pro. That's where the product overlap is highly muddled these days.

 

[Altemose]

Really? Didn't know

Sorry, thought the iMac could only get 16GB of RAM!

As for the Fusion drive, it is classified as one to Pro users. Just because technically it is two, it is built into one drive.

As for the USB 3.0 Card, I was going off of a vanilla Mac Pro fresh out of the box rather than tinkering with cards!

By the way, iMacs can drive two Thunderbolt displays for a total of three counting the internal! An iMac will never run Lion or Snow Leopard, so if Mountain Lion does not serve you appropriately, get a Pro!

 

[DPUser]

Tinkering with cards. The real reason to buy a Mac Pro.

 

[Mactrunk]

To the OP

You can open a Mac Pro.
Yes, actually open an aluminum door and have access to all of the workings.
You can access hard drives, video cards, slots and even the CPUs if you dare.
Even a PSU can be replaced easily.

On the other hand....
The iMac is a beautiful machine and very capable.
Newer processors and a very elegant form factor, but don't even think about opening up the case.

Either one could be a fine choice.

 

[KaraH]

To the OP

You can open a Mac Pro.
Yes, actually open an aluminum door and have access to all of the workings.
You can access hard drives, video cards, slots and even the CPUs if you dare.
Even a PSU can be replaced easily.

On the other hand....
The iMac is a beautiful machine and very capable.
Newer processors and a very elegant form factor, but don't even think about opening up the case.

Either one could be a fine choice.

Drat! I was just about to say pretty much the same question!

To the OP: it sounds like we are in the same boat, at the moment it really boils down to "are you a geek or a consumer". If you want a machine that will arrive on your doorstep that has all of the current bells and whistles, sure go with the iMac. On the other hand if the thought of a real tower you can upgrade and replace/add/upgrade parts in makes you salivate go with the pro.

By going on stock store specs I could use an iMac. Most of my home usage is hobbyist stuff (it involves things others might call work but I consider fun). The stuff I am paid for I do in the office. Having used computers since the ][ though not being able to even OPEN my apple just rubs me the wrong way.

 

[Pval]

A 2012 iMac with i7-3770 scores 12873 in geek bench, the base Mac Pro is slower : http://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks

The graphics (GTX680MX) seems to be on a par with the newly released Mac Edition Radeon 7950 : http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

However the Mac Pro is more flexible and more robust (cooling, upgrades), the iMac is basically a laptop bolted onto the back of a big screen.

 

[trickness]

The Geekbench scores on whatever the new Mac Pro will be (if it ever comes out) will probably triple the top iMac (or more). I've got a RMBP and wouldn't really consider an iMac because as someone posted above, it's a laptop with a screen attached

 

[jpmorais]

The Mac Pro did receive a minor refresh this year.

If you answer yes to any of these questions you need a Mac Pro!

- Do you need to run Snow Leopard and/or PowerPC apps under Rosetta?
- Do you need more than 16 GB of RAM?
- Do you need more than one INTERNAL hard disk?
- Do you have a desperate need to drive multiple video cards?

If you answer yes to any of these questions you need an iMac!

- Will you use Thunderbolt peripherals and/or displays
- Do you want a built in display?
- Do you have USB 3.0 compatible devices?
- Do you want the simplistic look on your desk?

It really is a tough call! The iMac boasts newer and faster hardware, while the Pro offers expandability, but at the cost of legacy hardware!

The only issue for me is the thunderbolt for usb3 i can get a card i have 2 lacie hard drives that are also usb but thunderbolt is more CPU friendly!

but paying apple 900 for a 768 hard drive is crazy!! im so confused!

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What type of use do you need the new machine for?

Im a video editor in NYC and i do work a lot from home especially now that that i just had my right ankle replaced!

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To me, the only "real" reason to get a mac pro is because of the hard drive options which are really limitless. If you need over 32gb of RAM or 12 cores you know who you are and what you are doing. For most other people, an iMac is great EXCEPT for the hard drive limitations.

for me also is the hard drives!!
But 32 of ram would help me a lot for video but with the mac pro i could go up to 96GB of ram if i wanted to! maybe a lil over kill!

----------

Drat! I was just about to say pretty much the same question!

To the OP: it sounds like we are in the same boat, at the moment it really boils down to "are you a geek or a consumer". If you want a machine that will arrive on your doorstep that has all of the current bells and whistles, sure go with the iMac. On the other hand if the thought of a real tower you can upgrade and replace/add/upgrade parts in makes you salivate go with the pro.

By going on stock store specs I could use an iMac. Most of my home usage is hobbyist stuff (it involves things others might call work but I consider fun). The stuff I am paid for I do in the office. Having used computers since the ][ though not being able to even OPEN my apple just rubs me the wrong way.

Well Video work is mostly done by the CPU and the IMAC is pretty capable machine scoring 14000+ on geek bench with a damn good Video Card!

But definitely the mac pro can be more capable if i buy the 12 core and buy a new video card! but im looking double the money as the imac would cost me.

 

[Pval]

I think you just answered your own question, the base model Mac Pro is already $1498 more than the iMac 27", if you take the $999 27" screen into consideration, of course you'll want a higher end model, better graphics card, more disks and probably an extra screen. So the Pro option is easily thrice or more the cost of the iMac, depending on your self-control / bank-balance.

 

[xgman]

I can't understand how anyone could think it is a good idea to buy a current Mac Pro in anything more than a refurb at best, and that at a substantial discount unless money is no object and old technology is acceptable.

 

[Pval]

Totally agree with your money argument, I bought mine for $1000 in a bankruptcy, then upgraded from there. Spend about $1200 on it since in cpu, ram and ssd upgrades, already had a 24", but must admit I've since upgraded to a 27", looking at the sapphire 7950 for a graphics upgrade now.

Beside that, when considering buying a new pro, bear in mind that the Mac Pro isn't sold anymore in Europe, they have to upgrade or lose this market.

I won't get into the new is better argument if you don't mind

 

[jpmorais]

I can't understand how anyone could think it is a good idea to buy a current Mac Pro in anything more than a refurb at best, and that at a substantial discount unless money is no object and old technology is acceptable.

Well i have a big job to work on, my 2008 logic board die on my pro.

So i have around 3k cash to spent on a new MAC!