Mac-Pro vs. iMac

[clembo67]

I need your help. I'have iMac Mid 2011 (I7 + 256SSD + 1Tb + 16 GB RAM).
I work with Parallels desktop with many virtual machine and intensive DB application (SQL Server).
My question is: Can new Mac Pro help me to better performance (quad core) working with parallels or not?

Thanks in advance

 

[LostSoul80]

Virtual machines eat up plenty of RAM. I doubt you'd benefit from a new Mac Pro base configuration.
I'd suggest looking to upgrade your machine RAM if it supports more than 16 GB.

 

[shaunp]

I do similar stuff, but VM's in Fusion instead of Parallels. Both products use hyper threading properly and use loads of RAM. Where is your current setup constrained? CPU, RAM, disk I/O? If it were me I'd look to get the 8-core nMP (seems to be the best price point), add the D500's (not much difference in price to the D300's), 512 GB SSD and 12GB RAM - upgrade the RAM to 64GB 3rd-party.

I would use the SSD for creating VM's, then run them from a thunderbolt array such as a Promise Pegasus 2. I have one of these and using the standard HDD's it's okay for VM's. If I were doing a load of stuff that was highly transactional I'd replace the HDD's in the Pegasus with SDD's.

 

[derbothaus]

SSD and memory make the biggest impact on VM's. Unless you are running more than 2 then you need more than a Quad core. Getting a quad core nMP to replace a recent quad core iMac is not the greatest idea. Gains will be slim.