If you're on a budget, the new Mac Mini should be a monster when paired with a SATA III ssd. Update should happen very soon.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
MacPro vs iMac
- Thread starter selonimes
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
If you are coming from a PC, you will be disappointed in the 'expandability' of the Mac Pro. From a gamers perspective, there is no guarantee that that new fancy video card will even be released for the Mac and even if it is, Apple may decide to limit it to the 'new' model they just released and not the one you bought a year ago. Upgrading a Mac Pro for the latest hardware usually means selling the old one and buying a new one, but that is pretty cost effective since they have strong resell value.
The Achilles heel of the iMac is that it is an all-in-one device with no 'user' access to most parts (and I don't consider needing to remove the screen with a suction cup in a clean room 'user access'). If any major part dies, you can't replace it and the upgrade path is non-existent.
The Mac Mini - if it meets your current needs for processor and video becomes an interesting choice with Thunderbolt for external hard drives.
The Achilles heel of the iMac is that it is an all-in-one device with no 'user' access to most parts (and I don't consider needing to remove the screen with a suction cup in a clean room 'user access'). If any major part dies, you can't replace it and the upgrade path is non-existent.
The Mac Mini - if it meets your current needs for processor and video becomes an interesting choice with Thunderbolt for external hard drives.
Agreed, if running 64bit Windows 7 and getting BSOD more than once in a very long while (about as often as a Mac Pro Kernel Panics) you have a major system issue with your build not a Windows issue.
Although I don't own a Mac Pro, I would prefer one. In terms of value, the iMac is a steal compared to the price of the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro offers expansion, which equals longevity, while the iMac is difficult to upgrade as all of the components are stuffed into a thin machine, plus the fact that you have to pull off the glass and LCD every time you want to do something other than upgrade the RAM, which is always risky. As far as speed, Mac Pro all the way, while it's clock speeds aren't amazingly impressive, the large amount of cores will prevail once software can make use of them. Recently there have been rumours of an entirely new Mac Pro, so I'd sit tight until further notice.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)
No, the GPU is very important. I didn't mention it because that can be upgraded later, so at least to me it is less important when buying the computer. You will be able to get by with an ATI card like the 5870, but you will be much better off with a Nvidia Quadro card. Currently the Quadro 4000 Mac edition is the best if your running OS X. The downside is that the card costs between $700-$1200 depending on where you get it.
As for what screen I use: I have an Apple 27" LED Cinema Display.
akilone said:
No, the GPU is very important. I didn't mention it because that can be upgraded later, so at least to me it is less important when buying the computer. You will be able to get by with an ATI card like the 5870, but you will be much better off with a Nvidia Quadro card. Currently the Quadro 4000 Mac edition is the best if your running OS X. The downside is that the card costs between $700-$1200 depending on where you get it.
As for what screen I use: I have an Apple 27" LED Cinema Display.