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Trying to justify replacing HP desktop with iMac

subroutines

subroutines

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 30, 2009
67
26
I currently have an HP Desktop the basic specs are:

AMD Athlon - 3GHz
512 mb Nvidia GC
3 GB Memory

It only cost about 400 - 500 dollars to purchase and upgrade. I don't do any gaming but I do HD video editing.

I am looking at a general iMac with roughly about 3 GHz, 4GB RAM and it appears to be 256 MB card (either shared or discrete). So I am wondering if I am losing any performance by going to an iMac considering the it costs a bit more and the graphic card is somewhat questionable?

Thanks in advance and I appreciate any feedback or comments.
 
subroutines said:
I currently have an HP Desktop the basic specs are:

AMD Athlon - 3GHz
512 mb Nvidia GC
3 GB Memory

It only cost about 400 - 500 dollars to purchase and upgrade. I don't do any gaming but I do HD video editing.

I am looking at a general iMac with roughly about 3 GHz, 4GB RAM and it appears to be 256 MB card (either shared or discrete). So I am wondering if I am losing any performance by going to an iMac considering the it costs a bit more and the graphic card is somewhat questionable?

Thanks in advance and I appreciate any feedback or comments.
Click to expand...


trying to justify a purchase 4 times the price of the machine its replacing when the performance will be the same..??

good luck.....


just buy Win 7 for the existing PC... to get the best OS and value for money!

with the change.... have a nice vacation..! ;)
 
You should either get a quad-core iMac or build/buy a PC because C2D iMac isn't really an upgrade in performance as it's about as fast as your current. So if your budget allows you to get quad-core iMac, get one, they are amazing, but if it doesn't, you can build a very decent PC for less than 1000$ and it'll crush any iMac.

By the way, how intensive is your editing? Something light with iMovie? Or something heavy with e.g. After Effects?
 
Replace HP

I had an HP, 4 gig RAM, 500 gig HD and Vista. Got a MBP and loved it. Bought the 21.5 IMAC and it is fabulous. I hardly ever touched the HP due to Vista and Windows. My son put Windows 7 on it and I have to admit, it runs 100% better, but, you can't beat a MAC. Just working with photos is reason enough for me to stay with the MACs.
 
Hellhammer said:
You should either get a quad-core iMac or build/buy a PC because C2D iMac isn't really an upgrade in performance as it's about as fast as your current. So if your budget allows you to get quad-core iMac, get one, they are amazing, but if it doesn't, you can build a very decent PC for less than 1000$ and it'll crush any iMac.

By the way, how intensive is your editing? Something light with iMovie? Or something heavy with e.g. After Effects?
Click to expand...

Thanks for the responses.

I use Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects.
 
thegoldenmackid said:
I would upgrade the iMac's video card, but in general you should have a faster machine with the iMac because of OSX's efficiency compared to Windows.
Click to expand...

Yeah I guess I could customize the purchase of Imac through the store...didn't realize that. But overall I am just looking for the same performance or better with an iMac.

Also is there much of a difference in performance with the Quad Core? I have heard rumblings that most people don't even use all of Dual Core power
 
Yes, you will get more power with QuadCore, as you have more cores available for other apps in the system.

Don't forget to factor in the cost of purchasing the software for your iMac as well (Premier, After Effects, etc.)
 
iShater said:
Yes, you will get more power with QuadCore, as you have more cores available for other apps in the system.

Don't forget to factor in the cost of purchasing the software for your iMac as well (Premier, After Effects, etc.)
Click to expand...

Adobe allows you to transfer the license from Windows to OS X. There may be a small fee but the OP won't have to re-buy his Adobe software.
 
iShater said:
Yes, you will get more power with QuadCore, as you have more cores available for other apps in the system.

Don't forget to factor in the cost of purchasing the software for your iMac as well (Premier, After Effects, etc.)
Click to expand...

excuse my ignorance on processors, but when I look at the listings they have quadcores rated at 2.66?

Also would there be much of difference between 2.66 and 2.8 Quad Core processor or is the difference very minimal?
 
subroutines said:
excuse my ignorance on processors, but when I look at the listings they have quadcores rated at 2.66?

Also would there be much of difference between 2.66 and 2.8 Quad Core processor or is the difference very minimal?
Click to expand...


That 2.66 is Giga Hertz which is the frequency of the processor. While dual core is available at 3.33GHz it has only two cores while the quad core has four. Because you're a newbie with processors we can do it in this way (this isn't realistic but gives you an idea of it):

2 x 3.33GHz = 6.66GHz
4 x 2.8GHz = 11.2GHz

If you have the money, 2.8GHz is worth it as it has Hyper-threading
 
Hellhammer said:
That 2.66 is Giga Hertz which is the frequency of the processor. While dual core is available at 3.33GHz it has only two cores while the quad core has four. Because you're a newbie with processors we can do it in this way (this isn't realistic but gives you an idea of it):

2 x 3.33GHz = 6.66GHz
4 x 2.8GHz = 11.2GHz

If you have the money, 2.8GHz is worth it as it has Hyper-threading
Click to expand...

The extra cores allow you to do more things while you are rendering or importing, exporting, etc. i.e. the processor is available to do more parallel tasks. Unless your application can use all 4 cores (I thought some Adobe apps use only 2?) then it can get more performance boost.
 
iShater said:
The extra cores allow you to do more things while you are rendering or importing, exporting, etc. i.e. the processor is available to do more parallel tasks. Unless your application can use all 4 cores (I thought some Adobe apps use only 2?) then it can get more performance boost.
Click to expand...

I think Premiere Pro and After Effects support quad core. In addition, quad core has Turbo Boost which boosts the 2.8GHz quad to 3.46GHz so even if the app can only support one or two core(s), it'll be faster than C2D
 
The quad-core processors boost their clock rate when not using all cores so are basically never slower than the 3GHz C2Ds. It's really difficult to keep all the cores busy, and there are other factors involved (display performance, disk performance) so it is hard to quantize the real world performance boost of the i5 or i7, but it sure seems fast!

So far the biggest improvement has been with Handbrake, which really flies, and running multiple virtual machines. The Hyperthreading in the i7 is only good for maybe a 25% speed boost if you can manage to utilize more than 4 simultaneous threads. Ho-hum. But if I can get an extra year of life out of the i7 over the C2D, or a few months extra over the i5, it will have paid for itself.
 
If you are going to do mostly gaming and just looking for more power to process video. I'd personally just buy/build a Quad PC and save yourself some cash while getting a better graphics card. OSX/Windows aside the same i7 860 Quad chip, 6 gigs of ram, 1TB HD, and a 5870 ATI 1gig ram card (plus PS, Case etc..) can be had for around 1200 bucks or less. Then your just have to find a monitor that suits you. IPS panels are very nice and I love mine but it's not the end of the world for gaming and video. If it's professional photo work then the IPS panel and the iMac may make sense.

While I'm not a fan of windows OS, you can't compare the mobile version of the 4850 to a desktop card like the 5870 in a gaming rig. I have a 2yr old 8800 GTS w/768mb ram with a 2.4 duo core that can run higher FPS in games than the iMac. If gaming is what your really doing, I'd have to suggest building a rig specific for your needs. The video editing can be done on either machine and since your using Windows based software now it would work on either platform.
 
Hellhammer said:
That 2.66 is Giga Hertz which is the frequency of the processor. While dual core is available at 3.33GHz it has only two cores while the quad core has four. Because you're a newbie with processors we can do it in this way (this isn't realistic but gives you an idea of it):

2 x 3.33GHz = 6.66GHz
4 x 2.8GHz = 11.2GHz

If you have the money, 2.8GHz is worth it as it has Hyper-threading
Click to expand...

thanks for the explanation.:)
 
Hey you may want to keep your pc and plug it in the iMac through the video in.

Then using cmd-F2 you can switch between both computer.

Also look at the geekbench benchmarks, iMac i7 beats even some 16 cores pc, scoring around 9000.

Latest iMac score: Intel Core i7 860 @ 2.80 GHz (1 processor, 4 cores, 8 threads) = 9765

http://www.primatelabs.ca/blog/mac-benchmarks/ (new iMac 27" i7 not yet in that page / 9765 means above Mac Pro 8 cores (2008-2009)) - Only the 16 cores or latest 8 cores Mac pro beats it.
http://www.primatelabs.ca/blog/pc-benchmarks/
 
you just cant justify purchasing a mac on pure performance aspects , its like buying a car only because of the spec ,
despite i'm not a fan of huge screens and flat panels in particular , the iMac 27" i7 looks damn good for a flat panel AIO system ,
so compare it with a car again , a ferrari , you dont purchase a ferrari because of the pure spec and performance , you buy it for its design and you know it has sufficient performance as its a ferrari
same for the iMac you buy it for its design and you know it will have sufficient performance


but good design comes at a premium price
but we dont talk about money as money should not be something to take in consideration when buying a new mac ,
as we all know we could get better performance for half the price , but without the brilliant design of apple......and without osx
 
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