Upgrade to new iMac or old Pro?

[facundocampos]

Hey there,

As the title states, I'm currently thinking about upgrading to a newer work station. I do a lot of video and some photo work and I was curious the other day if upgrading my iMac8,1 to a newer iMac would be a good idea, or would it be smarter to go with an older MacPro5,1? Say like one of the 2012 six core Westmeres? Would it perform better than say a 2014 iMac?

I know this kind of a strange question, but it ultimately comes down to price. Can I get more bang for my buck by buying an older, yet more robust model?

Thanks

 

[DougTheImpaler]

How much tinkering do you want to do when you get the machine? Would buying a 4,1 from OWC for $600 and then upgrading it yourself be an option? Also, do you have a display already? Your iMac 8,1 doesn't support target display mode. If you don't already have a nice monitor, the iMac makes a lot of sense. How multithreaded is your work load? Haswell iMacs have better per-core performance, though with 6 cores Westmere-EP can be faster overall. For OpenCL apps, you can get a lot more video performance in a Mac Pro thanks to just slapping a PC card in the slot (with the appropriate power cables, of course). Just a lot of variables and we can give better answers based on how they work for you.

But that monitor thing is pretty convincing. If you don't have one, it'd be awfully tempting to just get a 27" iMac and call it a day, and if you need the OpenCL acceleration, get the higher-end 27".

 

[facundocampos]

Hi Doug,

Thanks for the reply. Yes, buying a bare bones model and upgrading that would definitely be an option and that's something else that I would consider, making the old Mac Pro even more powerful. But even the base model MacPro 3,1 or 4,1 would still yield better results than what I'm currently working with if I'm not wrong. In the end, that's all I'm concerned about, the MacPro being faster than what I'm currently using.

I currently work with a dual monitor setup so I have the extra monitor right now. I'm aware that I would have to purchase another one, but I've considered that a given, since I don't plan on going back to using only one screen.

I'm currently work on FCP7 but plan to switch over to Premiere so I can better use OpenCL for improved GPU. So, at the moment not too much multithreading, but I plan on using it.

Is there anywhere that you know where I could compare benchmarks of the older MacPros vs a newer iMac?

 

[IowaLynn]

Barefeats

And FCP-X 10+ and Mavericks or above, dual AMD GPUs can push a lot of the workload. Also on Barefeats.

Real World Speed Tests for Performance Minded Apple Mac Users
February 27th, 2015 -- 5K SHOOTOUT: iMac 5K versus Mac Pro ... Quad-Core Macs (MacBook Pro vs iMac vs Mac Pro) August 11th ... late 2013' Mac Pro Quad versus 'late 2013' iMac Quad i7
http://www.barefeats.com/

Real World Speed Tests for Performance Minded Apple Mac Users
February 27th, 2015 -- 5K SHOOTOUT: iMac 5K versus Mac Pro ... Quad-Core Macs (MacBook Pro vs iMac vs Mac Pro) August 11th ... late 2013' Mac Pro Quad versus 'late 2013' iMac Quad i7
http://www.barefeats.com/index.html

--------------------

Final Cut Pro 10.1 shootout - old vs new Mac Pro
Pro X 10.1 Shootout: 2013 Mac Pro vs 2010 Mac Pro Originally posted Thursday, ... 8-core 2013 Mac Pro with FirePro D700s ... with top 2013 iMac results Final Cut Pro X 10.1
http://www.barefeats.com/tube05.html

2013 Mac Pro 4-Core vs 2013 iMac 4-core
GRAPH LEGEND 2013 MP 4c 3.7GHz = 'late 2013' Mac Pro Xeon E5- ... here. Since the newest iMac and Mac Pro both have PCIe flash ... display for the Mac Pro since the iMac comes with the
http://www.barefeats.com/tube03.html