maybe for you, but for others its quite useful for me and it sees many people are happy with the Fusion drive.
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Why the Hate for Fusion Drives?
- Thread starter whodatrr
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I changed my mind about this, and now think a Fusion drive is the way to go for most people. The 'only downside' of using two external hard drives became a bigger deal to me the longer I thought about it. I now think that having all your data internally, a backup drive and Time Machine running is probably the simplest setup for most people.
Besides, I think that a Fusion Drive is more suitable for casual users, since they install only a handful of apps and have a lot of media files. It's a shame that Apple downgraded the 1TB Fusion Drive flash to 24GB, but at least the 2TB Fusion Drive with 128GB flash provides a very balanced option.
I've ordered my iMac with a 2TB Fusion Drive about 1.5 week ago. Hopefully, it'll be delivered this week. The one thing I'm concerned about, is that the hard drive's noise will bother me, but I guess we'll wait and find out...
In general it makes little difference. I do 4k video editing on a top-spec 2013 iMac 27 with 3TB FD and external Thunderbolt array, also a top-spec 2015 iMac 27 with 1TB SSD and TB array. There is little performance difference attributable to the boot drive. The $100 feature film "Focus" was partially edited on a iMac 27 with 3TB Fusion Drive, although the media was on a large Thunderbolt RAID array.
OTOH the opposing view is if all your media will be external, why not get an SSD iMac? It is not hugely faster for everything but you will occasionally encounter situations (say copying large folders) when the SSD makes a meaningful improvement.
thanks Joema2..finally a down to earth practical opinion...I will always do all my editing (1080p for now but perhaps 4k in the future) on external drives...I will continue to use my Lacie D2 for now connected to the thunderbolt (via an adaptor-I hope it works without issues...does anyone know if this solution works flawlessly?) and when the moment comes I will get a big mother thunderbolt raid! so perhaps a 2TB FD is just not needed and perhaps a 512 GB SSD would be the best solution (even if at a premium)...My main concern is video and that it will play smoothly-I just got concerned when some people expressed their opinion that FD would wreck the editing process-dropped frames etc but really that cannot be the case...hard drives have come a long way.
SSDs should be inside all imacs really but not at their current price. It just that it sounds nice to say that the imac has plenty of internal storage but if I'm going to upgrade from a nice but slow imac 2009 to a late 2015, I want to have the best system I can afford that can last min 4 years...or so...
thanks again Jooema2!
Erick
SSDs should be inside all imacs really but not at their current price. It just that it sounds nice to say that the imac has plenty of internal storage but if I'm going to upgrade from a nice but slow imac 2009 to a late 2015, I want to have the best system I can afford that can last min 4 years...or so...
thanks again Jooema2!
Erick
I think some people hate the fusion drive because they want it to be more like an ssd when it isn't. For most people the fusion drive is enough. Ssd will always be consistently faster but is the cost and capacity limitations worth it over the fusion? That's up to the user 
I have the new iMac with the 3TB FB and I can assure you there is very little noise from the hard drive. I think you will be very happy.
My 2010 iMac is pretty quiet with a spinner (the noisiest part is the Super drive), so I suspect my 2015 iMac with fusion drive will also be pretty quiet.
When editing single-stream H264 1080p or 4k, dropped frames are usually a CPU or GPU deficiency, not I/O. The I/O rate is just not that high. If you edit a lower-compression codec like ProRes 422, Red Raw, etc, the I/O load is higher, especially if multicam. However this I/O is typically to the media drive not the boot drive.
In general I mildly prefer a SSD boot drive because the performance is a little more consistent and (in theory) it might be a little more reliable but those two items get blown out of proportion.
Yes if you do a huge 500GB folder copy there's a big difference between SSD and FD. But how often is that? With a 512GB or smaller SSD there's not enough space to move huge amounts of bulk data.
The main reason for me would be that it's significantly more expensive if I would want to get a meaningful amount of SSD storage. Obviously you could easily get by with 256GB if you use your computer as a dedicated media workstation. But I wouldn't want to organize all my stuff, VMs, games, and so on and put everything on the appropriate storage module.
I have all my videos on external storage. And obviously, when it's not connected, I can't edit any videos. But beyond that, my computer is fully useable no matter what, and I don't have to care about anything storage related. It's mainly a convenience thing.
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sorry to bother you Joema with a question a bif off topic...how "safe" is it to buy a used late 2014 imac i7 given the reports about overheating under heavy loads- I won't play games but encoding/editing video will for sure push the computer. I found a used system for half of what a late 2015 would cost me...with applecare still valid.
the specs look good, even a 512 GB SSD, i7, 16GB RAM, a 2GB video card (I would prefer 4GB but 2 GB might be just fine, no?)...my only concern is the overheating reports and how this affects the performance of the CPU...sorry this is totally off topic..couldn't resist@.
thanks for your opinion,
E
I don't have a good answer. Max Yuryev did a test of this which he references in this video but I can't find the original test anymore:
You are right a top-spec 2015 iMac 27 is expensive and a good deal on a 2014 model is hard to pass up. Premiere behaves differently than FCP X in terms of CPU utilization on common editing operations, e.g, scrubbing through the timeline. With Premiere all cores are more consistently at higher utilization, so you'd be more likely to encounter fan noise and thermal limiting. It's not any faster, simply the code is just less efficient. You might consider that in your evaluation.
darn! I guess a late 2014 may not be the best route to go...sorry to put forward one more question Joema2...
I read that you have a top of the line 2013 and also a top of the line 2015...can the 2013 hold its own against the 2015? I see the benchamarks and the 2015 i7 is faster...and it has that gorgeous 5k screen...
how do you find them in real work? editing/exporting/encoding? Is the Thunderbolt (not 2 I know) ok with using firewire external drives? I came across a late 2013 with these specs:
Processor: 3.9GHz Turbo with i7 Quad Core 3.5GHz
Memory: 32GB 1600MHz DDR3
Storage: 1TB Flash || Solid State Drive
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M with 4 GB of dedicated GDDR5 memory
at about 65% of the cost a Late 2015 would cost me...if the 2014 didnt have heating problems that would be a good one for me....
thanks....
Erick
I read that you have a top of the line 2013 and also a top of the line 2015...can the 2013 hold its own against the 2015? I see the benchamarks and the 2015 i7 is faster...and it has that gorgeous 5k screen...
how do you find them in real work? editing/exporting/encoding? Is the Thunderbolt (not 2 I know) ok with using firewire external drives? I came across a late 2013 with these specs:
Processor: 3.9GHz Turbo with i7 Quad Core 3.5GHz
Memory: 32GB 1600MHz DDR3
Storage: 1TB Flash || Solid State Drive
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M with 4 GB of dedicated GDDR5 memory
at about 65% of the cost a Late 2015 would cost me...if the 2014 didnt have heating problems that would be a good one for me....
thanks....
Erick
Yes I have tested 2013 and 2015 iMacs side-by-side many times on FCP X. While the 2015 is modestly faster in specific benchmarks, the 2013 in actual use feels just as fast. You can see some benchmarks I ran in this post (M395 tests by twilexia): https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/m380-m390-m395-m395x-thread.1928278/page-15#post-22210423
Don't over-emphasize any specific benchmarks. The 2013 iMac 27 is a very fast machine and well capable of 4k video editing. I would not hesitate to get the 2013 from a performance standpoint.
That said the retina display on the 2015 is very nice. You don't really need it but the display is very crisp, especially on text. You can inspect retina vs non-retina displays at a local Apple store.
Re Firewire HDDs, I don't have any of those. You'd need a Thunderbolt-to-Firewire adapter. I don't know how well those work.
Given the small size of SSD in config for Fusion drives I'd rather spend a little bit more and get a decent sized SSD for my main drive, and then add a HDD (USB 3.0 or TB Array depending upon the budget and requirements) to store all of my data.
2TB SSD's aren't that expensive now however and I can see in the next 12-18 months Apple finally ditching HDD's altogether and going completely flash across the range.
2TB SSD's aren't that expensive now however and I can see in the next 12-18 months Apple finally ditching HDD's altogether and going completely flash across the range.
So, a couple months after starting this thread, I went in a non-iMac direction. I did buy a 2015 iMac, but it had some hardware issues. Also, I had requirements that were beyond the iMac's comfort-zone, so I wound up with another platform. I still do have my old iMac, with Fusion drive. And, were I to buy a new one, I would still seriously consider the FD for its mix of price/performance/simplicity.
The system I did wind up going with does also have a mix of Spinning and SSD, but just many more of them.
Boot/OS - 512GB M2 NVMe SSD
Main Data - 2x1TB SATA 6 SSD in RAID 0
Sandbox - 128 SSD/2TB 7200 (using Intel SRT, much like Apple Fusion)
Backup - 5TB 7200 (actually haven't bought this drive yet, but that's where I'm headed).
I haven't played with Intel SRT much in this system, but have used it in the past. It's pretty much like Apple's Fusion drive, in that it allows you to use an SSD for accelerating a spinner. I mainly used it in my new system because it came with a very small SSD and spinner that I didn't have much other use for, so they'll be doing lots of VM/work stuff.
FWIW, I've also been doing quite a bit of drive testing, with various SSD configs:
It should be noted, however, that someone purchasing an iMac with a 2TB Fusion drive will likely experience the same or even better drive speeds than I am, for most day to day operations. The NVMe drive in the iMac is indeed very fast, and that's what users will be interacting with when loading their OS, apps, and frequently accessed data.
The system I did wind up going with does also have a mix of Spinning and SSD, but just many more of them.
Boot/OS - 512GB M2 NVMe SSD
Main Data - 2x1TB SATA 6 SSD in RAID 0
Sandbox - 128 SSD/2TB 7200 (using Intel SRT, much like Apple Fusion)
Backup - 5TB 7200 (actually haven't bought this drive yet, but that's where I'm headed).
I haven't played with Intel SRT much in this system, but have used it in the past. It's pretty much like Apple's Fusion drive, in that it allows you to use an SSD for accelerating a spinner. I mainly used it in my new system because it came with a very small SSD and spinner that I didn't have much other use for, so they'll be doing lots of VM/work stuff.
FWIW, I've also been doing quite a bit of drive testing, with various SSD configs:
- PCIE SSD - Yielded 1600r/1500w. I believe that I can improve that to North of 2k, if I put it in a faster slot, but 1500 is about as fast as I need.
- SATA 3/6 SSD - Got around 500 read & write. probably more like 540/480, on my system
- SATA 3/6 RAID 0 - Seeing around 900 reads and 850 writes. So yes, RAID 0 offers a very nice performance improvement for SATA SSDs, but it's still about half of what you get with NVMe. And yes, this volume will be frequently backed up.
It should be noted, however, that someone purchasing an iMac with a 2TB Fusion drive will likely experience the same or even better drive speeds than I am, for most day to day operations. The NVMe drive in the iMac is indeed very fast, and that's what users will be interacting with when loading their OS, apps, and frequently accessed data.
I have to admit, this thread has really got me thinking. I placed an order for an i7 with 512GB SSD, but now I'm wondering a little if I wouldn't be better served by a 2 TB or 3 TB FD. I consider myself a fairly average consumer, but I do photo editing of RAW files and some audio recording. I'm sure there is no right or wrong.
Personally, I go with SSD internal and an external drive hooked up. Sorta like a Fusion Drive, except I get to manage where everything goes manually. Might seem tedious to some, but I don't mind putting in a bit of work to have exactly what I want, where I want it.
I got the 512 SSD and it was definitely the right choice. I have a 2TB external USB 3 spinner for archive files and the whole setup works great for me.
I got the Freedom Quattro 3. I just archive stuff to it manually.
I have an older 500Gb Freecom set up as a Time Machine drive to automatically back up what is on the internal SSD.
I would definitely recommend Freecom drives (the disk is actually a Toshiba)
I have an older 500Gb Freecom set up as a Time Machine drive to automatically back up what is on the internal SSD.
I would definitely recommend Freecom drives (the disk is actually a Toshiba)
Thank you. I just noticed you are in the UK. I don't think that is a product easily available in the US, but there are various others that are similar, of course. I was just curious if you were using a portable USB portable drive or a desktop external drive, and I see that it is the latter. Looks good too
Might I suggest using a internal SSD (big enough for OS X and Windows if desired) with a portable Seagate External "Fast" RAID-0 hard disk (USB powered) which can be velcro'd to the back of the iMac stand out of sight. It is quite fast, and the 4TB model would allow a bootable clone of your SSD plus plenty of space for photo, music, video libraries. Then perhaps a larger 3.5" USB3 backup disk (6TB) behind or under your desk for Time Machine backups. Neat and clean for normal "everyday" computer usage.
This thread has been interesting reading. I'm on the verge of buying a 21.5" iMac, and I was weighing my decision between a 256GB SSD and a 1TB Fusion, even taking into account that the 1TB Fusion has just 24GB SSD. I'm a light user; rarely anything more advanced than hobbyist-photo stuff. The occasional iMovie (like, once every year or two). I was told as a general idea that a 1TB Fusion would be 2-4 times as fast as the regular 1TB HDD, while the pure SSD would be about 8 times as fast, and it was a matter of how much money I wanted to spend.