Hey guys
Since yesterday I've been having huge buyers remorse for my new iMac purchase (ordered on the 23rd of January).
Here's my situation.
I have a MacPro 1,1 which is nearly updated as it can be (9GB of RAM, all four hard disk bays occupied, ATI 5770 1GB Ram). I use it professionally and it served me well for all those years.
It definitely starts to show its age especially since I'm doing a lot of complicated work in 3d and AE and I have to do all sorts of tricks to get the speed I want out of it. Lower res previews, quick and fast renders before committing to the final one etc. But there comes a point where a deadline is near and exporting the final content takes time. Not to mention the huge productivity (and creativity) boost of having a very speedy machine while creating the content.
Anyway to make a long story short my main problem with the machine is the slow PCI bus (ATI5770 isn't fully utilized), old CPU, lack of thunderbolt, lack of options for speedy storage connections, lack of official OSX support. OWC SSDs for example can be hardly put to good use and hardware RAID on 4 drives isn't that exciting on this particular machine.
So I decided to take the plunge and buy a BTO iMac with everything nearly topped out. (i7 3,4GHz, 680MX, 1TB Fusion drive and 16GB of Ram from crucial for a total of 24GB + drobo 5D for a thunderbolt RAID). Right from the beginning I wasn't that excited with this machine since in benchmarks it's just x2,5 faster than a 7 year old computer and even though iMac's graphics card is capable it's still a mobile card. But I thought it's about time, so I did it.
The remorse comes from the fact that last night I found out that a upgraded Mac Pro 1,1 with a 5365 Xeon gets nearly the same Cinebench score, as the iMac and at a fraction of the cost. And Cinema 4d is my main 3d program!
So for basically 1/10th of the price I'm getting the same CPU performance! Granted I'm missing a lot of other stuff. For example with the iMac I'm getting x2 the GPU performance (which is important), have a RAID system which isn't insanely fast but very expandable and with dual disk redundancy, a nice big screen and all the new connection ports.
But for some reason I think just updating the hard disks and the CPU on this Mac pro could have lasted me for 1 more year (until the new MacPros come out) and for a fraction of the cost.
It wouldn't be exactly what I wanted but the iMac isn't exactly what I want either!
So right now I'm struggling to justify the cost of a capable but not that exciting new computer. And especially since now I'm also thinking of upgrading the CPU of this Mac along with a few hard disks, which will raise the cost even further!
Am I crazy here or should I just stop whining and get the new machine?
Things are further complicated since in Greece you not only have to give a deposit (which I already did) I have no clue if they'll allow me to cancel the order since it's a BTO and it'll be harder for them to sell the machine.
Man I've got a headache just thinking about it!!!
What do you guys think?
Since yesterday I've been having huge buyers remorse for my new iMac purchase (ordered on the 23rd of January).
Here's my situation.
I have a MacPro 1,1 which is nearly updated as it can be (9GB of RAM, all four hard disk bays occupied, ATI 5770 1GB Ram). I use it professionally and it served me well for all those years.
It definitely starts to show its age especially since I'm doing a lot of complicated work in 3d and AE and I have to do all sorts of tricks to get the speed I want out of it. Lower res previews, quick and fast renders before committing to the final one etc. But there comes a point where a deadline is near and exporting the final content takes time. Not to mention the huge productivity (and creativity) boost of having a very speedy machine while creating the content.
Anyway to make a long story short my main problem with the machine is the slow PCI bus (ATI5770 isn't fully utilized), old CPU, lack of thunderbolt, lack of options for speedy storage connections, lack of official OSX support. OWC SSDs for example can be hardly put to good use and hardware RAID on 4 drives isn't that exciting on this particular machine.
So I decided to take the plunge and buy a BTO iMac with everything nearly topped out. (i7 3,4GHz, 680MX, 1TB Fusion drive and 16GB of Ram from crucial for a total of 24GB + drobo 5D for a thunderbolt RAID). Right from the beginning I wasn't that excited with this machine since in benchmarks it's just x2,5 faster than a 7 year old computer and even though iMac's graphics card is capable it's still a mobile card. But I thought it's about time, so I did it.
The remorse comes from the fact that last night I found out that a upgraded Mac Pro 1,1 with a 5365 Xeon gets nearly the same Cinebench score, as the iMac and at a fraction of the cost. And Cinema 4d is my main 3d program!
So for basically 1/10th of the price I'm getting the same CPU performance! Granted I'm missing a lot of other stuff. For example with the iMac I'm getting x2 the GPU performance (which is important), have a RAID system which isn't insanely fast but very expandable and with dual disk redundancy, a nice big screen and all the new connection ports.
But for some reason I think just updating the hard disks and the CPU on this Mac pro could have lasted me for 1 more year (until the new MacPros come out) and for a fraction of the cost.
It wouldn't be exactly what I wanted but the iMac isn't exactly what I want either!
So right now I'm struggling to justify the cost of a capable but not that exciting new computer. And especially since now I'm also thinking of upgrading the CPU of this Mac along with a few hard disks, which will raise the cost even further!
Am I crazy here or should I just stop whining and get the new machine?
Things are further complicated since in Greece you not only have to give a deposit (which I already did) I have no clue if they'll allow me to cancel the order since it's a BTO and it'll be harder for them to sell the machine.
Man I've got a headache just thinking about it!!!
What do you guys think?
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