Fusion drive vs. i7 for general speed performance?

Probably the fusion drive, since the storage device is nowadays the slowest component in a computer, which SSDs can remedy partly.

Also know, that for video editing, if that is what "media editing" means for you, an external scratch drive is recommended.

fusion drive will give you short reaction times and faster booting and app launching etc. this is a no brainer imo if you want to upgrade. this will make your imac run much faster

i7 will give you better performance doing heavy tasks like photo or video editing and rendering etc. but it won't give you better gaming performance

Fusion drive of course. The i7 will only be noticeable if you do some computationally heavy workloads (like video encoding) all the time.

Fusion drive by a county mile. For example my 2011 MBA with SSD is more snappy and feels quicker in most tasks then our HDD driven Mac Pros at work.

Fusion. Hands down.

Regarding Video Editing

simsaladimbamba said:

Probably the fusion drive, since the storage device is nowadays the slowest component in a computer, which SSDs can remedy partly.

Also know, that for video editing, if that is what "media editing" means for you, an external scratch drive is recommended.

Click to expand...

Hello!

I'm considering to buy the iMac 27" for the company I work in video editing.
I just didn't figure out how does Fusion Drive works.
I use of course, an external drive for media files.
The question lies when I export to file.

with an SSD I have the writing speed issue covered, but I'm not so sure in the case of the Fusion Drive.
Will the exported file be written in the SSD or in the HDD?
If it's written in the HDD the time to export or convert video files will be increased which is undesirable.

Bottom line: What's Fusion Drive's behavior whenever you write a new video file (or any type of file)? SSD or HDD?

Thank you.

Miguel Cunha said:

Hello!

I'm considering to buy the iMac 27" for the company I work in video editing.
I just didn't figure out how does Fusion Drive works.
I use of course, an external drive for media files.
The question lies when I export to file.

with an SSD I have the writing speed issue covered, but I'm not so sure in the case of the Fusion Drive.
Will the exported file be written in the SSD or in the HDD?
If it's written in the HDD the time to export or convert video files will be increased which is undesirable.

Bottom line: What's Fusion Drive's behavior whenever you write a new video file (or any type of file)? SSD or HDD?

Thank you.

Click to expand...

i don't really know this but i guess it will put saved files/ downloads on the HDD part just because there is no real benefit playing these from the SSD. the fusion drive will most likely put apps and such stuff that benefit from the SSD speed on the SSD part

Miguel Cunha said:

Hello!

Bottom line: What's Fusion Drive's behavior whenever you write a new video file (or any type of file)? SSD or HDD?

Click to expand...

It always writes to the SSD first from what I've read. If the data is not frequently accessed afterwards, it gets moved to the HDD.

leman said:

It always writes to the SSD first from what I've read. If the data is not frequently accessed afterwards, it gets moved to the HDD.

Click to expand...

So, that being true, there is no loss in speed, compared to SSD.

I've read something about 4GB minimum space on the SSD FD.
What if the video file is bigger?

Miguel Cunha said:

So, that being true, there is no loss in speed, compared to SSD.

I've read something about 4GB minimum space on the SSD FD.
What if the video file is bigger?

Click to expand...

It is a 128 GB SSD plus a 1 TB or 3 TB HDD, not like the Momentus XT from Seagate with its 4 or 8 GB of flash storage.

Thus writing files bigger than 4 GB is allowed, but then again, an external USB 3.0 HDD will suffice, as the CPU is hardly that fast to get you write speeds of more than 50 MB/s during export.

Miguel Cunha said:

So, that being true, there is no loss in speed, compared to SSD.

I've read something about 4GB minimum space on the SSD FD.
What if the video file is bigger?

Click to expand...

Well, if your SSD is full (which is highly unlikely), it will most likely write to the HDD.

Thank you leman and simsaladimbamba, for your valuable insight.

From what you said, I think that Fusion Drive is good enough for me, without the SSD price tag.

Best regards.

does anyone know if the fusion drive hdd of the 27" imac is 5400 or 7200 rpm

deja-vu said:

I am gonna use it for gaming as well, but i still guess that the fusiondrive would be best for me. Would the I7 perfomance gain in gaming be noticable you think?

Click to expand...

Well, what games do you play? Its very unlikely that i7 will have much effect.

For instance, have a look at some benchmarks: http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Intel-Core-i53470-QuadCore-CPU-Review/?page=5

Here, the i5 (3470) is slightly slower than the i7 (3770), but keep in mind that in these tests the GPU influence is minimised because of the low resolution. In most of the games, especially when we are talking about 27" native resolution, the GPU will be the limiting factor. Overall, anything which is playable with the i7 will also be playable with the i5.

P.S. The Fusion Drive won't affect Bootcamp - Windows installation will be the HHD only!

...

Without a doubt the Fusion drive will.