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27" iMac or Mac Pro?

Refurbs

I don't think that I would spend an extra $400 for the 2.93 over a 2.66 quad Mac Pro. Especially since these are last years models. For the OP's needs it may be overkill.
 
I have the i7 and it is spectacular. But... the biggest feature missing (IMO) is the lack of fast external connects for more storage. FW 800 is ok I guess, but I'd love to see some more options there.

EDIT: Actually, dual internal drives would be nice too, (thinking SSD + 2TB HDD).
 
Cave Man said:
Nope, hyperthreading. Aperture 3 uses all 8 "cores" of an i7 processor. Even Handbrake uses all 8 of the i7 "cores".
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Yes, but that's called multithreading! The software actually doesn't know if the cores are real or fake cores created by hyper threading and it doesn't matter since the Intel processor itself splits up the threads to its cores, which are either real or virtual. The software can't do that.
 
Transporteur said:
Yes, but that's called multithreading! The software actually doesn't know if the cores are real or fake cores created by hyper threading and it doesn't matter since the Intel processor itself splits up the threads to its cores, which are either real or virtual. The software can't do that.
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From THIS page:


Processor and memory

21.5-inch and 27-inch models, one of the following:
3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB shared L2 cache
3.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 6MB shared L2 cache
27-inch models only, one of the following:
2.66GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor with 8MB shared L3 cache; Turbo Boost dynamic performance up to 3.2GHz
2.8GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with 8MB shared L3 cache; Turbo Boost dynamic performance up to 3.46GHz; Hyper-Threading for up to eight virtual cores
4GB (two 2GB SO-DIMMs) of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM; four SO-DIMM slots support up to 16GB
 
I'd recommend looking into a lower end Mac Pro once the new ones come out, if you can wait. :) Initially the iMac is an elegant all-in-one solution but once you need an external HD or other external devices it becomes less elegant, so IMO the Mac Pro is more elegant. You can put the tower below your desk so that only the display and speakers are on your desk with the keyboard and mouse.

Much much easier to install more RAM or a SSD in the Mac Pro versus the iMac. Installing RAM or SSD yourself may void iMac warranty, but since Mac Pro is made to install these extras, it won't void warranty.
 
we all are expecting updates of the mac pro or the macbook pro, its the 100 dollar question will either arrive before the iPad launch on april 3rd.....
 
Transporteur said:
Yes, but that's called multithreading! The software actually doesn't know if the cores are real or fake cores created by hyper threading and it doesn't matter since the Intel processor itself splits up the threads to its cores, which are either real or virtual. The software can't do that.
Click to expand...
For the record, I understand the difference and perhaps I wasn't being clear enough; when I said "nothing I'm doing uses hyperthreading" what I meant was that I'm not running anything that's using more than four cores, and therefore nothing is (at least as far as I can see) taking much advantage of hyperthreading, because it doesn't really kick in until there are at least five threads running concurrently.

And in truth, I'm probably wrong; there may well be times when there are more than four concurrent threads even in my usage patterns, it's just that they're brief and/or low-CPU enough that I'm not seeing them in the graph. Could well be that things are subtly more responsive and/or faster on account of whatever thread management the i7 does.

An aside, when did the Xeons in the Mac Pro get Turbo Boost? Just thinking that if one were debating between an older Mac Pro without Turbo Boost with an i7 (or even i5) iMac, depending on your use patterns the boosted iMac could have a speed advantage not apparent in raw clock speed numbers. (For those unfamiliar, Turbo Boost can overclock a single core if there's a single-threaded operation taking place and the load is otherwise low enough that there's cooling overhead to handle it.)
 
Makosuke said:
An aside, when did the Xeons in the Mac Pro get Turbo Boost? Just thinking that if one were debating between an older Mac Pro without Turbo Boost with an i7 (or even i5) iMac, depending on your use patterns the boosted iMac could have a speed advantage not apparent in raw clock speed numbers. (For those unfamiliar, Turbo Boost can overclock a single core if there's a single-threaded operation taking place and the load is otherwise low enough that there's cooling overhead to handle it.)
Click to expand...

Only the current generation Mac Pro comes with TurboBoost which can not only overclock a single core, it works with 2 cores, too.
By the way, the i7 iMac processor and the processors the current generation Mac Pro uses are both based on the Nehalem architecture.
 
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