iMac 27 i5 or Mac Pro for Final Cut Studio 3?

[damir662]

Hi all... I torn between these two. Please give me your advice and what you think. It will be mostly used for editing in FCP7.

Here are the specs of the computers:

Mac Pro
2 x 2.66GHz Xeon Dual Core
8GB ECC DDR2 FB-DIMM 667MHz RAM
Nvidia 7300GT GPU
Superdrive DVD
Airport
bluetooth
500GB drive

or

iMac 27 i5 2,66 GHz
4 GB (2x 2 GB SO-DIMM) 1066 MHz DDR3 SDRAM
ATI Radeon HD 4850 med 512 MB GDDR3
1TB drive

opinions and comments welcome

 

[redbotsoftware]

I'd go with the iMac. The bench marks almost there, and it looks beautiful. But wait a few weeks, I hear they're getting ready for a refresh!

 

[spinnerlys]

The iMac will suffice, unless you work with uncompressed footage.

The Mac Pro offers eSATA ports (with additional cards), the iMac has FW800 as fastest port.

MRoogle

 

[damir662]

I'd go with the iMac. The bench marks almost there, and it looks beautiful. But wait a few weeks, I hear they're getting ready for a refresh!

Thanks for the advice. Both of them are used computers since I dont have more than around 1200 EUR (1600 USD) so I won't be investing in a new one. Maybe the prices on 1st gen 27' will drop even more with the refresh...