Mac Pro 2008 vs new iMac - video editing

[timbob]

Hi Guys,

I'm considering a second hand 2008 mac pro -http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/stats/mac-pro-eight-core-2.8-2008-specs.html

2.8 GHZ - 8 Core, 6 GB Ram - Radeon HD 2600 XT

I was just wondering how this would stack up against the new iMacs (i3 & i5) performance wise, specifically for video editing in final cut pro.

Many thanks in advance

Tim

 

[asdf542]

http://www.primatelabs.ca/geekbench/mac-benchmarks/

Order from best to worst processor performance:
iMac (Mid 2010) 2.93 i7 4-core - 9084
Mac Pro (Early 2008) 2.8 8-core - 8994
iMac (Mid 2010) 3.6 i5 2-core - 6967
iMac (Mid 2010) 2.8 i5 4-core - 6735
iMac (Mid 2010) 3.2 i3 2-core - 5948
iMac (Mid 2010) 3.06 i3 2-core - 5737

Give or take from some of the scores since they are averages. Bear in mind that the 2600 XT does not support OpenCL which all of the current GPU's in the iMacs support so that may speed up encoding times down the pipe should Apple ever implement it into the QuickTime engine.

 

[initialsBB]

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Both should be roughly equivalent, but you don't get ease of expandability for storage. It depends what you are going to be editing and the quantity of rushes you will have. The iMac is a beautiful machine, but you'll get more mileage out of the MacPro.

 

[timbob]

Mac pro vs iMac

Fantastic Advice guys,

That clears things up for me now. Mac pro it is I think )

 

[CaptainChunk]

Also, those are synthetic benchmarks, which don't always paint the entire picture.

For example, an 2008 8-core 2.8 will certainly render in Compressor (entirely CPU-based) faster (with a QMaster virtual cluster enabled) than any current iMac will because it simply has more physical processing cores.

But a 2010 Core i7 iMac will be faster in single-threaded tasks, due to the higher clock speed and improved CPU architecture.

 

[dgrgich]

I'll second what folks are saying here . . .

. . . and I have first-hand experience with both machines.

Get the Mac Pro and then a better video card and you'll only miss the 27" screen. Having the drives onboard and available makes all the difference in the world.

 

[TheStrudel]

Or you could buy a 27" screen. Or a better graphics card. Or multiple graphics cards and a plethora of monitors.

It's worth pointing out that every Mac Pro is actually going to get faster, not slower, as software is slowly re-engineered to actually use all the hardware.

I'm two years into the lifespan of mine, and I expect it to be competitive for another six.