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Mac Pro vs iMac

S

SuperMiguel

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 6, 2010
423
12
Sofor around the same price $3500 i can get a high end 27" iMac or a low end Mac Pro with a Apple LED Cinema Display

Mac Pro: $2500 with out monitor
One 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem”
3GB (3x1GB)
1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive
ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB

iMac: $3000
3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
4GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
2TB Serial ATA Drive + 256GB Solid State Drive

AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2GB GDDR5

Im an Computer Engineering Student, do a lot of programming on it, and play world of warcraft...

I will update both system to SSD and memory to 16GB
 
In this case, the iMac will be a quicker machine by a fair amount than the Mac Pro. The price difference really does make this a no-brainer in my opinion.
 
lamboman said:
In this case, the iMac will be a quicker machine by a fair amount than the Mac Pro. The price difference really does make this a no-brainer in my opinion.
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How about the base dual CPU one? The one with 2 2.4 Ghz Xeon is $3500
 
alust2013 said:
Programming really won't benefit from more cores, so that one will be slower. For what you need, the Mac Pro is simply a waste of money.
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This.

The new iMacs are really fast enough for most career professionals, and will definitely be enough for programming.
 
i would really love to own a mac pro but as I see it most iMacs are great for most uses with the added benefit of a built in display...
 
In this case the Mac Pro only benefit would be "bragging rights". I don't play games but for programming *any* Mac model with a big display (or two!) will be fine.
 
SuperMiguel said:
Umm I was Actually more concern about the video card
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The base dual processor model's card is the same as the base single processor's...5770.

If you do a CTO Mac Pro, the 5870 is available and is faster than the 6970M in the iMac. Worth it though? Definitely not.
 
lamboman said:
The base dual processor model's card is the same as the base single processor's...5770.

If you do a CTO Mac Pro, the 5870 is available and is faster than the 6970M in the iMac. Worth it though? Definitely not.
Click to expand...

iMac it is then :)
 
alust2013 said:
Programming really won't benefit from more cores, so that one will be slower. For what you need, the Mac Pro is simply a waste of money.
Click to expand...
I could not agree more.

In addition, when not needed a Mac Pro has a few distinct disadvantages. If you wanted to simply move it from one room to the next, it's more time consuming because of the cables and it's modular nature with everything being separate. It's heavier and requires a lot more room, and so at the end of the day there is a lot to be said for an iMac if it meets your performance requirements.
 
lamboman said:
If you do a CTO Mac Pro, the 5870 is available and is faster than the 6970M in the iMac. Worth it though? Definitely not.
Click to expand...

If it means anything the 5870 is twice as fast as the 6870m. So it may be worth it as gamers pay $400-500 for 20% improvements year over year.
 
I'd love to have iMac (edit: oops I mean MacPro :p) for its expandability and safer long run .. I mean come on .. my iMac has been running hot at times and I'm afraid it couldn't handle too much things.

MacPro on the other side can be much cooler due to a lot of breath room, but yeah .. the form factor looks like a regular PC tower except the case is a nice carved aluminum. But then it's the only Mac with largest-user-upgradeablity.

But still, MacPro is almost dead in the water. If you see the history, it's never a big interest for Apple to build separated PC tower like any other PC company, Apple II to original Macintosh, all of them are all-in-one concept. And also read the newest front page entry and you'll see. MacPro held no foreseeable future :(

Unless you wanna to have the last-gen MacPro and be different, but no future upgrades, I'd say go iMac.
 
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iSayuSay said:
...and safer long run .. I mean come on .. my iMac has been running hot at times and I'm afraid it couldn't handle too much things.
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I don't know, I've done a number of 30hr+ plus renders (CPU is at 800% constantly) with my iMac and many more 5-15hr renders alongside some mild Photoshop work and normal daily usage. It's never had any problems so far, temps are usually in the mid 50°C range, though I may regret saying this 2years down the track :p I'm pretty faithful that the iMac can handle the abuse though.
 
iSayuSay said:
But still, MacPro is almost dead in the water. If you see the history, it's never a big interest for Apple to build separated PC tower like any other PC company, Apple II to original Macintosh, all of them are all-in-one concept. And also read the newest front page entry and you'll see. MacPro held no foreseeable future :(
Click to expand...

Macrumors is always abuzz with hype and....gasp....rumors?

Don't start putting nails in the coffin, until it's actually dead. :cool:
 
derbothaus said:
If it means anything the 5870 is twice as fast as the 6870m. So it may be worth it as gamers pay $400-500 for 20% improvements year over year.
Click to expand...

But the iMac doesn't have the 6870M as an option. The 6970M is a fair bit faster, around 40%.
 
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jessica. said:
Isn't upgrading the HDD in the iMac a total pain in the ass?
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SuperMiguel said:
Yup
Click to expand...

Which is why you buy it with as large a drive as you expect to need, and if you need more, use externals or a server. My 2 year old iMac has a 1 TB drive, 1/3 filled, but I've got a server with about 4 TB of data.

And even the Promise Thunderbolt RAID drives look cheap compared to a Mac Pro:

27" iMac with 3.4GHz i7, 16 GB RAM, 1TB internal hard drive, 4x2GB Promise box, AppleCare is $4467.

Mac Pro, 3.2 GHz quad-core Xeon, 16 GB RAM, 4x2 TB hard drives (fills box), RAID card, Apple Cinema Display is $6672, or about 50% more expensive.
 
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