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MacBook Pro vs iMac 27" for video editing

D

dany74m

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 5, 2012
84
0
Los Angeles - California
Hi Guys,

I'm a professional videographer and I use primary to edit adobe Premiere. In the beginning I was needing of power and portability so I bought the late 2013 Macbook pro with 16gb and 1TB SSD. I have to say I'm quite satisfied with this machine, considering that is a Notebook is an amazing beast, even if some time with complex video suffers a little.

Now things are changed and portability for me is not anymore an issue, so I'm trying to understand if to sell my macbook pro and buy the top IMAC 27" with the GTX 780M 4gb. I thought the IMAC would have been be faster and would have been let me to edit smother, but than I read something about the intel iris being faster than the GTX. So I'm a little confused. Is it worth to switch to the IMAC, or the performance would be the same, so it is better just buy an external 27" monitor and continue to edit with my macbook pro?

Thank you.
 
dany74m said:
Hi Guys,

I'm a professional videographer and I use primary to edit adobe Premiere. In the beginning I was needing of power and portability so I bought the late 2013 Macbook pro with 16gb and 1TB SSD. I have to say I'm quite satisfied with this machine, considering that is a Notebook is an amazing beast, even if some time with complex video suffers a little.

Now things are changed and portability for me is not anymore an issue, so I'm trying to understand if to sell my macbook pro and buy the top IMAC 27" with the GTX 780M 4gb. I thought the IMAC would have been be faster and would have been let me to edit smother, but than I read something about the intel iris being faster than the GTX. So I'm a little confused. Is it worth to switch to the IMAC, or the performance would be the same, so it is better just buy an external 27" monitor and continue to edit with my macbook pro?

Thank you.
Click to expand...

I bought the iMac 27" and switched it out for the late 2013 MacBook Pro 15", on the recommendation of the Apple people. The processor in the MacBook Pro is faster than the one in the iMac. Plus the MacBook Pro has an HDMI out port and Thunderbolt. However, if you are planning on using it to play your video to a large screen 4K TV, you will see choppy results when there is motion in the scene. Evidently the graphics card in the MacBook Pro is not up to that task.
 
chenderson2 said:
I bought the iMac 27" and switched it out for the late 2013 MacBook Pro 15", on the recommendation of the Apple people. The processor in the MacBook Pro is faster than the one in the iMac. Plus the MacBook Pro has an HDMI out port and Thunderbolt. However, if you are planning on using it to play your video to a large screen 4K TV, you will see choppy results when there is motion in the scene. Evidently the graphics card in the MacBook Pro is not up to that task.
Click to expand...

I disagree. In single-threaded tasks, the 3.5GHz i7 in the 27" clearly beats the 2.6GHz in the 15". It's also faster by 0.1GHz in TurboBoost than the MBP's one. http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/compare/476302?baseline=526202

The iMac has TB too, although it's just TB1.

To say the rMBP is faster - that's utter nonsense. In multithreaded tasks, the iMac has the slight edge.

In throttling and thermal efficiency, the iMac is far better - it runs cool even under heavy loads. The rMBP doesn't.

Also the GTX780M in the iMac is far better than the GT750M in the rMBP.
 
A desktop with matching specs will always out perform a Laptop unless you are talking about something like a MacMini. This is not my opinion, but a proven fact. Been there, have a house full of equipment, done that!
 
I am not aware of any actual useful benchmarks comparing the two machines. Performance-wise, the CPUs are quite close, the iMac will have a clear lead in longer-lasting demanding workflows (because it can maintain the higher clocks for longer time). As to the GPU difference. I doubt that the GPU's role is so significant that you will see a substantial difference for real-world video editing.

Of course, it all depends on what exactly you do. E.g., if you look at these results, a dedicated GPU is clearly much better. But the thing is, the benchmark is designed to favour faster GPUs with more VRAM by using insanely big images (5120x2700 pixels). Essentially, this test measures the performance of the GPU memory subsystem — and the 750M clearly has much more bandwidth than Iris Pro.

Now, do you need to edit videos with such a high resolution? If yes, then an iMac would do wonders for you. If no, you are only looking for a few seconds improvement (at best) — probably not really worth the hassle.
 
chenderson2 said:
I bought the iMac 27" and switched it out for the late 2013 MacBook Pro 15", on the recommendation of the Apple people. The processor in the MacBook Pro is faster than the one in the iMac. Plus the MacBook Pro has an HDMI out port and Thunderbolt. However, if you are planning on using it to play your video to a large screen 4K TV, you will see choppy results when there is motion in the scene. Evidently the graphics card in the MacBook Pro is not up to that task.
Click to expand...

Sorry but a laptop i7 vs the desktop class processors in the iMac? Really?
 
Thanks for all your reply. Of course I'm not interested in benchmark numbers, but in improving my workflow. Sometimes the macbook pro become not really responsive when the project becomes complex with color correction applied. So I'm not really interested in saving a bunch of secs in rendering but in edit my project faster. Is the difference going to be measurable also from an user and not just from benchmark?

Thanks.:)
 
Hands down, the only reason to buy the MacBook is portability. If that's not important to you, then get the iMac.

The iMac has a better GPU, and will throttle less when under load. The GPU will help in workflow and working as close to realtime as possible.

I used to own and sold a late 2012 high end iMac in favor of an rMBP because I needed the portability, and the iMac was very adept at editing.
 
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