MBP sold, now MP or iMac

[PaulCon]

Hi,

Sold my late 2011 MBP (spec in sig) and I'm looking to get either a 2008 or 2009 Mac Pro or 2011 iMac, basically my budget is about £800.

I mainly use my macs for light gaming, stuff like Borderlands 2 and nothing too taxing, some light encoding, iMovie and general stuff

I have a few questions:

1. would I see the benefit of an 8 core over a quad core Mac Pro.

2. the 2009 MP are a lot harder to come across than the 2008 and obv cost more, should I just get a 2008 with 12gb+ RAM and upgrade for to an SSD and GTX 650 or get a basic 2009 and wait until I can afford to upgrade.

3. If I could get a 2011 2.7 i5 iMac with an SSD and 16gb (don't want to change hdd myself with it being a pain of a job) would I see much difference between that and Mac Pro for what I would use it for?

Thanks in advance

Paul

 

[RedCroissant]

Hi,

Sold my late 2011 MBP (spec in sig) and I'm looking to get either a 2008 or 2009 Mac Pro or 2011 iMac, basically my budget is about £800.

I mainly use my macs for light gaming, stuff like Borderlands 2 and nothing too taxing, some light encoding, iMovie and general stuff

I have a few questions:

1. would I see the benefit of an 8 core over a quad core Mac Pro.

2. the 2009 MP are a lot harder to come across than the 2008 and obv cost more, should I just get a 2008 with 12gb+ RAM and upgrade for to an SSD and GTX 650 or get a basic 2009 and wait until I can afford to upgrade.

3. If I could get a 2011 2.7 i5 iMac with an SSD and 16gb (don't want to change hdd myself with it being a pain of a job) would I see much difference between that and Mac Pro for what I would use it for?

Thanks in advance

Paul

You would most certainly see the benefit of 8 cores over 4. Most certainly.

I don’t think you would see much difference depending on what you would be using it for, but I would recommend the Mac Pro for a few reasons:

1. You can choose your displays
2. Upgradeability
3. easily modifiable
4. more I/O options

If you don’t want to bother with HDD exchanges and replacements with an iMac because of the pain( and it is for any iMac made after 2004) then the ease of getting into a Mac Pro would be a bonus. Plus, the ability to have 4 HDDs in RAID would be better than or comparable to a SSD and tho way you could save some none there as well.

With an iMac, you’re limited to the Graphics card that you buy it with, but with a Mac Pro you have other options and they would be better for gaming.

You might take a hit on energy consumption depending on how many HDDs you put in there and the type of display(s) you choose, but the benefits of being able to do most things yourself is a bonus.

 

[energyboy]

You might take a hit on energy consumption depending on how many HDDs you put in there and the type of display(s) you choose, but the benefits of being able to do most things yourself is a bonus.

Hard drive's don't use much energy, typically between 6-8 watts. That's peanuts. Most power supply units range anywhere from 400-750W. A single Core i7 CPU takes up about 100w, a GPU uses anywhere from 90-200w depending on type (geforce 650 uses about 90, a 680 uses about 160 i think).