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Replacing 8-Core Mac Pro with iMac?

M

Mr. Paul

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 4, 2013
5
0
I'm working up a replacement if my Mac Pro can't be rescued, and really don't want to buy another Pro of the current generation. So, I'm looking at a 27" iMac (I need a new display anyway....). My current machine is a 8-core Xeon 2.8GHz w/16GB, Early 2008 with a few TB of storage, some if it RAID 0. I'm looking at the 27", i7 3.4HGz + 680MX w/16GB and 3 TB Fusion Drive.

My main concern is video encoding/tanscoding, FCP, PS5 and XCode (though that isn't very compute intensive typically). From what I've seen, the iMac looks to be a little faster then the Mac Pro, but not much. It is killing me (in my head) to give up 4 cores. How disappointed will I be, if at all, with the iMac? I'll be stuck with it for 5 years or so (my upgrade cycle). Do you think I am going to kick myself hard in 2 years for not buying a Mac Pro, despite the aging hardware platform (not to mention cost)?
 
If.....

the principal concern is the giving up of working cores, seems to me that boils down to how optimized is the sofware you use to run in multi-core setups. So, maybe is wise to investigate that issue, before commit to another solution. And still, a update to the Pro is rumored in 2013....:eek:

:):apple:
 
I know everyone's mileage may vary but here's what I did:

Had the same machine you have, editing shorts and music videos as well as local church stuff at the time. I was reluctant to move off that machine but after trying a friend's Macbook Pro, I was amazed. My work had increased to kid's TV shows and I needed something that was mobile. I couldn't buy a new Macbook Pro without selling my Mac Pro, so I took the dive and I'm so glad I did! I must say that I traded out the HDD and Optical Drive for a pair of SSD's (I'm on an early 2011 15" Macbook Pro) and this thing is fast. I'm now almost in a position of being able to purchase a desktop again to assist my notebook and instead of looking at Mac Pro's, I'm seriously considering the new 27" iMac.

Last week I went into an Apple store and tried out FCPX on the display model and it ran smooth as butter.
 
4God said:
Last week I went into an Apple store and tried out FCPX on the display model and it ran smooth as butter.
Click to expand...

I would suggest that the smooth as butter operation of the iMac and fcpx may be an anomaly. More involved testing and operation has shown a compatability issue with the iMac with the high end video card (680MX) and fcpx. See: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4707372?start=315&tstart=0

I would not currently replace my mac pro with an iMac if you are doing a lot of work with fcpx. Hopefully, this issue will be resolved, but I would hate to be a professional and, after giving up my mac pro, be out of work or significantly slowed down for some unknown period of time because I replaced it with an iMac.
 
Lebthree said:
I would suggest that the smooth as butter operation of the iMac and fcpx may be an anomaly. More involved testing and operation has shown a compatability issue with the iMac with the high end video card (680MX) and fcpx. See: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4707372?start=315&tstart=0

I would not currently replace my mac pro with an iMac if you are doing a lot of work with fcpx. Hopefully, this issue will be resolved, but I would hate to be a professional and, after giving up my mac pro, be out of work or significantly slowed down for some unknown period of time because I replaced it with an iMac.
Click to expand...

I Have this model and yes there are massive problems with FCPX and MOTION, regular crashes when using titles or random system halting when rendering etc.

We are hearing reports that its NOT a hardware problem, more of a software/ios problem.. only Apple knows

I have the 27 iMac, 1tb fusion i7, 680mx... So its fast, then dies, then its fast again, then dies..
 
Geekbench score (64 bit) for your Mac Pro: 10800

Geekbench score (64 bit) for fully loaded 2012 iMac: 13984

The iMac has better performance (with the video card too, though Geekbench doesn't take that into account), but you're giving up upgradability and repairability. Just FYI.
 
Lebthree said:
I would suggest that the smooth as butter operation of the iMac and fcpx may be an anomaly. More involved testing and operation has shown a compatability issue with the iMac with the high end video card (680MX) and fcpx. See: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4707372?start=315&tstart=0

I would not currently replace my mac pro with an iMac if you are doing a lot of work with fcpx. Hopefully, this issue will be resolved, but I would hate to be a professional and, after giving up my mac pro, be out of work or significantly slowed down for some unknown period of time because I replaced it with an iMac.
Click to expand...

Yes, the model I tried had the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX with 1GB VRAM. I have read about the issues with the 680MX and I would wait for Apple to fix that challenge before recommending a purchase in that direction.
 
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