To iMac or not to iMac

[MrHoobs]

Hi all.

After a little info / advice please.

I've been a pc user for years, and dabble in a little video editing etc.

I recently bought an hd video camera that records in avchd. My current pc - quad core 6660 I think it's called, 4gb ram and a 512k video card just doesn't hack it.

So I'm looking at upgrading. I seems for the same price I could get:

iMac quad core i5 3.1 4 gb ram, 27 inch, 1gb graphics
Dell or custom pc, i7 8/16gb ram, 1gb graphics.

I have some mac fans as friends and they say a mac runs faster than a pc.

My concern is if I buy mac I'll be buying almost the same spec as my 3GS old pc. Are they that much faster?

Also went into apple today and they couldt get my sd card with .mts files to work on a mac. Does anyone here do video to answer that?

I've never looked at a mac before, but now have iPad and iPhone and love they way they work. iMac I assume I'll be just as impressed with but do wonder if they really are that much quicker that the 2 specs above are an equivalent speed...

Any info / advice appreciated!

 

[belunos]

The hardware is pretty much 1 for 1. Assuming the same hardware, the system performance will more or less be 1 for 1. In other words, the higher spec system will probably perform quicker (don't listen to fanboys on either side, the OS's will perform about the sme on similar hardware). So no, the iMac will not be faster. However, you're buying better hardware with the Mac.

The iMac will handle you video files fine. The higher spec'd pc will probably knock a little time off your processing time of said files. The question is, are you ready to learn a new operating system. OS X is actually fantastic, and the hardware is great, and if you just dabble in video, either of these solutions would probably be fine for you. If it's like you say, and you're only interested in performance, the pc will be faster since it has better specs. But keep in mind there's a reason Mac people are big fanboys

 

[MrHoobs]

Thanks for the info!

So I'd need a comparable MAC, which would meen upgrading the processor and memory which would take the price above £2k... about £750 more than the equivalent PC - and that's with a 26inch high def screen taken into account too.

It's a shame as I'd love a MAC, but it does look as though the premium is for the brand and build quality.

When I thought the MAC ran faster and an i5 Mac was equivalent i7 PC, the pricing's evenly matched. However I think I'll need to go for substance over style so looks like it'll have to be a PC.

I've also just found out that the DVD drive on the MAC is pretty slow, and you can't burn high def / blueray dvds!

Maybe the next generation.

Thanks again!