What's the difference using a high end iMac or a Mac PRO?

[mrsir2009]

What's the difference using a high end iMac (intel 2009) or a Mac PRO?

Oh and have you Mac PRO owners ever overclocked your Mac PRO lol, how hard is it?

 

[maghemi]

What's the difference using a high end iMac (intel 2009) or a Mac PRO?

Oh and have you Mac PRO owners ever overclocked your Mac PRO lol, how hard is it?

Can't comment on the difference. I went from a mid range iMac to a Mac Pro and personally I found it a huge difference (and I'm not a heavy image/video user)

As for the overclocking, don't bother. Not going to happen. There is one program out there that you can use to overclock. But it also changes the speed of time! So the more you overclock the shorted the hours get. And you have to re-do it every time you restart the system.

Or overclocking if you get a low end classic unit you can do the BSEL mod on some chips. But that's pretty flakey at times too.

The biggest thing for me with a Pro was the ability to get a better vid card, lots more ram, and more hard drives.

 

[gugucom]

The biggest thing for me with a Pro was the ability to get a better vid card, lots more ram, and more hard drives.

For me going from dual core to quad initially and then upgrading to Octad. Upgradability and raw power is the domain of the Mac Pro.

 

[dsiew81]

It really depends on your usage habits. Word processing won't be much different.

 

[Tesselator]

What's the difference using a high end iMac (intel 2009) or a Mac PRO?

Expandability. Almost only expandability. Well, that and you can connect it to a real monitor. If your rendering 3D graphics or using something like Handbrake that can make good use of 8 physical cores and your comparing the iMac to a Mac Pro octad then it's twice as fast at those things. For everything else it's very very close to the same speed given near-equal clock speeds.

Oh and have you Mac PRO owners ever overclocked your Mac PRO lol, how hard is it?

Nearly impossible. Same as iMac I guess.

 

[J&JPolangin]

...the programs you use need to be able to take advantage of the additional processor cores...otherwise you're pretty much just wasting your $$...

 

[alphaod]

What's the difference using a high end iMac (intel 2009) or a Mac PRO?

iMac:

• Compact
• Good for families who just need a computer that works
• Low power draw
• No hassle of really setting up the machine
• Offers decent performance
• Uses low power parts
• Computer replacement forces display replacement—added cost
• Not readily upgradeable
• Not expandeable

Mac Pro:

• Very powerful
• Good for people who need to get work done
• Upgradeable
• Expandible
• Replacement does not necessitate display replacement
• More connections, so possibly harder to set up
• Uses a lot more power (so watch the power bill)
• Takes up more room
• Requires you to buy more peripherals

I know this comparison isn't that great, but it pretty much what the target market is.

 

[ManiG]

I use an iMac 24" (3.0ghz) at work and a Mac Pro (2.66 nehalem) at home.

I am a software developer and I often use VM's which use up a lot of RAM and CPU power.

To me, the differences are as follows:

imac is ...
- prettier to look at (to me, this is important)
- built in video camera
- is completely silent
- i love the "plug and play"/"it just works" beauty and tight integration of it

mp is ...
- _noticeably_ faster in typical (browser/email/etc) usage, even with same amount of ram (honestly, i was not expecting this)
- you can load it up with more ram, easily
- you can swap out, install hd's, easily
- you can have a gamer-worthy video card
- you can plug in multiple monitors of your choice
- has workstation class build quality reminiscent of SGI and Sun workstations of the good old days.

i like both machines a lot. for most people, i would recommend the imac 24". but, a small number of people who really crave the expandability and power of the mp will find the much higher price of the mp worth it.

 

[Bartman01]

Do you need:
More than 2 monitors?
More than 4/8GB of ram (and if your model supports it, 8GB isn't cheap on an iMac)?
More processing power than the iMac provides (if you don't know then you probably don't).
The ability to replace/upgrade the graphics card over the life of the machine?
The ability to add PCI cards?
The ability to add additional INTERNAL hard drives (you can always add them externally with the iMac)?

Then you need a Mac Pro if you want to stay in the Apple universe.