Which 21.5 iMac spec for running Logic Pro?

[widdershins]

Hi guys, I'm going to buy an iMac primarily for music production with Logic Pro. I'd obviously love to get the i5 or i7, but unfortunately those are firmly out of my budget.

My budget is £1300, but I was hoping to keep £100-200 of that to put towards the Logic 9 upgrade, so I'm trying to decide between two 21.5" specs:

1) 9400M graphics, 3.33Ghz upgrade. This might leave me enough for a third-party memory upgrade too.

2) ATI 4670 graphics, 3.06GHz, 8gb memory upgrade.

Basically, will I regret not getting a decent graphics card? I don't play many games, but equally I'd like this computer to be pretty future proof. Will OpenCL have much impact in the future?

Secondly, in Logic would I benefit much from the 3.33Ghz Core Duo upgrade? Or is a shovel load of memory a better investment?

One final question: I have a 2007 Macbook Pro that's gone kaput. Will I be able to put its 2Gb of RAM into a new iMac?

 

[Henri Gaudier]

I'd go for the lesser processor with more RAM. However, even with that if you're using VI's and FX it'll choke pretty quickly. (If you're using it as a recorder more than a sequencer it'll be okay. Just.) Can you wait to see what's happening with the Pro in Jan? The old Pro before the Nehalems started at 1450£ and it may go down to something similar to that as the rate of exchange has improved about 25% since the Nehalem Pro's 450£ price hike. Does it even have to be a Mac? You get a bigger bang for your quid if you go to a specialist PC DAW maker.
http://www.inta-audio.com/computer-music-c36/music-pcs-c37/intel-i7r-music-pc-p8

I'm in a similar situation and I'm waiting till the next Pro and seeing what it costs against something like this. I may jump ship Mac.
http://www.inta-audio.com/computer-music-c36/music-pcs-c37/intel-i7r-pro-64-music-pc-p9

Replace Logic with something like this.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan09/articles/reaper24.htm

I know this is heretical but look how much more you get! If you spec up a Pro to match the Intel i7R Pro 64 Music PC it will cost 1300£ more. And Inta have a very good rep so build quality will be as good/better than the Mac. Oh and the graphics card is irrelevant in music. Any card can handle it.

 

[widdershins]

Thing is, I'm a bit locked in to Logic - I'm halfway through recording an album on it. Besides which I love Logic itself and don't really have a desire to learn another package at this stage.

I realize you pay a premium for Apple products (I think we all realized this long ago!) but I don't care because I enjoy using them.

I used to do all my recording on a 2.2Ghz 2Gb RAM Macbook Pro, and although I quite often encountered "System Overload" messages it could handle what I wanted it to do (though barely). I'd love to have 4 or 8 cores, but I don't think the Duo will seize up every two minutes either.

Thanks for your advice, and here's to hoping!

 

[Badger^2]

Add your own ram, an 8 year old could install it, and its far less money than buying from Apple. Close to 100 pounds.

So get the base model and add 4 gigs to go to 8.

 

[Henri Gaudier]

Understand about not wanting to change from what you know .... so how about a C2D mini from eBay as a node to an older iMac? More power if chosen wisely. Something like a 2.8 iMac and a 2.O mini = a combined score of around 6000 in Geek. That's old Pro territory.

 

[XxEjGxX]

low end imac and upgrade the ram yourself, its almost too easy to do, just plug and play basically... also logic 3 will run almost perfectly without the upgrade, if you choose to upgrade though, do it yourself, do not pay apple to do it, you will get ripped off