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Wood crest Mac Pro vs Lynnfield iMac?

I

itpromike

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 20, 2010
135
10
Ok so the classic question, the new iMac vs the old Mac Pro, which one is faster. I know the whole 'faster' thing is relative too depending on applications you're using but what I use the Most is Office 2011, iTunes, Safari, Chrome etc... the only thing is I multitask A LOT. I mean I have many many windows open at any given time because of the projects I work on and manage (I manage an IT team) so I have spreadsheets going and 10 draft emails going and 40 Safari/Chrome tabs going all at once usually etc... Currently I have a MacPro 1,1 with 2 Xeon 5100 dual core 2.0GHZ chips. My job is offering to give me one of the new 27inch iMac i5 @ 2.8GHZ. One of the main reasons I'd think about upgrading is the fact that currently there is work on Windows computers that I need to do so I VNC into a Windows computer as my current MacPro cannot run Parallels very well and it slows down both the Mac side and the Windows side too much to be useful to me. If the new iMac processors could handle virtualizing Windows XP using parallels well then I'd definitely do the switch. Any guidance would definitely be appreciated. Thanks all

PS. The iMac i5 is the clarkdale chip and the i7 is the lynndale chip right?
 
Last edited:
There are two variants of the i5 in the iMac. There is the i5 dual core 3.6ghz chip, which is a clarkdale. Then there's the i5 quad core 2.8ghz chip, which is a lynnfield. The i7 is also a lynnfield.

The lynnfield will without a doubt be faster.
 
How much RAM do you have in your current Mac? I would get at least 8GB, maybe even more since there are so many slots. You usage does not really require a faster CPU but it really needs more RAM.

An SSD would be nice as well.

BTW; 3.6GHz i5 = Clarkdale, 2.8GHz i5 = Lynnfield, i7 = Lynnfield
 
My Current Mac Pro has 8Gigs of RAM and the new iMac has 4 but I can add memory no problem. 10 or 12GB would be fine I'm guessing?
 
You can get an 8gb pack for around 100usd, so 12gb should be pretty good.
 
itpromike said:
My Current Mac Pro has 8Gigs of RAM and the new iMac has 4 but I can add memory no problem. 10 or 12GB would be fine I'm guessing?
Click to expand...

Yes, but why not to add more RAM to your current system? Where exactly does it slow down at the moment? You could add more RAM and maybe an SSD or faster HD to your current Mac as it's still more than capable of running the tasks you mentioned.

Sure you can get a new one if you want to
 
You can always use activity monitor on osx or task manager on windows to monitor your cpu usage, to see whether your cpu is your bottleneck or not.
 
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