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Mac Mini vs iMac 2014 for Premiere & AE?
We’re finally looking to upgrade to 2 new workstations. I know many are using iMacs these days and was even at a post facility recently who were using 4 iMacs as both offline and online machines. I’ve even read Walter Biscardi’s articles on this matter. My question is, I’m pushing hard for 2 new iMacs, but am being countered with, “why can’t we use Mac Mini’s,” because we’ll save about $1500.
Aside from the NVidia GeForce GTX 780M GFX card in the iMacs, how else can I justify iMac purchase over the Mac minis for Adobe Premiere & After Effects. I’m also starting to get into SpeedGrade a bit. I fear the Mini’s won’t have enough sustained horse power for our needs.
Thoughts?
OSX 10.7.5 with a 3.39 Ghz Intel Core i7 on a built up Hackintosh
16 GB of RAM with OSX on SSD, (2) internal HDDs RAID’d 1 for project files and External RAID 5 for all project assets (media, GFX, stills, etc.)
BMD Decklink Studio 2, FSI BM210, KRK Rokit 5s, Mackie 802 -
15 Replies
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Your Mac mini will come no where close to specs with the video card. It is a integrated in the motherboard so no separate processing. Also doesn’t come with a monitor.
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I think you would be better off looking at eBay for previous generation MacPros over either of these options.
The only downside would probably be the lack on USB3.
Vince
Vince Becquiot
San Francisco Bay Area
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Interesting. That surprises me because I thought with the 780m GFX card the iMac would perform well. Now I would have to hack the text file and add that card to the list for Mercury Playback as we’re still on CS6. I understand CC you can simply check the box for Cuda acceleration, even if not on supported list form Adobe. I currently use the text file hack on my current Hackintock, haha, and I get Mercury in Premiere but not AE. So I’m curious if the iMacs would do ok. Just for simple animations and the occasional matte track & corner pin. Mostly use Motion 5, just because its quick and Premiere. AE for the heavier compositing jobs.
How would the iMac’s perform compared to the specs on my Hackintosh (in my signature & screen shot below)?
OSX 10.7.5 with a 3.39 Ghz Intel Core i7 on a built up Hackintosh
16 GB of RAM with OSX on SSD, (2) internal HDDs RAID’d 1 for project files and External RAID 5 for all project assets (media, GFX, stills, etc.)
BMD Decklink Studio 2, FSI BM210, KRK Rokit 5s, Mackie 802 -
The Macpro is much more flexible than an iMac, and it’s upgradable, including the GPU.
You’ll also have much more processing power, up to 16 core and Xeons instead of i7, depending on the year and what you want to spend.
Vince Becquiot
San Francisco Bay Area
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[Matt Campbell] “My question is, I’m pushing hard for 2 new iMacs, but am being countered with, “why can’t we use Mac Mini’s,” because we’ll save about $1500.”
I’m waiting to see if Apple refreshes the Minis in June. If they can take 32GB RAM, we’ll give them serious considerations here. But also note that we have a few “Big Iron” systems for heavy rendering.
If you will ONLY have the 2 machines, go with the iMacs. You’ll love em. Just be sure they have the full 32GB RAM in them for best performance. My editors just love working with them and they’ll save you quite a bit of money over the Mac Pro.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative MediaCraft and Career Advice & Training from real Working Creative Professionals
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[Vince Becquiot] “I think you would be better off looking at eBay for previous generation MacPros over either of these options.
The only downside would probably be the lack on USB3.”
No…it has many other downsides. They are MUCH slower than the current iMacs. the processors on the older MacPros can’t compete with current line of Minis and iMacs and MacBook Pros. Even the last 2012 is slower, processor wise. And Adobe loves processors. The only thing they can do better is Graphics cards for CUDA. Although you can get a Thunderbolt/PCIe bridge and put an NVIDIA card in there for the boost.
The older machines also lack Thunderbolt…which is the connection of now…current tech. As is USB3.
Don’t invest in older tech…not tech that is 2 years old. Move forward. And go with iMacs…they come with one monitor already….they have faster processors, better GPU.
My $.02.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
I’m pretty grateful that Apple has been dragging their feet on the mac mini refresh as it forced my hand to buy a new iMac this past fall and I couldn’t be happier. Granted the mac mini wouldn’t have been a main edit box, but the iMac certainly can handle anything I bring to it.
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All I can tell you is that I had a bad experience with an i5 2012 iMac and dynamic link. In fact it was more of a nightmare.
Constant freezes, and crashes requires relinking, etc.
We now use 12 core MacPros and it’s just a breeze for most projects.
I agree with you on the connections, but there are workaround for that as well.
We use Caldigit towers with mini SAS, and getting these to work smoothly with an iMac or Macmini would be a fun project 🙂
Vince Becquiot
San Francisco Bay Area
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[Vince Becquiot] “We use Caldigit towers with mini SAS, and getting these to work smoothly with an iMac or Macmini would be a fun project :-)”
Got that working with my laptop…CalDigit HDOne, via SAS, into a Thunderbolt PCIe Bridge. Same read speeds, slightly slower write speeds.
https://lfhd.net/2014/01/20/thunderbolt-expansion/
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Thanks for your input gentlemen. I think with what we do here, the iMac’s should serve us well based on your responses and everything else I’ve read. Not too sure about those mini and trying to nip that idea in the bud. And since we’re going to move to 2 TB storage RAIDs, 1 for each since shared storage is expensive, those speeds will benefit greatly too. Not to mention TB I/O for one of us and a PCIe expansion chasis for the other since we have a Declink Studio 2 card. And we’ll spring for the i7 chips and cram as much RAM in as we can.
I’m hoping to get the Cuda working with AE CS6 as well. My current hack only gets me Premiere acceleration and not AE for some reason. I want to pay with ray tracing!
thanks again.
OSX 10.7.5 with a 3.39 Ghz Intel Core i7 on a built up Hackintosh
16 GB of RAM with OSX on SSD, (2) internal HDDs RAID’d 1 for project files and External RAID 5 for all project assets (media, GFX, stills, etc.)
BMD Decklink Studio 2, FSI BM210, KRK Rokit 5s, Mackie 802
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