Am I wasting my money on old iMac?

[Steve Connor]

What graphics card does that have? I work with FS100 footage a lot, I never transcode it as it doesn’t seem to stretch my system at all even on an older 2011 MBP

[David Powell]

I’ve cut a lot of footage with FS100 on my 2011 imac. Generally 3-6 cameras. It works great. As far as money is concerned, that depends on how much you’re getting it for. You’ll get more milage out of an i7 than an i5. With 16 gigs of ram, you’ll be good. As it happens I have such an imac for sale if you’re intersted 😉 Its got 2gig vram which is maxed out for that year.

[Steve Buke]

Yes I’ve seen a few posts that people have edited AVCHD without transcoding the footage. The 2011 iMac has an AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR5 memory. The 2012 model I was also considering has an NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M Graphics Processor With 512 MB Of Dedicated GDDR5 Memory

[Steve Buke]

I found 2 iMacs on gainsaver.com. Purchased 2 old Power Mac G5’s from that company back in the day and had great success with them. The 2011 model with 16Gb RAM will run me $1000.

[Jeremy Garchow]

I would say you’re wasting your money, or at least not spending it as wisely as possible.

Check the refurbished section of Apple.com and for a little bit more money you can get a machine that’s newer, has better hardware, and therefore will run fcpx more smoothly.

It will also have a warranty.

[Bret Williams]

I thought X required a gig of GPU. I have the maxed out late 2012 iMac. In some ways the 2011 maxed out is better. But you want the 2gig GPU. The difference in CPU between the 2011 and 2012 is negligible. I upgraded from the 2011 to get an NVidia card for Adobe. I also gained USB 3. But you lose FW800 (easily restored with an adapter). You also lose a SuperDrive but I bought a portable Samsung blu-ray burner that’s better for $80.

My maxed out 2012 is worth $1750 on eBay.

[Steve Buke]

Thanks for the info. So it looks like neither of the 2 units I am looking at has a gig of memory never mind 2gig, that’s the GDDR5 we are talking about correct? I might be able to swing the new 21.5″ iMac 3.1GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
16GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM – 2X8GB
1TB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 1GB GDDR5
would it be a dramatic difference in your opinion? about $800 difference in price

[Dave Gage]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I would say you’re wasting your money, or at least not spending it as wisely as possible.

Check the refurbished section of Apple.com and for a little bit more money you can get a machine that’s newer, has better hardware, and therefore will run fcpx more smoothly.

It will also have a warranty.”

Steve,

I agree with Jeremy. My last 3 Macs were purchased from the Refurb section at the online Apple Store and I have no regrets. I even added the extended warrantys to all.

I edit on a 2011 MBP 17″ Quad-Core i7 (16 GBs of Ram) with AVCHD and screen captured H.264 files and have no problems and no transcoding, but… I’m not really doing anything taxing on the machine. I’m also still on the Snow Leopard OS for business reasons and a version of 10.0. It all works fine for me as I don’t make my living as an editor, I just do it for my online businesses.

In your case, I would definitely go with something refurbed and newer and with better graphics cards.

Dave

[Steve Buke]

Dave thanks for your post, problem is the 21.5″ iMac i7 processors on the apple referb site when I bring them up to 16gb ram will be $200 difference from a brand new one. Everything I’ve read and heard is telling me to stay away from i5 processor if running FCP X, probably reason there are some good deals for them on Apple site.

[Bret Williams]

The i7 isn’t just a newer faster processor, it also supports hyper threading, doubling the number of virtual cores. And, apparently, that’s a good thing.