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Anyone using a top of the line iMac for serious work?
Hi
I guess everybody knows the mess Mac Pro is in at the moment and I was wondering if getting a completely specced-up iMac would tide me over until next year. I have a MP from 2008 – 3.2 dual core with 16 GB of RAM.
I use After Effects and Cinema 4D for HD rendering. I’m a motion graphics designer, usually dealing with sequences of no longer than 30 seconds.
If anybody has any pointers, it would be greatly appreciated.
(I’m posting this on to the AE forum too, I hope that’s ok)
A
Vertigo Productions
https://www.vertigo.co.uk -
3 Replies
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Yes, I have an iMac I just got earlier this year. It runs OS 10.7.4 currently, has a 27″ screen, 3.4GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB memory, and an AMD Radeon HD 6970M graphics card. I have a 23″ Apple Cinema Display hooked up to it as a second monitor (it was the screen I used with my previous Mac, which was a Mac Pro tower). It runs fast and smooth, and I run Cinema 4D on it, as well as the entire Adobe Creative Suite, and a lot of other software. It’s a fast renderer. I do all my work on it, and it’s great. I also run Parallels and Windows on it when I need to. It’s a fine machine.
Jack
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Thanks Jack, that’s extremely useful. It seems you were in the same position as me with a tower. I also have a 23” display and I was wondering whether I could hook it up to the iMac. Do you need to use an adapter?
Also, could I ask you one more question? What do you have as a backup solution? At the moment I just have a couple of external drives and simply use Time Machine.
A
Vertigo Productions
https://www.vertigo.co.uk -
Yes, I use an adaptor to plug the extra monitor into the iMac. I’m not sure what it’s called – I didn’t buy it, someone in our computer tech office had one and gave it to me. Basically, the extra monitor plugs into the big white box, same one as when I used the tower. Out of that comes a cable with several output plugs, one of which is the standard Mac video plug (it would be VGA on a PC, I think, but Apple has their own), the one you would use to plug into a projector. The adaptor plugs into that, and then into the iMac, in the Thunderbolt port on the back (it has a picture of a thunderbolt above it). Then you just go into the Display preferences and press the Detect Displays button. It should work right away. But the adaptor is necessary. It should be easy to find on the Apple site.
For backup I use Time Machine, going to a LaCie 1TB hard drive.
Jack
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