imac i7 v mac pro (plus CS5 and pro 12-core Q’s)

[Walter Soyka]

Like you said — RAM, RAM, RAM. 2-4 GB per core.

I’d be leery of using an iMac for broadcast work. I’m pretty dependent on my RAID, Kona capture card, and broadcast monitor, and only the Mac Pro has the expansion options to make that happen.

The current Mac Pro has been out for quite a while — it’s overdue for an update, and the if the 12-core rumors are true, it will have a big impact on multiprocessor rendering. That said, no one knows when the next generation is really coming out. If you can afford to wait another month, it might be worthwhile, but if you need to start working now, the current Mac Pros will not disappoint.

CS5 is going to be a big deal for you working on broadcast HD. 64-bit RAM addressing means that you could RAM preview an entire 30-second spot in HD (provided you have enough RAM). 32-bit AE CS4 can’t grab enough the 7 GB of RAM or so that it would need to cache the frames).

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Uli Plank]

If Premiere Pro is important too, the iMac is NOT for you. There’s only a limited number of nVidia cards supported for hardware acceleration. And, believe me, you’ll want it!

Director of the Institute of Media Research (IMF) at Braunschweig University of Arts

[Pat Bray]

Thanks for the prompt reply Walter, I’ll add what you’ve said to my proposal, however I have a question regarding RAM – if you need 2/4 per core, then the imac would be maxed out at 16 as it has a quad core cpu, so when CS5 comes out with its 64bit support, there’ll be no additional benefit as it’ll be operating at maximum capacity, correct? If what I’ve written is gibberish I apologise!

P

[Pat Bray]

Thanks for the info Uli, I doubt we’ll use Premier Pro, but what about Final Cut Pro, does the graphics card issues apply to this too?
P

[Pat Bray]

Hi Dave, thanks for the reply. It’s an ongoing debate but looks like we’ll go for a 12-core pro.
Should anyone else be interested in this I’ve listed all the notes I’ve found below, hope it helps:

iMac i7 –

According to Macworld’s tests, the Core i7 iMac beat the 8-core Mac Pro 2.2GHz in a number of Speedmark 6 tests, HOWEVER, although in terms of raw horsepower, display quality and price, an iMac is the obvious choice, its not if your plans involve using any future versions of After Effects, which begins shipping in just a few days (CS5), if you plan on upgrading, or running on fast external hard drives.

CS5 is going to be a big deal for working on broadcast HD, as the native 64-bit support means you can tap all the RAM on your system to work more efficiently with HD, 2K, and 4K projects, rather than being limited to 4GB RAM per core as with previous versions of AE, and adding RAM is the best single thing you can do to improve AE performance. (Note: the iMac is a quad-core system with a maximum RAM capacity of 16GB, so there will be no benefits in using CS5’s new 64bit support)

Also, the two links below show that in terms of AE rendering, the mac pro 8-core still halve (approx) processing time compared to the iMac:

https://www.barefeats.com/imi7m.html

https://www.barefeats.com/imi7.html

Waiting for the 12-core Mac Pro –

Rumored to be released in June, the 12-core will have a big impact on multiprocessor rendering and use of the 12-core processors will reestablish a much larger performance gap between Apple’s consumer and professional desktop computers

It will also allow up to 128GB RAM compared to 16BG RAM of the iMac i7

Other considerations include –

The iMac is not expandable, so you can’t add a video card like AJA or Blackmagic Design, to monitor your work on a broadcast monitor

You can’t add a RAID card for working with uncompressed HD footage

You’ll have to daisy-chain multiple external hard drives and maybe a Blu-ray burner off a single FW800 bus, which is slow

There is NO option for fast external storage for the iMac as it only runs via firewire 800. Real world speed writes can drop as low as 45MB/sec, so this area is the Achille’s heel of the iMac

Mac Pro has bigger “data pipes” that creative and high end 3D apps can take advantage of, not to mention dual CPU capability and expandability

[Tyson Frantz]

I’m planning to upgrade very soon as well… I’m currently using a PowerMac G5 2.5GHz Quad with dual 23″ cinema displays.

Since I plan to upgrade to Adobe’s CS5 at the same time, I was considering the Quad i7 iMac simply because of the price vs. power ratio that the new iMacs are providing. I’m a motion graphics designer, but don’t do much video editing. Therefore, I just simply don’t need the industrial expandability of the Mac Pros.

However, I fully understand I’d be taking a hit on performance considering Apple’s plans to update the Mac Pro line very soon with the reported hexacore chips. At times, I perform some fairly intense rendering with AE and Cinema 4D.

I’m wondering how much of a disadvantage I would be putting myself in by purchasing an i7 iMac, since AE CS5 is now supporting 64-bit architecture?

I could be saving myself a good $2,000 by purchasing the Quad i7 iMac over a new Mac Pro, so price becomes a major factor.

Does anyone have any advice?

[Tyson Frantz]

Thanks for your quick reply Dave, and yes, what you said is exactly what I meant. I take it from your response that you’d advise to NOT buy that iMac?

Bottom line is, I know that I’ll be seeing vast performance improvements over my current dinosaur of a machine, but I’m just wondering if I’ll be experiencing buyer’s remorse 6 months after buying an i7 iMac.

Having 64-bit capability would be great, especially being able to render longer RAM previews on higher resolution projects.

The type of work I do, however, is typically short-length (10-30 second) HD resolution graphics… so what’s really important to me is faster renders, not so much longer RAM previews. I realize those go hand-in-hand, but will I ever add more than 16GB of RAM (which is the iMac’s memory max) to my machine, even if I did buy a Mac Pro? Probably not.

Since Apple is supposedly launching a new line of Mac Pros in June (hopefully?), maybe my best bet is to wait until it’s announced, and make my decision then.

Maybe I’m just dreading the thought of dropping upwards of $5k on a new Mac Pro and CS5 upgrade!

[Duane Giliam]

Hi

I was actually planning on buying an imac until i saw this thread.
Ive been mainly editing for the last couple of years but now feel I need to up my game to include motion graphics and thus am wanting to learn After Effects.

I was hoping you could guide me as to what system to go for. I feel mac is the way and was leaning toward buying the new cs5 suite because of the additional programmes it comes with.

Also is it possible to have a quadro (FX1800) card in a mac.

Any advise would be appreciated.

Thanks
Duane

[Duane Giliam]

HI Dave

Yes its a nvidia card. Its part of the Quadro range which is said to work well with Premium Pro.

Thanks for the advice – I’ll go nose around later.
Im just concerned because I see alot of guys on the forums having issues with open GL.Is Open Gl to do with the GPU or the CPU?

Thanks again

Duane

[Walter Soyka]

[Duane Giliam] “Im just concerned because I see alot of guys on the forums having issues with open GL.Is Open Gl to do with the GPU or the CPU? “

Even with CS5, the graphics card has relatively little impact on After Effects. AE generally renders on the CPU, not the GPU. The Quadro will impact Premiere Pro’s performance a lot more than it will impact AE’s performance.

You are right that many have had issues with OpenGL rendering, and even people with Adobe recommend leaving it OpenGL accleration off for rendering. The OpenGL – Interactive setting accelerates your viewport during user interactions like scrubbing the timeline and moving layers, but not during actual preview or render, and it’s pretty widely considered safe and reliable.

There are some effects that are capable of GPU-accelerated rendering, and these may be accelerated nicely by the Quadro. This has nothing to do with AE’s OpenGL rendering, which you can safely leave off.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events