iMac Quad-Core vs. Mac Pro for FCP

[Shane Ross]

[Lauren Petty] “he sales person at Tekserve, NYC was strongly suggesting that I get a new iMac quad-core instead – as I would actually get more bang for the buck.”

That sales person is talking from his ass. HOW would it be more bang for the buck? The ONLY advantage it as is that it comes with a monitor already. The advantages stop there. The only thing you can upgrade in that computer is RAM…period. With a MacPro you can:

– install THREE more SATA hard drives…all internal (so fast) for storage. Bare SATA drives are cheaper and faster than external firewire drives.
– Add a capture card to capture and output non-firewire based video. Priced from $199 to $3400.
– Use said capture card to monitor video properly on an external calibrated monitor.
– Add an eSATA card to connect to much faster external enclosures, including multiple drive RAIDS
– Add ATTO or other mini SAS cards to connect to other external RAID enclosures.
– Add up to 32GB RAM
– 8 core or 12 core processors! iMAC…quad core. You want Compressor to compress fast? More cores, faster encodes.

With an iMac you are limited to firewire drives. Meaning slow. Enough for a single stream of ProRes, maybe too. But that’s it.

With an iMac the only capture card you can attach is an AJA IOHD…$3400. But then it takes over the firewire bus, so you can’t attach a firewire drive to capture or output video. The iMac only has one firewire bus. And the Matrox MXO (the original) won’t work (Walter Biscardi tried)…so basically NO capture card for dealing with capturing non-firewire formats…nor anyway to properly monitor ANY format for color accurate viewing. (The IO HD doesn’t work with Color in HD…firewire issue).

You want expandible? Get the Mac Pro. Future proof.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Zak Ray]

All true, Shane, but from reading her post, I don’t know that she’s going to be using SAS RAIDS and HD-SDI monitors. For simple cutting and simple graphics work, an iMac can save a lot of money over the baseline Mac Pro and still get the job done (especially if she sticks with the DVX).

Mike Curtis has a good article on this topic here:
https://provideocoalition.com/index.php/mcurtis/story/new_quad_cores_imac_or_mac_pro/

[Shane Ross]

Fine for what they are doing now. But the sales person said “more bang for the buck.” And they wanted some future proofing. THe iMac is FINE for editing…capturing DV, HDV…edit, make a DVD, output back to DV or HDV tape. Compress for the web. Tapeless formats too…editing and all that. But you can’t color grade on an iMac, not with any confidence. Just saying.

The new iMac is DARN good. But there are limits to what it can do. basic editing…perfectly fine.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Jeff Mueller]

I’ll chime in here as a low budget person who’s been studying this issue intensively. My intel iMac is overloaded and so I just chose to buy a 1st gen Mac Pro (and upgrade it substantially) rather than buy a new iMac, but it wasn’t an easy choice. If you can afford a brand new Mac Pro without indenturing yourself, by all means buy it. For all the reasons Shawn stated it is a wonderful machine. But the latest Quad Core iMac is pretty impressive for the money. It benchmarks as twice as fast as my 2.66 Xeon quad core and certainly the processor speed and buss is faster and FCP doesn’t really use the 4 cores (as I understand it, feel free to jump on me). It’s got a great graphics card (basically as good as they get by today’s standards) and a wonderful 27″ IPS, led backlit screen, all for less $$$ than a base Mac Pro. Plus, it appears that OWC can install an eSata connector for a couple hundred bucks which would enable you to add a very fast external Raid array.

But Shawn is right, other than maybe the eSata upgrade it is completely un-expandable, un-upgradeable. A video I/O is a big problem (but if you are mostly off-lining that’s not necessarily a big deal), drives are MUCH cheaper if you just slam raw ones into a Mac Pro (although you can buy the cheapest G-Raid and slam big drives into it). And I’ve been having a lot of fun upgrading my old Xeon: ATI Radeon 4870 graphics card 1 GB (PC version) $130, upping the RAM, picked up a slightly used 1 TB 7200 RPM drive for $34.00 (Mac came with two fast 500 GB drives), Asus 300MBPS N wifi, haven’t picked the final Monitor yet but it will be IPS (plan on using an older Sony for bins and such).

For me the decision to go Mac Pro was in part based on frustration with the previous iMac, as it got long in the tooth its issues couldn’t be addressed. No updates, and failure means going outside the box (Firewire optical drive that’s never quite happy for instance) or giving up (thought my GPU was going out, but it turns out the darn thing won’t cool properly with the stock factory settings, so downloaded smcFan Control. turned the fan up, cooled the GPU to under 100 degrees F and that part is fine, but i just don’t think the iMacs were built to work 24/7 doing heavy processing, Not that I work 24/7, but sometimes it is 24/3 and then the iMac still has to render for 12 hours at which point it gets really cranky.

So my take is the iMacs are worth a look, but if you can swing a Pro it will last you longer and frustrate you less.

Jeff Mueller
http://www.ApertureVideos.com
Santa Barbara, CA

[Shane Ross]

[Jeff Mueller] “For all the reasons Shawn stated”

[Jeff Mueller] “But Shawn is right”

I understand people calling me Shawn (or Sean…Shaun) after they meet me in person. Shane is uncommon, and they might hear Shawn. But when it is WRITTEN…printed as SHANE, and is there to be referenced? I don’t get it.

Shane…like the movie. It isn’t “Shawn. Shawn! Come back!” Nope. Shane.

(Sorry man, just raggin…)

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Jeff Mueller]

I stand corrected. Sometimes I get too passionate about the gear and forget about the people, Shane.

Jeff Mueller
http://www.ApertureVideos.com
Santa Barbara, CA

[Lauren Petty]

Thanks all for the feedback. All good considerations and things I had been thinking about – Shane, you hit on just about every one of my concerns…

I guess I just need to think it through – and make a wild guess about what my future will look like. The IMac is fine today but I very well might hit a wall in a year.

[Lauren Petty]

Zak – thanks for posting the article. It was very helpful and a clear breakdown of the issues.

Ultimately, I am more comfortable going Mac Pro – it would be such an easy decision if money were not an issue…

[Zak Ray]

As is the case with a lot of things 🙂 The bottom line is, the average desktop turnaround is 3-5 years. Do you see yourself adding internal drives, changing the graphics card, or interfacing with SAS/eSATA/HD-SDI devices before then? And are you willing to pay the premium for that future-proofing?

[Stewart Grinton]

This is EXACTLY the discussion I’ve been looking for. I have been agonizing over this decision now that my 6-year-old G5 just isn’t cutting it.

Thanks for everyone’s input and thank you Lauren for asking the question!