New 27″ iMac speed/fusion/graphic card Q’s compared to mid-2011 27″ iMac

[Jeremy Garchow]

Get 32GBs of memory and go for it.

[John Davidson]

You’re going up a single generation. Things that will be more noticeable will be the improvement of USB 3.0, apps will open a little faster (usually) and the less reflective screen will make you cry like childbirth. In terms of render speeds, proc speeds, it may be noticeable but not as much as the other things, IMHO.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[Steve Connor]

Has 10.8 and the latest OSX release fixed the problems with the 2gb Nvidia card? I haven’t seen much about this on the forums.

Steve Connor

There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum

[Jeremy Garchow]

Supposedly the pixie dust filter has been fixed.

[Michael Garber]

I tried it and it rendered and played fine. Didn’t do any extensive editing or testing with it though.

Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company
Blog: GARBERSHOP

[Alister Robbie]

I’ve been running mine for 3 weeks or so and it rocks. Super fast rendering. A lot of stuff that would cause my 2010 27″ iMac to choke is no problem for this box.

Mine is the top spec iMac with 32GB RAM hooked up to a 10TB Promise RAID with a BlackMagic Design MiniMonitor handling client output.

I haven’t really had a chance to do performance testing as I have been flat out editing with it. Still, it is a great box and a huge performance boost, especially with Final Cut Pro X.

—
Editor| Post Production Consultant
The Post Project

[Stephen Underwood]

Thanks to all who weighed in on this… One thing I’m trying to clarify: A friend who works at the local Apple Store estimated that the graphics card would be about 60% faster in the newest iMac, compared to mid-2011. In terms of playback with 3rd party plugins (like Lock/Load, Crumplepop ToneGrade), will I see less stuttering, or is that determined by CPU speed only, (or a combination of both?)

~ Steve Underwood

Computer: iMac 27″, (Mid 2011), OS X 10.7.5
Processor: 3.4GHz, Intel Core i7, Memory: 24GB
AMD Radeon HD 697OM, FCX 10.06, FCP 7.03
GRAID 8TB Thunderbolt

Computer: MacBookPro (Mid 2009), OS X 10.7.5
Processor: 3.06 GHz Intel Core2Duo, Memory: 4 GB
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB, Software: FCPX, FCP 7.03

[Jason Tranetzki]

I’m curious about the same thing, and wondering if anyone has news on any development for future imac’s graphics cards.

The nvidia 680mx is powerful, but it is still considered a notebook card, so wondering if apple will incorporate high-end nvidia equivalent to those on power macs.