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New iMac for 4k editing
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[Don Walker] ” Robin says that the choice of an i7 is not that critical over the i5. Peter says the i7 is crucial. Which is it? Is an FCPX editor really going to see much difference between the two, all other options being equal?”
The two options discussed were a quad-core 3.8 Ghz i5 vs 4.2 Ghz i7 for 4k editing in FCPX. The clock speed difference is about 11%. Benefit from i7 hyperthreading will vary from zero to significant. I have tested FCPX export performance with hyperthreading on vs off on the same i7, by using the 3rd party CPUSetter utility. Hyperthreading improved export performance by 30%, so the total i5 vs i7 performance difference would be about 40% — for the export case.
I didn’t test other FCPX CPU-bound operations such as transcoding, or CPU-bound effects such as stabilization, Neat Video, or Digital Anarchy Flicker Free. However the i7 would possibly help in those cases. Identifying these cases it easy — just use iStat Menus or Activity Monitor, and if all CPU cores are pegged, it’s not waiting on I/O or GPU. In all those situations more CPU horsepower (whether additional cores, higher clock speed, better IPC from a newer CPU or hyperthreading) would likely help. Whether it would be noticeable or worthwhile depends on the magnitude of improvement and how often those cases are encountered.
Obtaining smooth 4k editing is often difficult on almost any hardware. However this varies widely based on the codec. If the camera captures ProRes or has an external ProRes recorder, editing that is a lot easier. If it is H264 ( including containers such as XAVC-S), then it’s a lot harder. If you never edit multicam or apply any compute-intensive effects, it’s easier. Multicam and/or compute-intensive effects make 4k editing much harder. But if you are willing and able to transcode everything to proxy, it can be edited on a MacBook Air.
[Julius Jonas] “…when you would ONLY use Final Cut Pro X then you can “ignore” the processor, go for the best graphics card you can have…”
You definitely cannot “ignore” the CPU in FCPX. If so a quad-core 2013 Mac Pro with dual D700 GPUs would be as good on FCPX as a 12-core machine with the same GPUs.
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Thanks for all the thoughtful replies. I haven’t pulled the trigger yet, but I think I will go with the i7 based on some of the comments and the reality that this one should last a long time. I am currently still using my mid 11 27 inch. In the good old days when Moore’s Law was working, two years was a long time to keep a Mac. For me, I think the 2 TB fusion disk should be enough. It has 128 GB of SSD in it and I am going to keep my media elsewhere anyway. For RAM, it looks like adding two 16 GB chips to the 8 GB of factory installed RAM would give 40 GB and that is probably enough. The only thing I will miss and internal DVD drive for some legacy materials. So at some point I would need an external one, but they are relatively cheap. Now to figure out the 4K camera.
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Okay so:
Which model are you getting? Radeon 475 or 480?
If you get the 475 then do not buy the 2TB Fusion Drive if you get external storage anyway. If you get the 475, buy the cheaper 256 GB SSD plus your own external storage – just makes more sense to me.If you get 8GB of Ram from Apple do not insert two sticks of 16 GB. I am not an expert on it, but someone can probably back me up on this: it is not good to use different sized RAM sticks.
So rather go for 4*8=32; that should be enough
Unless you want to take out the original one and then put for 16 GB in there or whatever…
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[Julius Jonas] “Which model are you getting? Radeon 475 or 480? “
???
No current iMac has either. Nor do I get what the GPU could possibly have to do with the storage options.[Julius Jonas] “it is not good to use different sized RAM sticks.”
That most certainly does not apply to iMacs and only applied to some very select few machines of yesteryear. Whereby mixing same sized PAIRS has never ever been an issue. If anything then mixing different sized sticks on the same bank and only with very specific types of RAM (for parity reasons). So this is a complete non-issue.
– RK
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[Robin S. Kurz] “I highly doubt that any mentionable performance differences will merely be due to the SSD as opposed to a Fusion drive by any relevant level. There are many many other specs that will play into that and make the real difference, whatever it may be.”
This is correct. I have a 2013 and 2015 iMac 27, one with 3TB Fusion Drive and one with 1TB SSD. Both have the top CPU and GPU and both have 32GB RAM. I have tested them extensively side-by-side and cannot tell any difference in I/O-related FCPX performance when the media is on an external drive. Re FCPX boot time, it’s usually about the same between the Fusion Drive and SSD iMac.
If media is on the boot drive there are some cases where SSD is faster but (a) You normally don’t want media on the boot drive, and (b) Even 1TB of SSD is too small to put much media on it.
Thus the dilemma is a 3TB Fusion Drive is big enough to put some media on it, but you shouldn’t do that, whereas the 1TB SSD is fast enough but not big enough. If all media is on external storage, either Fusion Drive or SSD will generally deliver about the same real-world FCPX performance. In that case I would mildly prefer SSD because it’s less complex and might help non-FCPX performance in some edge cases.
OTOH spending all your money on an SSD iMac then putting your media on a cheap, slow, bus-powered USB drive can often produce poor performance.
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[Joe Marler] “If media is on the boot drive there are some cases where SSD is faster but (a) You normally don’t want media on the boot drive, and (b) Even 1TB of SSD is too small to put much media on it. “
The reason I get large-as-possible internal storage, is for various media libraries such as Photos, iTunes, Logic’s and FCP’s sound libraries etc. All of which amount to well over 1TB, but certainly don’t demand super-speed. Media I want access to without needing to attach (and therefore possibly carry around) external disks.
And as you say (and I know from experience), an SSD will not do anything worth mentioning in terms of overall performance. Certainly nothing that gets you anywhere close to make up for the horrendous difference in $$ per GB.
That said, I certainly enjoy the mind-boggling speed (near 3GB/s) of my MBP’s SSD when copying things or rebooting. But then it was not optional, nor would I have spent what they cost on getting one had it been.
– RK
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Deutsch? Hier gibt es ein umfassendes FCP X Training für dich! -
I am sorry, I obviously meant the 575 and 580.
And that has something to do with the standard storage option you get. For the 575 you get 1TB Fusion drive. He says he is getting a 2TB Fusion Drive, which would be standard for the 580. But if he wants to upgrade the 575 model to 2TB Fusion drive it would be cheaper to buy a 256GB SSD.Also, you can pretty easily put your Logic library, Photos library and even iTunes if you really want to, onto an external storage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRCXYXszi8U
I guess you might be right about the RAM, it must be different then between PCs and iMacs.
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[Julius Jonas] “Also, you can pretty easily put your Logic library, Photos library and even iTunes if you really want to, onto an external storage.”
Yes, I’m aware of that, only that was my whole point: I don’t want to. I want to have that media with me at all times without the need for external storage. Other than those “basics”, everything goes onto external storage, yes.
– RK
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Deutsch? Hier gibt es ein umfassendes FCP X Training für dich! -
Hi Robin same advice for late 2017 iMac?
best graphic choice at apple’s site and stay with i5? No advantage to i7 for performance in general?
money not a variable…huge grant.Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic HPX250P, FCP X 10.3, teach video production in L.A.
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[Craig Alan] “… money not a variable…huge grant.”
Erm… then simply max out everything and enjoy? ????
– RK
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Deutsch? Hier gibt es ein umfassendes FCP X Training für dich!
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