regular or fusion drive?

[Michael Hancock]

The Fusion drive is an SSD and a regular drive. The OS monitors what programs and files you use most and keeps the on the SSD, speeding up the opening of programs, the read/write response of said programs, and should give you a snappier, faster, more responsive machine.

The 1TB is just a regular hard drive.

I’d go for the fusion drive to get that SSD goodness.

—————-
Michael Hancock
Editor

[Chris Kenny]

[Kent Beeson] “May get an new iMac 27” – should I go for 1TB regular or 1TB Fusion drive, what are potential pitfalls for the fusion drive?
“

The potential downside of Fusion Drive is that it makes performance somewhat unpredictable. You might read a file once and see one level of performance, then read it another time and see a completely different level of performance. That said, in theory performance should always be better than with a regular drive, so there’s no downside here, really; it’s just something to be aware of, particularly if you’re e.g. testing whether your system can handle a certain format.

Fusion Drive is just clever software, though. You can ‘break apart’ the HDD and SSD, if you want to, and just use the SSD for boot and applications and the HDD for bulk storage. That’s a nice way to set up a system in general. So even if the Fusion Drive functionality does cause some problem, you’re still fine with this as a fallback position.

Personally, I wouldn’t buy a new computer that didn’t have an SSD these days, and the way to get an SSD in a new iMac is to order it with Fusion Drive. So for me there wouldn’t be much question.

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.

[Kent Beeson]

true…but since it’s gen 1, I wonder if anyone is reporting issues yet with a fusion drive. But yes, it’s faster – might get that, but just wondered if generation 1 may be an issue since they’re just experimenting in essence with this technology.

Thanks

K
http://www.effective-video.com

[Kent Beeson]

Sounds good thanks for replies – will get fusion

Thanks

K
http://www.effective-video.com

[Craig Seeman]

Just so you’re aware, while the 1TB Fusion Drive can work with Bootcamp, currently the 3TB Fusion Drive can not. I do hope Apple tackles this.

[John Davidson]

I love the fusion drive. I feels like in real world use it performs better than our SSD’s. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because it works well with a tricked out iMac.

Happy buyer here.

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

[John Davidson]

And really, if you’re worried, get Apple Care. We always get that with macs now.

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

[Kent Beeson]

I agree about mac care – so John would you recommend the maxed out iMac 2013 over say my Mac Pro early 2008 3.0 quad core 12GB RAM? The new iMac is totally up to all FCP X and MOTION 5 tasks? Plus adobe cloud apps? And is 16GB RAM good enough in iMac 27″ with i7?

Thanks

K
http://www.effective-video.com

[John Davidson]

The imac 2013 is faster than the mac pro current generation in many tasks. That tutorial I made was done on a 2011 iMac. Just think about that, I was recording video off the screen at 2500×1900 (or whatever the specific dimensions are), editing with Prores over gigE, and it was pretty much just going with the flow. There were 2 crashes because I think editing, recording, and recording scratch VO all at the same time was pushing it a little.

And I got 32 gigs of RAM from OWC because it was cheaper. Got everything else fully loaded. I use all the apps you’re discussing. It’ll blow the 2008 mac pro away.

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

[Kent Beeson]

Danke much – so how can I order 0 GB RAM from Apple, then order 24 or 32 from OWC? When I buy on apple website, it makes you have to get at least 8GB RAM – how to not?

Thanks

K
http://www.effective-video.com