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To iMac or not to iMac…
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It’s perfect for me. Most of the benefits of an SSD without the limitations on space. I think it’s a great compromise until SSD’s prices come down and can completely replace spinning disks. I did get Apple care because this is somewhat new (for apple) technology. If we find the drives have issues a year down the line, I’m covered.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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It’s al about perspective. My 2006 MacPro was smokin when I got it. But I certainly don’t upgrade every year. So going from a 2006 MacPro to a 2011 iMac was a jump ahead light years. And at iMac prices I can afford to get a new one every year.
I’ll be swapping mine out for a nVidia version and not putting any faith in seeing a new MacPro that is going to satisfy anyone anytime soon.
Although it is a good sign to see them in the stores again!
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Ofcourse anyone that buys extra ram at Apple is throwing away money.
You can add 32 gb ram for 200 bucks in the 27” iMac. -
1) Can anyone here enlighten me about what is most important the GPU or the CPU when it comes to video editing, rendering and 3D in FCPX and Motion?
2) I’m looking to upgrade my iMac, but I’m not sure how to spend my hard earned money best. I do some 3D, but mostly just editing in FCPX. Will the 21″ with the following specs “suffice”: 16gb ram, 3.1QC i7, NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 512MB.
… or should I opt for the 27″ with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX 1GB or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2GB.Any thoughts?
Ps. If I had all the money in the world, I would naturally opt for the 27″ , but I am wondering if it is worth the extra cash.
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[Jason Jenkins] “I’m not sure about the Fusion drive. How is this better than a discrete SSD for the OS & applications and a second internal HDD for media?”
Just conjecture until we get more experience with the newest 27″ iMac, and just running the system as you suggest may be perfectly fine. I lean towards the high-end Fusion, 3TB HDD with 128GB SSD (wish it was 256GB for $250), though because it may be the smartest “it just works” disk management option ever (even easier than Time Machine). The OS manages what is on the SSD and what is on the HDD according to its use. Initially on a new system, everything is loaded on the SSD which would be the OS and your applications and other data, but as the demands exceed the capacity, data is loaded to the HDD. Then as data is used by you over time, the rarely used material (including OS and apps) migrates to the HDD and data you use frequently goes from the HDD to the SSD.
Sure it takes some time for the OS to learn what belongs where, but apparently it learns after a couple of accesses to the data. So the OS does potentially a better job than the user would of maximizing performance in the internal system. And you don’t waste too much empty space on the SSD because the OS and your apps only took up 75GB for example.
Of course when we have more experience with the Fusion drive, the theory may have its quirks in practice. If it proves to be a winner, it’s such an elegant way of benefiting from an SSD while retaining high capacity on the iMac’s internal volume. Much better than simply using the SSD/Flash on a hybrid drive as a temporary cache.
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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