Truly depressing…

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Tom Sefton] “I eagerly await some sort of comparison test between the mac pro and the imac.”

Many people will be refreshing barefeats.com, I’m sure.

[Rick Lang]

[Andre van Berlo] “CPU upgrade prices(there were estimates on some site, can’t remember which)
4 core +$0. ($294 on intel.com)
6 core. +$250. (583 on intel.com)
8 core +$1250 (1723 on intel.com)
12 core. +$2500. (2950 on intel.com)”

Linear upgrades for the other components but the CPU options, using Intel’s prices, do leave me wondering why the jump from $583 for the 6-core to $1,723 for the 8-core. A while ago I looked at each configuration on the Intel site, but I don’t quite grasp why such a large increase in cost? Anyone have any insight into the merits of the 8-core versus the 6-core? Do you feel it will be justified in the overall machine performance gain?

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Marcus Moore]

There’s LOADS of people for whom an iMac is a more than adequate editorial machine. I’ve felt myself hitting the way on this 2011 iMac (that I borrowed from my wife to fill the MacPro gap) more and more recently- so I’m very much looking forward to being back on team MacPro.

[Marcus Moore]

This is the question a lot of people want answered, and it will be really interesting to see the results across the spectrum of configurations.

But one spec isn’t going to give you the best experience. Different parts of X have different hardware masters- GPU for Rendering, CPU for Exporting/Transcoding (sometimes), RAM for real-time performance.

If you can’t max the machine out, everyone will have to make choices about what’s important to them.

I’m really curious to see if there’s any substantive benefit between the 8-core and 12-core machines in FCPX tasks.

[Rick Lang]

[Marcus Moore] “This is the question a lot of people want answered, and it will be really interesting to see the results across the spectrum of configurations.”

Very true, but looking at just the processor, it seems hard to believe that the performance of the 8-core CPU is worth three times as much as the 6-core processor. I know it’s complicated to answer when all the other variables are brought into play, but from Intel’s perspective, they think there is something in that processor that justifies the much higher price. Don’t know what it is when you examine Intel’s specs.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Viktor Kamenický]

I think, that the new version isn’t ready yet… so that is the reason.

(but it wasn’t ready in ’11 and it didn’t stopped Apple to release it…)

purquoise

[John Davidson]

Craig! Jeremy and I worked up a solution. Go and by $30,000 worth of IMACs, and then return them on January 5 when you’re Mac Pros gets here.

Or 30k in gift cards. Yeah.

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

[Andre Van berlo]

I can think of a couple of reasons why it is more expensive.

I can imagine it it much harder putting 8 or 12 cores in such a small space which leads to higher manufacturing costs. Another reason could be that there much fewer people needing 8 or more cores making it a real pro cpu, and anything pro is usually much more expensive cause the building costs arent carried by a large users base.

Sorry for my crappy english 🙂

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Andre van Berlo] “I can imagine it it much harder putting 8 or 12 cores in such a small space which leads to higher manufacturing costs.”

I think it’s yield as well.

If they could make them cheaper, they’d just sell more of them, or offer more power for a lower price.

When making chips, yield is a huge metric, and yield is probably lower in the bigger, faster, more complicated chips.

Look here under “Device Test”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_device_fabrication

When only 30% (or less?) of the chips are successful, that cost is passed on to the consumer.

[Keith Koby]

[Santiago Martí] “Today’s PPro updates includes OpenCL acceleration, that’s what Apple was waiting!”

That is actually really great news. Joking aside about the waiting… It will be interesting to see the comparative results between cuda acceleration on a good nvidia card versus OpenCL acceleration on the dual D700, D500 and D300 models on PP and AE.

Keith Koby
Sr. Director Post-Production Engineering
iNDEMAND