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When buying a MacPro tower was No Brainer. Now what? Versus MBPro, iMac
This subject was bounced around about a year and half ago. Seems a great deal has changed with product speed and capability, it would be really helpful to revisit the subject and I’d appreciate any insight.
Sure starting to look like the MacPro tower is not long for this world. In light of the increased capacity, speed and flexibility of the new MacBookPro line, the coming of thunderbolt, the new iMacs.. Where should an editor who does primarily small 30-60minute programs, docs, featurettes, works with AVCDHD and Apple ProRes444 quite a bit, start to look as she evaluates new system hardware. Used to be getting a tower was a no brainer and one knew exactly which CPU would sit at the foundation of their system… But now… Help.
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3 Replies
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Like Dave says, what else are you running? DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro, Avid, FCP X, After Effects, Motion? All of these programs can benefit greatly from powerful graphics cards which you’ll find in the Mac Pros (and can easily upgrade).
But I agree that the Mac Pro line is on the way out. I’d guess Apple will give it one more spec bump around April/May of this year when Intel releases the Ivy Bridge chipset. That’ll sell for 2 more years and then be discontinued around 2014 or 2015. So you may be able to have one last hooray with a new Mac Pro.
Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.com
vimeo.com/ryanholmes -
If its any consolation, I too faced this exact same dilemma a few months ago. I never thought I would edit on anything but a MacPro. But I needed a new computer now, not in six months.so I purchased the best iMac 27″ I could get, added 16gb ram, faster graphics card, a SD & internal hard rives , and then hooked it all up to a Pegasus 6TB thunderbolt array. My workflow is very similar to yours, also 30 minute shows shot with 1080p Canon DSLR,s… This system seems sweet, using FCP 7…. very snappy. But if you need the expansion capabilities, hold off for the MacPro, if not you,ll be fine with a fast iMac. BW
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Hi Ryan,
but as far as I know, you can hook up a Black Magic Graphics card externally over Thunderbolt, so that should not be a problem either.
I did some research, cause I sit in exactly the same dilema right now.
Because I edit a lot on the road, I thoought of buy a MBP 17inch, external RAID and Graphics card – Thunderbold connected.
It’s still cheaper than a MAcPro, where I live and I can stay mobile.Sascha
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