[Mitch Ives]

[Tom Sefton] “Would have been really nice to see the specs of both machines before the test.”

My thoughts as well. If I understood him correctly, he indicated that the 5K iMac had the i7 upgrade and the top of the line 295 GPU.

If that’s true, that was my issue… if you’re going to compare a stripped stone-stock 6-core Mac Pro, then why not compare it to a 5K iMac with the base CPU and the 290 GPU? That would be a more realistic match.

As he pointed out, the 290 GPU is an older design and no match for the upgraded 295 GPU, which if I was told correctly is newer than any of the MacPro options. So, if you’re going to have a maxed out 5K iMac, shouldn’t we at least have a Mac pro with an upgraded CPU (say 8 or 12 core) and the best GPU (D700’s), if we want the comparison to be meaningful?

[Tom Sefton] “In our experience, a 6 core with d700s has been faster than his benchmarks for exporting ProRes and H264 material, but I suppose it depends on storage drives and destination drives.”

I agree, which is what many others have reported as well…

Thanks for weighing in…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Mitch Ives]

Next you’ll want me to provide my calculations for pi… something else that’s been done exhaustingly by others.

I watched it again, where’s the part where the iMac annihilated the MacPro?

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Mitch Ives]

I bet this is going to make a lot of people happy.

The price is a nice surprise… almost as big a surprise as finding one of the very few remaining 67 Dodge Chargers to use in the examples… not many of those left…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Mitch Ives]

Lance, his machine appears to have the D500’s in it, based on the price he’s quoting, although he never actually tells us. Having watched it several times, in each of his areas where the iMac either slightly wins or slightly loses, he keeps referring to the GPU. When the MacPro first arrived, this forum was inundated with comparison tests among the models.

In every test, the overwhelming conclusion was that the one area to invest in was the faster video cards. Yes more ram, an SSD, and more cores (up to 8) all help, but faster GPU’s, provided the biggest bang for the buck. More cores were second, with the 8 core being the sweet spot. So, a Mac Pro with D700’s provides a leap in performance and would increase the gap substantially. Hell, you had people buying D700’s in 4 core machines, it was so significant.

In his conclusions he even says that if you’re “doing large complex projects” or “constantly rendering” you should get the Mac Pro. Even though he knows it, as I said, I’d like to see a longer more complex project used in his comparison, as that’s where everyone on this forum is reporting the slow downs. It would be interesting to see how the iMac handled that? Might have surprised us.

He also mentions the “6 TB ports” as an advantage on the Mac Pro. What he doesn’t mention is the advantage of having three separate busses across those 6 ports. Since a lot of us are using many external devices, like additional monitors, high speed disk arrays, client monitors, additional storage drives, etc., those three busses are very significant and really help. It allows the disk array to have it’s own buss and not be slowed down by single external drives or additional monitors. As a result it’s mid 900’s on both reads and writes.

Now, if your 5K iMac is doing 30 second spots and you use only the internal SSD, and have no external devices, then maybe it won’t mean much too you. OTOH, if you have many projects at once or have long ones requiring the use of external peripherals, you will see a difference between these two machines.

By your tone, you seem to be inferring that I don’t like the 5K iMac. Not true, I do… and I can imagine having had a room full of those when I was teaching at the College. Would have been a dream.

He concludes that “he’s impressed with the 5K iMac”. I think we can all agree with that… it may be the single greatest value Apple has ever offered.

But, having said that, a full range of tests would have really made this article of more value to those who are just starting out or don’t know all the other details that come into play. Speed is a function of so many things and configurations, not just isolated tests using just internal components. Apparently, I should have given more detail in my first post.

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Mitch Ives]

I can certainly appreciate all the work that went into this, but like most comparisons I’m always questioning the choices.

What I got out of this was… if you’re going to buy a woefully inadequately configured MacPro, you might want to consider the 5K iMac.

OTOH, if you’re getting a seriously equipped MacPro, then it’ll be game over.

I’d also like to see a real project length with complication. Five minute projects are fine, but once you reach 30 minutes or an hour, with complication is when you see the machines really stressed… and the men separated from the boys… metaphorically speaking…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Mitch Ives]

[Charlie Austin] “And remember, everyone who has access to Photos is using a beta. The *first* beta. The rest of us are only speculating based on seeing pictures/demos and using the iOS version. I’ll go out on a limb and say that it will have a lot more going on after it’s been out for a while. “

Exactly… the thing isn’t even out yet and already it’s being hammered. I’m taking a wait and see attitude. What if it’s like FCP X… pretty good but missing some stuff initially, but gets filled in later?

I do understand the whole DAM thing, but given that FCP X is at its core a database, why wouldn’t Photos have something similar?

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Mitch Ives]

That 7toX is pretty slick isn’t it?

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Mitch Ives]

[Bill Davis] “Wrong side of the bed Mitch?”

I was thinking I could ask you the same question with regard to your original post?

So my question is: are you suggesting that your original call for editors would have been less successful without the snarky comment?

I’m thinking it would have worked just as well, and since you were the one who pointed out that Jerry Seinfeld used to spend hours trying to remove a few words to make his message more clear, I would think that you of all people would appreciate that?

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Mitch Ives]

I can relate…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Mitch Ives]

[Bret Williams] “I read it as implying Pro experience WITH X. IOW if you didn’t listen to the naysayers and went ahead and learned X and have pro experience using it…”

That would make me a member of a very large group…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill