[Steve Buke]

Thanks. Just picked up a 2011 iMac 27″ 16gb (I can upgrade myself) with HD 6970 1gb card have some footage that needs to be edited and this was my quickest and least expensive way to get rolling. Thanks for all the posts, great forum.

[Steve Buke]

Thanks for the replies guys. Here’s my dilemma, not sure now if I can run FCPX properly with the GPU I listed in those 2 machines that I was looking at, they only have 512 of dedicated RAM. If not that only leaves me with buying a new 21.5″ iMac i7 with my budget.

[Steve Buke]

Dave thanks for your post, problem is the 21.5″ iMac i7 processors on the apple referb site when I bring them up to 16gb ram will be $200 difference from a brand new one. Everything I’ve read and heard is telling me to stay away from i5 processor if running FCP X, probably reason there are some good deals for them on Apple site.

[Steve Buke]

Thanks for the info. So it looks like neither of the 2 units I am looking at has a gig of memory never mind 2gig, that’s the GDDR5 we are talking about correct? I might be able to swing the new 21.5″ iMac 3.1GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
16GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM – 2X8GB
1TB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 1GB GDDR5
would it be a dramatic difference in your opinion? about $800 difference in price

[Steve Buke]

I found 2 iMacs on gainsaver.com. Purchased 2 old Power Mac G5’s from that company back in the day and had great success with them. The 2011 model with 16Gb RAM will run me $1000.

[Steve Buke]

Yes I’ve seen a few posts that people have edited AVCHD without transcoding the footage. The 2011 iMac has an AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR5 memory. The 2012 model I was also considering has an NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M Graphics Processor With 512 MB Of Dedicated GDDR5 Memory