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Archive 2014 · Upgrade? Top iMac vs nMP. One analysis

  
 
OntheRez
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Upgrade? Top iMac vs nMP. One analysis


Perhaps this will be useful to someone considering upgrading their desktop Mac. First my usage. I'm the only "professional" photographer in my small town. Professional is in quotes because there aren't enough people to support full time so I do a variety of things. Most of this involves intellectual work done at a distance: statistical analyses and reporting, technical writing, and some architectural CAD work. I do a lot a writing. I'm also the sports reporter with weekly deadlines (both written and photo). In a busy week I deal with 2K+ RAW photos. I'm on my 3rd Mac Pro. It's 4+ years old. I was blown away last month when I helped a friend acquire and setup a new 27" iMac with the 3.4 Ghz i7 processor (platter drive). Frankly it kicked my Mac Pro's butt! Understand, I've hot rodded this thing (2010 dual quad 2.4 Ghz) as far as it will go: max RAM, PCI-e SSD bootdrive, 4+ TB online storage, 30" CinemaHD monitor, etc. It's used daily for several hours at a minimum.

My first instinct was to go with the new Mac Pro (nMP). No doubt these are impressive cans I believe - once again - that Apple has staked out new hardware territory well beyond the current paradigm. They have done this before. (You'd have to be fairly old to remember the "Apple is dead" dirge that followed the introduction of the Mac. Reason: "No one will use those expensive 3.5" floppy disks cause everything is 5.25". The problems with the nMP are that the hardware ecology hasn't caught up yet, and bluntly the software developers in main don't even begin to exploit its capabilities. (Yes, I'm talking to you Adobe.

I depreciate my work computer over 3 years. (Yes the IRS claims they last 5. Wonder how many 5-year old computers are still in mainline service?) Three years seems to be a fairly good upgrade cycle because in that time hard/soft ware have generally advanced enough that new equipment makes economic sense. So my decision came down to how future proof do I want to be and how much extra do I want to pay to be a pioneer.

I ended up comparing the fully tricked 27" iMac (3.5 Ghz, 512 GB SSD, 4 GB VRAM, but minimum RAM: cost $2850 shipped no tax) vs both the 4 and 6-core nMP. The 4-core is roughly the same cost while the 6 is an extra $1K. Non-Apple RAM upgrades to 32MB are about the same for each. I've not owned a closed case machine since the Mac SE. My DOS boxes have always been hand assembled. The idea of NOT being able to modify a machine is difficult to accept. I believe Apple is returning to Steve Job's original vision of "computer as toaster." Regardless of choice, I'll have to invest in new peripherals because everything currently is eSATA, FW800 or USB-2.

All the testing I could find suggests that the 4-core nMP doesn't out perform the top level iMac. The 6-core does, but at a healthy premium. Also the nMP SSD upgrade is dramatically more expensive than the iMac. As far as I can tell other than Apple's Final Cut Pro and Pixelmater nothing is making use of the dual GPUs. Finally, I realized that while I can rig my 8-year old CinemaHD display to work with the nMP it would be a bit of a kluge and in examining the iMac screen it is clearly sharper and has better color. So while I can use the display in the short term I'd soon be looking at another ~$1K for a new monitor.

Dropping down to a 27" screen is a real negative, but it is possible to add a second monitor. Also I hate the idea of losing a computer because the screen went TU. After much head scratching and muttering I went with the fully tricked iMac, added $150 for 2 extra years of warranty (so it won't matter if the screen dies), so "tax, title, and license" it will arrive on my doorstep for <$3k. I'm getting an OWC "miniMax Stack" which is USB-3, inclues a CD-ROM, has room for drive, and multiple ports including eSATA, USB-3, and FW800. A good transition device. A further advantage is that the company I deal with will give me $1500 for my 2010 Mac Pro (minus my shipping costs). So run it for 3 years at $500 @ year (minus resale value) and see what the nMP looks like in 2017.

As with all choices there are downsides to any direction I went. As we say in statistics, "You can't maximize all the variables in any equation." This seems the best trade-off.

Long winded, but maybe of value

Robert



Jul 26, 2014 at 12:56 PM
Ian.Dobinson
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Upgrade? Top iMac vs nMP. One analysis


yeah the imac is a very good machine .
a while back someone on here did a Lightroom Camparison between an i7 imac and a nMacPro (in and apple store) and the imac held its own very well . he also made the test available to users on here to bench their own machines to those results .

i think for just about all still image use the imac is not far enough behind 'Vaders Trash Can' for the cost upgrade .
Now if you were rendering huge video files the upgrade is probably worth it in spades

I will say though that Apple 4k screens cant be that far away . some rumours indicate the imac could go 4k in the fall . its a possibility but I think it much more likely there will be stand alone 4k cinema screens to compliment the nMP .



Jul 26, 2014 at 01:07 PM
gdanmitchell
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Upgrade? Top iMac vs nMP. One analysis


OntheRez wrote:
Dropping down to a 27" screen is a real negative, but it is possible to add a second monitor...


For a desktop photography (and other) setup, there are a ton of advantage to the two-monitor system. I use it, and I have a cheap old Dell external monitor. When I'm in Photoshop, I fill that monitor with many, many tool windows, keeping the main screen for just the image I'm working on.

iMacs are excellent photography workstations for virtually all Mac-using photographers who want to work on the desktop. The monitors are excellent, the machines are plenty fast (though I'd go for a lot more than the 4GB ram you mentioned, the size is excellent, and easy expansion is available via all kinds of wireless/wired connections.

Dan



Jul 26, 2014 at 01:30 PM
OntheRez
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Upgrade? Top iMac vs nMP. One analysis


gdanmitchell wrote:
For a desktop photography (and other) setup, there are a ton of advantage to the two-monitor system. I use it, and I have a cheap old Dell external monitor. When I'm in Photoshop, I fill that monitor with many, many tool windows, keeping the main screen for just the image I'm working on.

iMacs are excellent photography workstations for virtually all Mac-using photographers who want to work on the desktop. The monitors are excellent, the machines are plenty fast (though I'd go for a lot more than the 4GB ram you mentioned, the size is excellent, and easy expansion is available
...Show more

Dan,
I use to run a multi-monitor rig before I got the 30" screen. There are advantages each way. I'll play with the iMac a bit and see if something smaller would be a good place to put pallets and tools. Oh, the machine will have 32 GB RAM. I just won't pay Apple's idiotic prices. I've had perfect service over the years with either Crucial or OWC.

Ian it does seem, based upon what I've read in multiple places, that most Adobe products (at least the core ones) get the best performance boost on higher clock speed hence going with the 3.5 Ghz i7.

It will be an interesting change. Seems to take me at least 2 weeks to completely switch to a new computer and I always forget and leave something on the old one.

Robert



Jul 26, 2014 at 05:50 PM
eyal.ma
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Upgrade? Top iMac vs nMP. One analysis


While choosing a mac pro several years ago was necessary for a good smooth workflow, today's iMac is more than a enough for 99% of photographers.

Unless you deal with extremely large files with a great amount of layers, the i7 iMac is strong enough for anything. I have been running my rMBP 15 with i7 as my main workstation and using an external U2713H monitor for editing. And its strong enough to handle almost all of my work.

But, and there is a small but here, when you do more than just editing raw, and use complicated filters / actions, or running video editing here and there, the iMac will start to feel sluggish sometimes.

Also as mentioned before, a mac pro will be able to give you a future choice to upgrade the monitor, while on the iMac you are stuck with only one choose, and replacing it for a 4K once they come out, will mean replacing the whole computer.
And that is the main reason for me why I got a mac pro for a really good price



Jul 28, 2014 at 01:26 AM
Alan321
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Upgrade? Top iMac vs nMP. One analysis


Personally I don't like the iMac screens. I'm much happier with my antiglare high-ppi Dell 4k monitor. To get the best from such a display requires a suitable graphics card, whether for photography or for video, games, etc. There's a lot of pixels to refresh. That extra resolution even slows Lr down for some edits but editing in a smaller window can boost the speed again. If I added a 4k monitor to an iMac then I think it would struggle a bit too much, but I'd rather have two 4k monitors anyway.

I dislike the rather closed-to-upgrades build of both the iMac and the nMP, so no real winner there.

In a review of the nMP that I read recently it was said that Ps can use one of the graphics cards for its GPU processing power and the other for the display. That could be a win for the nMP but frankly it is pretty clear that Adobe doesn't know how to fully utilise even four CPU cores let alone 6 or more. I expect they have a huge code base and they are afraid to alter it. However, you'd think it would be easy enough to split activities like file handling over multiple cores so that we don't have to do it manually. It could even be optional so that SSD users would benefit greatly without causing the HDD heads to thrash about too much on different parts of the drive.

I would probably go for the nMP because it has additional thunderbolt and USB 3.0 ports and also more bandwidth behind them. However, I am biased because I do LOTS of full backups due to my very long history of bad luck with most things computer. Backups can take ages on slow hardware and I prefer to get them out of the way and shut the thing down rather than let it run all night. [As an aside, do not use a drobo if speed is important to you.]

I'd certainly be even more tempted by "a really good price" but (at least here in Australia) getting a really good price on anything Apple is extremely rare.

- Alan



Jul 29, 2014 at 11:40 AM





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