iMac or Mac Pro?

freshface said
Well I have a 6c Mac Pro but I wouldn’t recommend it if you need graphics horse power -> I would rather build a Hackintosh or Win with more GPUs in SLI for that. Other than that, Mac Pro is the beast Regarding iMac vs Mac Pro, you just get what you pay for – see the specs and features. But both will do the job, iMac will be just slower.

16GB for MP costs $259

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory#1333-memory I personally have 32GB RAM from them and it’s working flawlessly. I don’t think that using basic 3rd party components such as RAM would void your warranty, that would be madness! But to be sure just remember to keep the stock Apple RAM in case you need the MP serviced, then you just swap the RAM and send it in.

Of course I would buy 32GB rather than 16. I just don’t want to buy it from Apple. The price on macsales for 32GB is pretty good.

How do you have 6C if apple sells only 4/8 and 12. And about the power. Is Xeon “westmere” more powerful than i7?

I tried to install hackintosh on my pc, but its pretty difficult. I don’t know if I can install it. I think the mac pro will do it also.

And how about, building a SSD in the mac pro. Is this possible and “easy” without to buy it from apple and don’t lose the warranty?

You can’t lose with an iMac or Macbook Pro. If you travel or move around a lot, and get a MacPro, also get an external monitor for the home office. Its a world of difference doing projects on a larger monitor. As mentioned in the other posts, definitely get RAM from an outside vendor rather the buying them from Apple, and install it yourself, its super simple. Adding RAM to a Mac doesn’t void the warranty, people do it all the time.

Naturally, it boils down to what you can afford in a new Mac, so the bang for the money is the iMac overall, cheaper with the same specs, more USB ports, and a bigger screen. We added 8GB of RAM on our iMacs for $89 per computer. At current market prices, RAM is really cheap. Good luck on your new purchase. Cheers!

Siddharth said
I suggest waiting. Updates for both are quite overdue.

BoostShock said

freshface said
Well I have a 6c Mac Pro but I wouldn’t recommend it if you need graphics horse power -> I would rather build a Hackintosh or Win with more GPUs in SLI for that. Other than that, Mac Pro is the beast Regarding iMac vs Mac Pro, you just get what you pay for – see the specs and features. But both will do the job, iMac will be just slower.

16GB for MP costs $259

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory#1333-memory I personally have 32GB RAM from them and it’s working flawlessly. I don’t think that using basic 3rd party components such as RAM would void your warranty, that would be madness! But to be sure just remember to keep the stock Apple RAM in case you need the MP serviced, then you just swap the RAM and send it in.

Of course I would buy 32GB rather than 16. I just don’t want to buy it from Apple. The price on macsales for 32GB is pretty good.

How do you have 6C if apple sells only 4/8 and 12. And about the power. Is Xeon “westmere” more powerful than i7?

I tried to install hackintosh on my pc, but its pretty difficult. I don’t know if I can install it. I think the mac pro will do it also.

And how about, building a SSD in the mac pro. Is this possible and “easy” without to buy it from apple and don’t lose the warranty?

It’s an update from 4c, see:

“One 3.33GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon “Westmere” [Add $1,200.00]”

I would recommend getting 1×6c instead of 2×4c like you said you want. 6c clocks at 3.33 and 8c clocks at only 2,4. It’s a big difference and the extra 2 cores doesn’t matter because most tasks are for made for 1c and even if they are made to support multiple threads or even processors their scaling sucks.

Let me put it this way, the fastest MP is 2×6c at 3.33 and second fastest is 1×6c at 3.33. This is for a real world usage and is of course arguable, on paper the 8c might seem faster at some tasks but I personally wouldn’t touch it, even with a 10 foot wooden pole. Also do the math as I am now not sure what is more expensive if 6c or 8c, but should be roughly the same.

I have SSDs from OWC as well and they are good, no problem there and it won’t void the warranty. You just need to buy some “SSD mount” so it fits into the MP – you can’t use the big HDD bay for SSD .

Is it true that an update is coming for Macbook pro in April? I was thinking to buy a Macbook pro 15” but will wait till end of April to see if there is an update. I was also confused between iMac and Macbook pro, but decided to buy the 2nd one. Because I prefer portability as well.

UniquePixelWeb said
Is it true that an update is coming for Macbook pro in April? I was thinking to buy a Macbook pro 15” but will wait till end of April to see if there is an update. I was also confused between iMac and Macbook pro, but decided to buy the 2nd one. Because I prefer portability as well.

Updates are done all the time and it’s always better to buy the latest update even if you have to wait a few months.

JWells said
As it is right now, you’re getting a lot more bang for your buck for the iMac than you are for the Mac Pro. The iMac uses a latest-generation Sandy Bridge CPU whereas the Mac Pro hasn’t been updated in two years and uses an outdated Nehalem-based Xeon. This is significant because the Sandy Bridge architecture provides about a 20% performance boost over Nehalem – nothing to be sneezed at.

So while the Mac Pro might do better at heavily parallelized tasks that take advantage of multiple cores (say like video editing/encoding), for nearly any other purpose the iMac is giving you more power for your money.

Something else to keep in mind is that the iMac gives you an industry-grade IPS display, exactly the same as the Apple Thunderbolt display and Dell’s 27” IPS display. One of these alone will run you $1,000US, making the $1,999US 27” iMac a pretty nice bargain. The only sacrifice you make is upgradability.

+1 – Well said, JWells.

As it is right now, you’re getting a lot more bang for your buck for the iMac than you are for the Mac Pro. The iMac uses a latest-generation Sandy Bridge CPU whereas the Mac Pro hasn’t been updated in two years and uses an outdated Nehalem-based Xeon. This is significant because the Sandy Bridge architecture provides about a 20% performance boost over Nehalem – nothing to be sneezed at.

So while the Mac Pro might do better at heavily parallelized tasks that take advantage of multiple cores (say like video editing/encoding), for nearly any other purpose the iMac is giving you more power for your money.

Something else to keep in mind is that the iMac gives you an industry-grade IPS display, exactly the same as the Apple Thunderbolt display and Dell’s 27” IPS display. One of these alone will run you $1,000US, making the $1,999US 27” iMac a pretty nice bargain. The only sacrifice you make is upgradability.

Any day mac pro

JWells said
As it is right now, you’re getting a lot more bang for your buck for the iMac than you are for the Mac Pro. The iMac uses a latest-generation Sandy Bridge CPU whereas the Mac Pro hasn’t been updated in two years and uses an outdated Nehalem-based Xeon. This is significant because the Sandy Bridge architecture provides about a 20% performance boost over Nehalem – nothing to be sneezed at.

So while the Mac Pro might do better at heavily parallelized tasks that take advantage of multiple cores (say like video editing/encoding), for nearly any other purpose the iMac is giving you more power for your money.

Something else to keep in mind is that the iMac gives you an industry-grade IPS display, exactly the same as the Apple Thunderbolt display and Dell’s 27” IPS display. One of these alone will run you $1,000US, making the $1,999US 27” iMac a pretty nice bargain. The only sacrifice you make is upgradability.

@Freshface Thanks for you advice, if I will buy the Pro, I will take the 6c machine. But I am not sure about iMac or Mac PRo. Sandy Bridge+Display or Mac Pro+6c+32GB