smvwhite Posted November 4, 2009 Share Posted November 4, 2009 Just checking out the latest info from Apple - the iMac now has the option of QuadCore processing. I was thinking Mac Pro - 2 x 2.26Ghz QuadCore Intel Xeon with 6Gb ECC SDRAM. Now I could go iMac single 2.8GHz QuadCore Intel Core i7 but with 16Gb 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM. Faster QuadCore (only one) but lots more RAM (16Gb) for almost $2000 ($AUS) less. So.... just needing some insight into what is more relevant - a Fast QuadCore CPU with lots of RAM, or two slower QuadCores with much less RAM. (ignoring the fact that more RAM could later be added to the Mac Pro system). (Would be running Parallels or Boot Camp). Thanks in advance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaneis Posted November 4, 2009 Share Posted November 4, 2009 The Mac Pro will be faster for rendering (I'm assuming that's what you're asking?!). iMac Quad - 4 cores hyper-threaded, effective 8 cores Mac Pro Dual Quad - 8 cores hyper-threaded, effective 16 cores. Provided you can afford the premium, the Mac Pro would be a much better choice for a production machine. iMacs aren't designed as a production machine, they're designed for home and normal business use. There's a thread on this forum somewhere that talks about RAM for Macs - in short, don't buy your RAM through Apple as it's way over-priced. Search around on http://forums.mactalk.com.au/ or the Whirlpool site for Mac Pro options specific to Australia... http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum/?action=threads_search&f=38&q=RAM http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1302452 Here's a decent guide to the various things you should consider when configuring a Mac Pro... http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-HowToConfigureAMacPro.html Have fun with your new Mac Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smvwhite Posted November 4, 2009 Author Share Posted November 4, 2009 OK. QuadCore with 16Gb RAM is 4Gb per core. Mac Pro - Dual QuadCore (8 cores) with 6Gb RAM is 0.75 RAM per Core. So the iMac would have a better speed with the above specs (first post) than the Mac Pro. Is this thinking correct or am I missing something (other than a fast PC at the moment ). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smvwhite Posted November 4, 2009 Author Share Posted November 4, 2009 Just read your post Shaneis. Will check out the links you posted - thanks for these. I am happy understanding the effect of the number of cores on render speed - but with the GHz differences with the RAM differences thrown in - just wondering if this changes the equation at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaneis Posted November 4, 2009 Share Posted November 4, 2009 That would depend entirely on what you're doing. If you're rendering medium-weight scenes with medium-weight textures, then 8GB will do you just fine. If, however, you regularly render heavy scenes with multiple displacements and high-res textures, then you'll need more RAM ~ 12-16GB. The most important thing to remember about RAM is this... If you need more, you can always get more. There's no point investing in 16GB unless you know you'll be using it. It's better to buy a Mac Pro with the minimum amount of RAM, then buy some 3rd party RAM to bring you up to 8GB. Test it for a week or so and then if you're renders are topping-out the RAM, buy some more. Otherwise, save the money and buy a nice red wine to celebrate... you'll be saving hundreds of $$$. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smvwhite Posted November 4, 2009 Author Share Posted November 4, 2009 OK. So it sounds like Plan A - the Mac Pro. Wanting to get into animation and architectural visualisation in a big way so lots of textures and unbiased rendering. Was only going to get the baseline 6Gb RAM with the MacPro but the iMac with 16Gb for less caught my eye. Thanks for those links - they are now bookmarked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dannydesil Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 Go with the iMac. With the i7 and the 8GB of ram everything should run just as well as a Mac Pro. With the turbo mode on the i7 chip it can over clock to over 3GHz and all so the hyper threading it be like running 8 cores. Of course the only down side is if Apple bring out new GPU in the macs you cant update the one in the imac, and as you are a heavy HD video and photoshop user a Mac Pro will allow you easy upgrading in GPU. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smvwhite Posted November 25, 2009 Author Share Posted November 25, 2009 Recently, I have swung back to the idea of the 16Gb upgraded dual-core iMac. Sure - a Mac Pro would be nice, but for the $ and the equivalent power - alongside the idea of starting out in arch viz and animations - probably the iMac is the best choice. My daughter has an earlier iMac and she is always shut down or powered up super fast while the PC is is still grinding through windows startup or shutdown. Looking forward to the change. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 That's not because iMacs are special it's because OSX is better than Windows. If you're buying it to use Bootcamp and run Windows software, what you'll have is a very good looking dual core PC. It won't boot or run any faster than other PCs with the same specs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manta Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 I think you could regret not getting the Mac Pro later on...if your purpose is to use this as a rendering machine then having the extra 4 physical cores would be to your advantage, not to mention upgrade options...of coarse you could always buy a fairly cheap PC to use as a render slave...something to think about... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 Wait, did you already buy a dual core iMac? For rendering and animation? Instead of an eight-core Pro, so you could get 16GB of RAM? You are going to be quite disappointed I think. Can you return it? Seriously, 16GB has got nothing on eight cores and the two cores aren't even Nehalem type. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 In complete agreement with Andrew. I bought a dual quad (8 physical, 16 virtual core) in June. Its a beast and completely worth the premium over lesser computers. On a side note, the Dell and HP equivalents were over $1000 MORE expensive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manta Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 I don't know how true this is...but according to wikipedia hyperthreading is disabled in the current i5's...you might want to investigate that first... Lynnfield Main article: Lynnfield (microprocessor) On September 8, 2009, Intel released the first Core i5 processor: The Core i5 750,[1] which is a 2.66 GHz quad-core Lynnfield processor with Hyper-threading disabled. Lynnfield Core i5 processors have an 8 MB L3 cache, a DMI bus running at 2.5 GT/s and support for dual-channel DDR3-800/1066/1333 memory. The same processors with different sets of features (Hyper-Threading and other clock frequencies) enabled are sold as Core i7-8xx and Xeon 3400-series processors, which should not be confused with high-end Core i7-9xx and Xeon 3500-series processors based on Bloomfield. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 Hyperthreading on an i7 gets you about 20%. It's nice but not nearly as good as having more real cores. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manta Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 it is nice to get 20% more performance...there is no i7 option for the Imac...so I would have to say no to the i5... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 That didn't follow logically, and it's also not true that there's no i7 iMac. They make one with a 2.8GHz i7. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smvwhite Posted November 26, 2009 Author Share Posted November 26, 2009 Thanks for the replies. AJLynn - my daughter has started secondary school so her iMac that I was referring to is not being used for rendering or animation. Agree about the OSX being better and understand that this won't mean a thing unless specs are bigger... but what a relief to have an efficient OS. I haven't bought the machine yet - probably another 6 months until D-Day. manta - I agree I may regret the iMac over Mac Pro but if I am successful enough to do a career change into arch viz, I would gladly spend the extra on a Mac Pro and network this to the iMac Quad Core. I guess I keep coming back to weighing up Mac Pro - Dual QuadCore (8 cores) with 6Gb RAM is 0.75 RAM per Core against iMac QuadCore (4 cores) with 16Gb of RAM - 4Gb per core. Which I could network render to other iMacs in the home. Thanks for the hyper-threading thought - I will do more research on this. Originally the goal was to go the Mac Pro route which undoubtedly is the superior path (for future expansion) but being a person with a family budget, I need to weigh this up against speed for $$ and likelihood of securing visualisation jobs (as a second income before making the leap - still learning). Just found this story which matches where I am coming from: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/182852/why_go_pro_when_imac_goes_faster.html Thanks for all your thoughts guys. I have more months to weigh it all up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted November 26, 2009 Share Posted November 26, 2009 Who are you going to listen to, some idiot tech writer or us? That guy's probably never rendered anything in his life. An iMac, while very nice, is not on the same level as a Mac Pro. Heck, you'd probably overheat it if you tried to render for a few hours at a time and reduce the hard drive's life span. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted November 26, 2009 Share Posted November 26, 2009 Add to that, the Mac pro is likely faster than the iMac plus all the networked computers by a significant margin. If you want to do pro work, you need pro gear. Yes 6GB of ram is a bit low for an 8 core machine, but you can add more later for very little money. I know the more expensive option seems foolish, but buying the incorrect equipment and then replacing it with the correct equipment is far more expensive and foolish. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted November 26, 2009 Share Posted November 26, 2009 Try this: Download a copy of Cinebench and unzip it onto a USB drive. Go to an Apple store and run the single and multi core rendering tests on a dual core iMac, a quad core iMac and an 8-core Mac Pro. This is a more accurate test of rendering speed than anything a Macworld writer will do, but it will actually understate the Mac Pro's advantage because the Cinema renderer is not as good at multithreading as some other renderers. If you render in mental ray or Vray, the actual numbers for you are: On a dual core, multiply the single CPU rendering score by 2. On a quad, multiply by 4. On an 8 core, multiply by 8. If it's an i7 or current Xeon, which has hyperthreading, multiply the result by 1.2. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smvwhite Posted November 27, 2009 Author Share Posted November 27, 2009 Well like I said - more months of weighing this up. Not currently working in the industry (and still needing to put together a portfolio) a career change is a long shot - of course the Mac Pro is the superior machine - just a matter of the $$$$ unfortunately. Never said you guys know less than some 'idiot tech writer'. Learning lots from this discussion. Thanks for the numbers AJLynn. Will test this out where possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smvwhite Posted November 27, 2009 Author Share Posted November 27, 2009 Didn't consider heat during render. I know the humble Pentium 4 PC I currently use heats up and the fan whines louder with rendering. Being a musician - I guess it's like a small amplifier (low watts) cranked, as opposed to a beast of an amplifier (high watts) working below capacity with lots of headroom? Both will do the job, but . . . . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanGrover Posted November 27, 2009 Share Posted November 27, 2009 Didn't consider heat during render. I know the humble Pentium 4 PC I currently use heats up and the fan whines louder with rendering. Being a musician - I guess it's like a small amplifier (low watts) cranked, as opposed to a beast of an amplifier (high watts) working below capacity with lots of headroom? Both will do the job, but . . . . To be fair, the P4 is like the drunken rapist in a family of clergymen - if you've been using a P4 for years, even a bunch of i7's in a room together will seem chilly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smvwhite Posted November 27, 2009 Author Share Posted November 27, 2009 Heh heh! Like your analogy Dan - ROFL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted November 27, 2009 Share Posted November 27, 2009 I guess it's like a small amplifier (low watts) cranked, as opposed to a beast of an amplifier (high watts) working below capacity with lots of headroom? Both will do the job, but . . . . Sort of. Good rendering software will pin the CPU at 100% until the work is done - this could be many hours. Which machine is better able to handle that heavy task repeatedly? Its not the consumer machine. A Honda Civic could pull a trailer every day of its life, but it would be a very short life. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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