Deciding between 5K Imac or 2012 Mac Pro Fully Loaded

Greetings all,

I'm new to these forums so I wanted to get the opinions of all you Mac users out there. I do a lot of photo editing in Photoshop & Lightroom and I do occasional video work in Final Cut Pro X. I also do a lot of music editing in programs such as Logic Pro, Ableton Live, etc. Of course, I'll have multiple windows and apps running at the same time.

Now I've came down to two Apple products to fit my workflow:

1. 2014 IMac 27" Retina 5K
3.5 GHZ
Intel Core I5
32GB 1600 MHZ DDR3 Ram
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon R9 M290X 2048 MB
1TB Fusion Drive
El Capitan
Comes with (2) 27" Thunderbolt Displays

Or

2. 2012 Mac Pro 6 Core Intel Xeon Westmere (12 Threads)
3.33 GHZ
48GB 1333 MHZ DDR3 ECC Ram
1TB 7200 RPM Hard Drive in each of the 4 bays (4TB Total)
1TB PCIE SATA III Solid State Drive (Boot Up Drive)
NVIDIA GTX 680 2GB w/ 1500 CUDA Cores
18x SuperDrive
USB 3.0 4 Port PCIe Expansion Card
El Capitan
Comes with (2) 30" Apple Cinema Displays

Like I said I do a lot of editing with music and photos and of course regular stuff like watching movies, surfing the net, etc.

With money not being a problem, I wanted to see what is everyone's opinion on the two machines outlined above and which would be a better purchase for me.

Thanks in advance

First question would be…do you NEED the 5K retina display of the 27" iMac? If you do…you won't get this with the Mac Pro.

- Nick

I thought about that also and I won't need it.

2 more questions.

- Is the iMac Apple refurbished or used? The 2012 Mac Pro is almost certainly used.
- If the iMac is Apple refurbished (and comes with Applecare)…and the Mac Pro used (and doesn't have Applecare). Are you ok with one of the choices having a warranty…and one not?

* Nick

p.s. And those two 30" Apple Cinema Display's are certainly WELL used (since they were discontinued back in 2010)…first introduced in 2004…and be between 6-12 years old.

I've checked out both machines and both are used. Both are in pristine condition as well. There is AppleCare on only the Imac.

I had a chance to test both machines and both running without any issues. The Mac Pro was definitely faster in rendering and boot up speed.

A pixel test was ran on all monitors. Again, no fading, no pixel loss, no bleeding, and no issues.

Go with the Mac Pro. It is easy upgraded with memory, graphic cards, USB3 PCI-e cards etc etc etc.

Despite my avatar showing an iMac, I have been a Mac Pro user in the past, using them for graphic artwork, Quark Express etc. Why did I five them away?

Simple. I am getting too old to lift the beasts on and off the desk to work on!!!!!

Thanks @harryb2448. So although these machines are old but loaded with the latest OS, will my current software work? (Photoshop, Lightroom, Final Cut Pro etc)?

Djconcise said:

...will my current software work? (Photoshop, Lightroom, Final Cut Pro etc)?

Click to expand...

Don't know what versions of this apps you have. To check El Capitan compatibility…go to:

www.roaringapps.com

- Nick

Djconcise said:

So although these machines are old but loaded with the latest OS, will my current software work? (Photoshop, Lightroom, Final Cut Pro etc)?

Click to expand...

I have a 2010 Mac Pro with dual Westmere processors, 64GB memory, SSD boot drive, and a Gigabyte GTX 780 3GB video card. I use Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 5 and Final Cut Pro (latest version). I also use several other programs in the CS6 suite. I am running 10.11.5 on it. It runs flawlessly and very fast. You will have no problems with the mac pro you have listed.

Lisa