iMac or Mac Pro

Greetings all,

I'm deciding between thefollowing of what to get:

2010-2012 Mac Pro Tower (Grey)
(2) 3.46 GHz Westmere Processor 12 Core
64GB Ram
GTX 970 Nvidia 4GB Graphics Card
512GB PCIe Flash Storage
(4) TB of storage (1TB in each bay)
USB C & USB 3.0 PCIe Expansion card
(2) Dell P2715Q 27" 4K Monitors

Or

Late 2015 27" Retina 5K IMac
4.0 GHz Quad Core i7 processor
32GB Ram
AMD Radeon R9 M395x 4GB Video Card
512GB Flash Storage
4 TB external Thunderbolt Storage
(1) Apple Thunderbolt Display

I do photography and work a lot with Photoshop and Lightroom. I also do music production using Ableton, Pro Tools, and Logic Pro. I render video at times but not too much.

I know the Mac Pro is a later model but with all the upgrades it looks like it can still hold its own as regards to speed and power. This would cost me $4000.

I also know the IMac is newer and the processors are faster and it also looks like it can hold its own in regards to power and speed. This model would cost me about $3200.

Money isn't an option. I just wanted to see what your opinions on this are.

Thanks in advance.

For starters...Geekbench benchmark scores are as follows:

2012 12-Core Westmere Mac Pro 3.06 GHz = 26,146
2015 27" iMac 4.0Ghz = 17,368

As you can see...the 12 Core Mac Pro has a slightly better than 50% CPU benchmark score. For tasks that are CPU dependent...the 12-Core Mac Pro is easily the better choice. Especially if cost is not an issue.

- Nick

p.s. By the way. The 3.46GHz CPU speed quoted for the Mac Pro above is the CPU "Turbo Boost" speed. This is not the true CPU speed. True CPU speed is 3.06GHz.

Thanks Nick. That's with all the upgrades with the IMac? Wow, the MP still blows it away. Even though it's a 6-7 year old machine the Mac Pro is the way to go huh? Thanks again.

Yes sir. From a CPU perspective...the 12-core Mac Pro does blow it away.

It's a bit more difficult to compare GPU performance (between the iMac & Mac Pro)...since GPU benchmarks are harder to find & compare. And because the video card you mentioned for the Mac Pro is not a stock card. If you REALLY wanted to research GPU performance...go to Maxon.net. They have a benchmark program called "Cinebench"...which includes two different graphics benchmark scores (one for video work, and one for photo rendering work). There's a pretty extensive database of systems there. And you MIGHT find two systems listed (the 4.0Ghz 2015 iMac, and 2012 3.06Ghz 12-core Mac Pro) with Cinebench benchmark scores to compare.

But the iMac does have it's positives as well. The 27" 5K display is awesome. The 2015 iMac has more updated ports.

But if you know that your photography work with Photoshop & Lightroom is mainly CPU dependent...then the 12-core Mac Pro will get your projects done a heck of a lot faster. And if you make a living doing this. You certainly know that "Time is Money"!!!

- Nick

What do you mean by CPU dependent? Also, could I get away with doing what I'm doing on the IMaC without sacrificing any speed or power you think?

The Mac Pro has the edge on the iMac both on sheer CPU performance and the amount of RAM it currently has and can potentially be upgraded to in the future. CPU dependent indicates tasks that require pure processing with little to no access of media routinely. An example of this would be encoding video frames or rendering fractals or whatever. Additionally, having lots of RAM means that data can be shuttled between the CPU and RAM which is much better than going to spinning disk. SSDs help in this bottleneck scenario..

The extra monitors aren't a bad addition to the Mac Pro either..

The 2012 Mac Pro is recent enough to support the latest version of macOS and continue to be supported for the next few iterations of the OS. This is likely your biggest thing to deal with once you get a few more revisions deep, they might deep the 2012-era and older Macs not compatible and now software that you may have will no longer work. Buying a 2008-2009-era Mac Pro will make it obsolete a lot faster than a 2012 model, but that's something you should keep in mind. The 2015 iMac on that other hand will now have this problem for the foreseeable future..

Djconcise said:

What do you mean by CPU dependent?

Click to expand...

"CPU dependent"...means that the apps that you use with your photography work mainly use the computers CPU's to process things/changes. "GPU" dependent" usually means how smoothly a video or game will play ...usually measured in FPS (frames per second). This is also very dependent on the resolution of the video/game being played.

More than likely what you're doing is more "CPU" dependent.

Djconcise said:

Also, could I get away with doing what I'm doing on the IMaC without sacrificing any speed or power you think?

Click to expand...

Kind of hard to say. I don't know if you're an amateur/hobbyist or professional doing what you do...or what volume of work you work with (a couple photos/week or 1000's of photo's/week). If you're a hobbyist doing a few photos/week...you can get away with a LOT less than the two systems mentioned. If you're a professional...processing 100's or 1000's of photos/week or per month...and time is money. Then you want the best/fastest system you can afford.

HTH,

- Nick

Thanks Ashton. That helps. I guess I'll have to go with the Mac Pro. Here's my other question. I don't do too much 4K rendering but I ordered those 4K monitors. I'm honking that maybe I should return those and grab some really good 1080p monitors or maybe even an Apple Cinema 27 display. What do you think?

That helps. I guess I'll have to go with the Mac Pro. Here's my other question. I don't do too much 4K rendering but I ordered those 4K monitors. I'm honking that maybe I should return those and grab some really good 1080p monitors or maybe even an Apple Cinema 27 display. What do you think?

You don't have to run the 4K monitors at 4K, you can run it at 2K. But it's best to be future proof as 1080P definitely doesn't cut it anymore for video/photo work. You should definitely be at least 2K minimum..