Chossing an iMac 27" - Which one?

[The_Bear]

Hey there :)

I'm searching for an iMac in 27" size for working with Pro Tools
I just don't know how which one is best for me.

1) What difference will it make for me if I choose i5 3.0GHz or i5 3.8GHz, or even i9 3.6GHz? How much influence does it make on Pro Tools?

2) What about iMac Pro? How much difference does it make compared to the "regular" iMac?

3) Is Fusion Drive a problem? Should I choose only SSD?

Thanks in advance :)

[JFreak]

First of all you should avoid Fusion drive at all cost, it is not suitable for Pro Audio. Period.

Second, go to www.everymac.com and see the specs of the models you are looking for. There are geekbench numbers available for every CPU out there and you can have a good idea how the models perform in comparison to each others. Bear in mind that low single-core performance is not necessarily a problem unless you run one very CPU-hungry process (plugin for example) but you generally speaking want to get good multi-core performance.

[The_Bear]

Thanks for the answer :)
Do you have any iMac model to recommend? Is there any difference between the iMac release year?

Oh, and should I even choose windows and not mac?

Thanks :P

[JFreak]

Just take a look at the specs and your budget, you will find your answer. I cannot recommend Windows, have left those behind me two decades ago

[The_Bear]

Originally Posted by JFreak

Just take a look at the specs and your budget, you will find your answer. I cannot recommend Windows, have left those behind me two decades ago

That's the point I'm afraid of. I presume i5 3.1GHz will be enough for me, but I guess I'm wrong.
I look for something that will serve me for a long time. Any guidelines you can give me for looking?
I saw the Avid mac specs at their site. I'm afraid to choose the low-power iMac and to see it working slowly after a year or two

[JFreak]

If it works great now, the solution is to not upgrade your OS for the years to come.

If your plan is upgrading everything all the time, the solution is to fork up as much money for your hardware now and it will likely last longer.

[JFreak]

I can give you one comparison though. This iMac Pro has same 3.0GHz 10-core processor that I swapped to my Trashcan. It has plenty of power. Obviously everything else is different between iMac Pro and Mac Pro, but as you asked for CPU performance, there's your benchmark.

[jesele]

I would go for the regular iMac with the 8-core i9 and an internal SSD.
You could add an external Samsung X5 if you need more space.
We have a new MacPro7.1 and the X5 actually has faster read times than the internal Apple SSD. Slightly slower write speed.

Jesper

[Eric Seaberg]

Originally Posted by The_Bear

That's the point I'm afraid of. I presume i5 3.1GHz will be enough for me, but I guess I'm wrong.
I look for something that will serve me for a long time. Any guidelines you can give me for looking?
I saw the Avid mac specs at their site. I'm afraid to choose the low-power iMac and to see it working slowly after a year or two

The rule has always been to avoid the i5. The minimum recommendation has been an i7 which is no longer available, so the i9 should be your first choice to look at.

[JFreak]

Obviously there are other differences but main factor between i3/i5 and i7/i9 is hyperthreading. If you disable HT on i7 it is basically top of the line i5

Why am I talking about this? There were certain OS/PT combinations which worked better with HT disabled. Go figure.