IMac 2.33 vs. Mac Pro 2.66

Question

I know this might seem like a no brainer but here goes. I am looking to set up a second rig and want it to be cost efficient. The iMac 2.33 is about $3300 with three gigs of RAM, the upgraded graphics card and a 500 GB hard drive. And it comes with that great big monitor.
The Mac Pro 2.66 with 2 GB of RAM, the standard graphics (same speed as iMac upgrade) and a 500 GB harddrive is about $3,000. but once i throw in the 23" monitor it goes to 4 grand.
Does anyone have any oppinions on this? Should I try configuring the MacPro 2.0? That would save me $300. Is there a performacne boost using ECC memory? Is a MacPro 2.0 with 4 GB memory better for Logic than a 2.66 with 2 GB?
these questions are a bit beyond me.

Answer 1

stephen, I think the thing with upgrading the graphics card is, it would give better performance for people working with FCP or intensive photo work where there are very large amounts of video data needing to be shunted around, such as multiple video streams. I realise you always work with video, but when we logic users say we work with video, it just means playing back one quicktime video at a time, it's not what video or photo people mean when they say it.. so you really should be fine. just remember to always encode your video to quicktime DV which doesn't require any software decoding and you'll be fine. that said, it's only a matter of a hundred bucks or so to upgrade that card, so it can't hurt to get it if you're at all concerned.
and yes, the MBP you refered to is the very same that I'm finding quite a bit more powerful than my G5. bear in mind that my G5 is not a quad, just a dual core 2gig. however, at an apple demo session I went to, a MBP did compare pretty favourably against a quad G5 anyway. I don't think you'd find it much of a problem to work with, it certainly would be no different to the imac you're looking at.
as for RAM, how much do you have in your G5? as you do orchestral stuff, you should absolutely bump the RAM on the MBP or the imac to the max 3GB. I've only got 2 because I couldn't justify the expense of getting 3 when I bought my machine, and I figured I'd see how it went anyway. so far so good. but I haven't done any projects where I've loaded in track after track of vienna yet. just a few things with some ivory piano, a few tracks of vienna strings and harp, and it handled it all fine. when I've done stuff using a lot of samples on the G5 I always found that around 4GB was the sweet spot.. things seemed to work as well as they would get, even after I tried sticking in a couple of extra gig that I borrowed to try it out. so 3GB it's not too far off that, and given that these machines are really alarmingly powerful anyway, they seem to be able to grunt their way through it regardless.. my MBP still surprises me with its paltry 2GB..
I can understand how after years of having a powerbook 17" you could be turned off the idea of getting another portable. it's hard to imagine holding something in your hands that looks and feels similar to the very underwhelming machine you have now, and to imagine that it could actually give your G5 a run for its money.. it's weird but it's true. my powerbook can only manage a handful of audio tracks, one or two exs, maybe another light synth or two, some EQ and if you ask it very nicely, maybe a single space designer, if it's a small setting. or, get rid of all of that and run one instance of sculpture instead, before it chokes. this is a 1.33gig PB G4 12" btw.. I'm writing on it right now, and I love it as my little email machine, but any serious logic work is quite far out of its reach. if your PB is the fastest one they ever made at 1.67Ghz (I think), well it's not much more of a performer than my little guy.. but when I move over to my little PBs big brother, I can't tell you what a different ballgame it is. everything about it feels like a serious desktop machine while running logic. check my recent posts to see the kind of songs I could work on with it in terms of plug ins and so on. I've yet to have to freeze anything...
so back to your shopping.. you mentioned the joy of having the 2 monitor logic experience. well, getting a 17" MBP to replace your powerbook and then connecting a 2nd monitor will give you that experience, as well as plenty of performance, as well letting you keep the concept of a portable writing machine. it will feel like having your G5 on your lap, you will be freaked out I can tell you that much right now..
and when you're set up in your studio, just use a wireless keyboard and mouse, and put the MBP up on a stand like an icurve or something (which I use) and it can just sit there being your second screen, next to the 23" cinema display or whatever you get, and also secretly be the hidden computer that is running the show. people will wonder where the giant computer tower is... surely you can't be running that huge arrangement in logic and that video playback from a laptop???
or, you can also go for the 24" imac. same performance as far as I can tell as long as you upgrade to the 2.33 chip, and oh boy does that screen look nice. I presume you can still add a second screen to that machine and use it for your video playback, so the imac screen could be a giant playground for logic. not a bad setup up at all.
as for interoperability of your logic sessions. AFAIK, as long as you are on the same version of logic, ie 7.2x on the G5 and on the intel mac, you can open songs on either machine no problemo. to be honest I haven't been able to try it because I've been away from my G5 setup, on the other side of the planet for a few months now, due to sad family reasons.. hence my need to get a MBP portable setup in the first place. anyway from what I've read as long as you're on the same version of logic, things should inter-open just fine.
anyway hope this helps. I think my best advice to you would be to find yourself an apple dealer that is going to grant you the time to come in and test out a couple of systems. it's not impossible to find an apple store that will either already have logic pro installed on machines or will do it for you. bring in an external drive with some of your work projects, your logic key, and go ahead and run them on a 24" imac and on a 17" MBP. make sure your hard drive has your exs sound library on it, and also remember that 3rd party plug ins won't be available. but if you've got projects that run mostly using built in logic stuff and that have some video files, you can see what you're getting yourself into. as you are in the states, there'd have to be an apple store with a pro audio genius somewhere, they'd be crazy to not have one in LA! you could give them a call, talk to the 'genius' and explain you're a working film composer and you absolutely need to be able to test your own projects on the systems before you buy. another possibility but a little more fiddly is to make a clone of your system drive on to a big external FW drive. then also add your sound library and some projects to this drive. you could then try booting from this drive on the imac and MBP in store, and if it works, you'd have your own logic setup and all of your plug ins right there with you.. don't forget iloks of course, if you need them. but I'd check with a 'genius' first.. it's possible that an intel mac won't boot into a cloned system from a G5.
either way, by trying out your own projects you'll be able to see if the machines are going to do what you need them to do. but if you can't swing it to go test drive, my feeling would be that they are both going to be able to give you what you want anyway, particularly if you've been suffering trying to run logic on your PB for so long..
happy shopping, let us know what you end up doing.
oh and one last thing.. you haven't mentioned what your i/o needs are. I doubt you are going to say that you need 24 channels of i/o with super low latency, but if you do.. remember that the imac and MBP limit you to firewire both for audio interfaces and external hard drives. in most cases this is absolutely no problem whatsover. but some users might be tempted to go for a mac pro desktop because of the fact that you can add lots of fast internal storage for projects and sound library, and the PCI or firewire for audio interfaces, thus spreading the load. this probably doesn't apply to what you want to do.. and also, if you are wanting to work between 2 systems, you probably want your project drives to be fast external firewire anyway.
ok any more questions, fire away.
all the best,
antonio