New iMac vs older Mac Pro

Hi Guys
I currently have a Mac Pro (not the latest model, one back from that). It's a 2 x 3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon machine with 5GB RAM. I do a lot of Final Cut Pro work and multitasking (Photoshop etc) and it seems to handle all of this fine. It's on a lease, and the upgrade to a much cheaper iMac looks enticing. Assuming I pimped out the iMac 27" with 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 and 8GB RAM, would the performance of the iMac match or better my old Mac Pro? My dealer seems to think so, but he just wants to sell me a Mac. is 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 > 2 x 3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon?
Cheers
Lucas

Considering the Mac Pro has faster clock speed and twice the number of real processing cores, if you make the RAM equal, I think the Mac Pro would be faster (although the relative performance of the graphics card will have impact as well). Also, the Mac Pro has the advantage of being able to accept up to FOUR internal SATA drive. If you separate the OS/apps (startup drive) from the drive where the user data is stored and manipulated, that will make the Mac run more efficiently and increase performance. You can't do that with an iMac; FireWire 800 to an external drive is decently fast, but not nearly as fast as an internal SATA connection.

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Mac benchmarks: iMacs vs older Mac Pro towers

I've been having a great discussion in a PPro Facebook group regarding new editing systems; I have a limited budget for 3 new Macs in our company and I feel confident about purchasing a new Mac Pro (for PPro, AE, color correction and finishing work) and 2 iMacs with Thunderbolt RAIDs (just for editing with PPro).
I'm curious though: when I look at the Geekbench scores for the latest Mac models there are older Mac Pros (2009 - 2013) that seem to outperform the newest iMacs in 64-bit multicore performance. The single core performance has the iMacs coming out on top (I'm only looking at the 27" retina, not the new 5K model). So which score is more indicative of performance while editing with Premiere Pro? I've heard from editors who say their new iMacs run circles around the older towers they replaced so I'm inclined to believe that a new iMac would feel faster than even the last silver Mac Pro tower (2012); but a 12-core beast with a beefy GPU has got to be a serious contender when it comes to intense multiprocessing tasks.
I know that there a lot of factors that determine overall "speed" (GPU, RAM, storage speed) so it won't always be an easy 1:1 comparison with these models. I just want to make sure I'm investing in the right hardware and very curious as to how these benchmarks translate into real world Premiere Pro performance.
TIA,
JVK

jvknowles wrote:
I'm inclined to believe that a new iMac would feel faster than even the last silver Mac Pro tower (2012); but a 12-core beast with a beefy GPU has got to be a serious contender when it comes to intense multiprocessing tasks.
There's a lot involved in this comparison, such as:
CPU core count and speed
GPU capacity
Storage speed
The old Mac Pros are excellent rigs, but limited to SATA2 storage speeds, and their Xeons don't have Intel's AVX available, which will speed things up a bit. One advantage they do have is an open catalog of AMD or nVidia GPUs, assuming you can get them powered by the internal connectors. The new Pros are AMD-only, though the advantage is that they have 2 GPUs versus 1.
Comparatively, the new iMac with its desktop Core i7 processor will be able to push faster GHz, and it also has Intel's QuickSync tech available (hardware h.264 encoding). So if you're doing a lot of output with h.264, you'll see a bit of a kick in the *** with those. The limitations? The GPUs aren't as capable as the ones in the nMP now. And you only have access to a single GPU, where the new Pro has 2. But, if you're not doing any work that can be off-loaded to the GPUs, it won't matter.
As Eric mentions: AE is all CPU, all the time. It wants cores and GHz. It'll make your machine cry, regardless of what it is.

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For what it is worth I would make a full system backup before beginning, you shouldn't need it, but it's best to be cautious with tools that can move masses of data into your lovely clean operating system.
Post back if you think of other things you need to grab.

New iMac 24" or Mac Pro for Aperure

Hi All,
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Dave Hall

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I have used my older Mac Pro and now my new 2011 iMac fo play the many movies and TV shows I have dowloaded. Great results.
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Thanks for your consideration.....

New Mac Mini, iMac, or old Mac Pro for Pro Tools?

I asked this in another thread, but just want to get more input from older Mac Pro users from different years (2008-2010..)
I need to upgrade my Mac and am wondering what experiences everyone has had with different options for running Pro Tools and other professional audio applications.
The FW800 port on my iMac recently broke, and rather than spend a lot on getting it fixed I've decided to just sell it to someone who doesn't need firewire and upgrade.
I'm trying to decide between a newer iMac (3.1 or 3.4 GHz) with thunderbolt and USB 3 (but no FW), a new Mac Mini, also with thunderbolt and USB 3, or a somewhat older Mac Pro (2008-2010) with at least a 2.8GHz processor. Any thoughts from those of you who have used any of these, or who know more about computers in general than I do? Thanks.
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Thanks!

Might want to ask this on a ProTools forum as well.
fwiw I have a 4 core MacMini Server w 8GB RAM and a 2008 MacPro 8 core w 16GB.
The Mini is used as a general file and A/V server when not specificially tasked with Final Cut Suite efforts.
Unless I have serious Compressor processes running (e.g. converting h.264 to an editable format) that draws on the full cores, the mini can do a good job keeping up with the MacPro.
What the mini won't do is take 3rd party cards or drive multiple large monitors but for digital audio it ought to be fine with thunderbolt drives.
Good luck.
x

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I am trying to do a migration transfer from an older Mac Pro, running Leopard, to a newer Mac Pro, running Lion. There is a step that asks for a "passcode" to proceed. I have no idea what that passcode is. It seems to want a numeric code. Has anyone had this experience?

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<Personal Information Edited by Host>

Setup Assistant and Migration Assistant do not restore MS Windows, it only does the OS X partition. All of your Windows stuff must be backed up and restore using a MS Windows application. If no one on this forum is able to answer your question then I'd repost it on a Parallels forum to see how other Windows users approach this.

HT1338 new to macs - have 10.4.11 and an iMac 2 - older Mac by today's standards - is there a version of Itunes that would work on the OS?

new to macs - have 10.4.11 and an iMac 2 - older Mac by today's standards - is there a version of Itunes that would work on the OS?

I'm not certain what you mean by iMac 2. Is that the lamp shade model -- round half ball with stem & lcd display?
TenFourFox -- It's a port of the latest FireFox to run on older hardware and software.
"World's most advanced web browser. Finely tuned for the Power PC."
-- works for me on 10.4. Supports 10.5
http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/
alternative download site:
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/37761/tenfourfox
Turn on pipelining. This will allow Firefox to make simaltaneous requests to the server. Chrome has pipeling turned on. Some sites could fail to load with pipeling set on. The site will be old. See "Increase pipelining" in:
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/firefox-optimization-tips/
OmniWeb uses the lastest Safari framework. The open source WebKit. Other browsers like Safari and iCab use the OS version of WebKit. The OmniWeb downloaded dmg includes it's own copy of the latest WebKit.
http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omniweb/
Safari 4.1.3 for Tiger
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Older Mac Pro users beware of Mountain Lion upgrade

I work at a company where we have 6 edit suites. Five of those suites are still running Mac Pros; three of them are Early 2008 models, two are Early 2009 models. All of these suites have 30" monitors in them running at 2560 x 1600 resolution. The other suite has a new 27" iMac. All but one of the Mac Pros have their original graphics cards.
When Mountain Lion first came out, I upgraded my Mac mini at home that has FCP7 and FCPX installed on it. Both applications ran fine and I was able to edit a project in FCPX with no problem. A co-worker who works remotely on a 27" iMac had also upgraded his machine and experienced no issues.
Seeing no issues with the ability to run FCP7 under Mountain Lion, I proceeded with upgrading the MacPro suites at our office. After an initial test on one machine to confirm that FCP7 would load and launch projects, I proceeded to upgrade the remaining suites. It soon became apparent after other editors began to use their computers that FCP6 and 7 were affected by the upgrade to Mountain Lion.
While the programs still work fine, one fundamental change that Apple has made in Mountain Lion is to push more of the responsibility for displaying the image on the computer monitor to the GPU of the graphics card. Previously these responsibilities were shared with the CPU. Therefore, if you have an older graphics card (even if it is fully compatible with FCPX, as ours are), FCP6/7 has a difficult time playing back 1080 video in the Canvas window (at any size), without breaking up when there is some degree of movement in the video image.The screen cannot refresh quickly enough to draw the video image without showing horizontal banding and some minor digital garbage.
Rest assured that the render files are clean and the output file will be fine. Once exported, a self-contained .mov file will playback fine in Quicktime, showing no banding where there previously was banding when viewed in FCP. This is an issue with display only. If you can live with it, fine. But it is rather distracting while editing.
I attempted to downgrade one of the Mac Pros to Lion earlier today. While I was able to successfully downgrade (not with a clean install, but another method), both FCP7 and FCPX would no longer launch because they were confused about which version of the OS was running. Using FCS Remover, I deleted both FCP7 and X, then reinstalled FCP7. Still no luck with launching FCP7. I finally decided to reinstall Mountain Lion for the time-being. FCP7 now launches again.
Just a warning to those considering upgrading that you may experience performance issues with FCP6/7 if you are using an older Mac Pro and trying to edit 1080 footage. You may have to upgrade your graphics card to achieve best performance.

Christian Castagna1 wrote:
Yes, we previously we had purchased an ATI Radeon 5770 to enable use of FCPX, and 1080 video plays fine through that in both Early 2008 and Early 2009 models, although it is not fully compatible with those computers. Technically it is only compatible with Mid 2010 Mac Pros. It is unclear if there is a card that is fully compatible with Early 2008 computers and FCPX at this point.
We have noticed some small pixelation around the edges of icons with the 5770 in an Early 2008, but that is intermittent and goes away with a restart. We have not noticed any issues in the Early 2009. We have also just purchased a Radeon 5870 and will be testing that in Early 2008 models to see if the same pixelation issue happens. We will install that card eventually in an Early 2009 computer because it is fully compatible with that machine.
If nothing else, hopefully these graphics cards buy us a couple more years with our Mac Pros.
Can you explain a little more about this please... My primary system is a 2008 8X 3.2GHz system with a ATI Radeon 5770 and I have it running two 27" Samsung monitors and a 37" HDTV (all 1080p) on FCS3. None of the displays have any artifacts under any conditions. What are the compatibility issues? If I'm doing a no-no, I want to know before my next big project...

27 LED monitor and older Mac Pro compatability

Will the new monitor work with older Mac Pro's?

Why does the Apple store list the ATI Radeon HD 4870 Graphics Upgrade Kit for Mac Pro as only the Early 2008 & Early 2009 models?
Only Apple knows, but the comments section, and many posts here, show it works in any Mac Pro/
I'd like to use the new 27" LED with my original 2006 Mac Pro 1,1. I currently have the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT.
You can use it with the dual-link DVI port (only one port is dual-link) on the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT with a converter
<http://www.atlona.com/Atlona-Dual-Link-DVI-to-Mini-DisplayPort-Converter-USB-Po wered.html>
The ATI Radeon HD 5770 Graphics Upgrade Kit says it's only compatible with the Mid 2010 version.
There are reports that it also will work in any Mac Pro.
<http://blog.macsales.com/6856-owc-reveals-which-radeon-video-cards-work-with-20 06-2009-mac-pros>
OWC says the Mini DisplayPorts didn't work, but that doesn't appear to be true:
<http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=12165151#12165151>
For three DVI displays, you need dual-link adapters
<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4279>

I have an older Mac Pro (2006). I want to install Boot Camp and Windows. I have installrg a purchased Snow Leapord on the machine. To install Windows, am I limited to Windows 7? And where are the Windows 7/Boot Camp Drivers? On the OS disk? Download? Tha

I have an older Mac Pro (2006). I want to install Boot Camp and Windows. I have installed a boxed Snow Leapord on the machine. And it says the download of the Boot camp drivers cannot continue because they are not available. But at that point I have not inserted a windows disk, so how does it know i have XP?
So it appears I am limited to Windows 7? And where are the Windows 7/Boot Camp Drivers? On the OS disk?
Finally, since I have necer considered Windows 7 before, I assume there are no compatability issues with mainstream applications that were running in XP?
Thank you.

You're welcome
Just remember to reformat the partition (bootcamp partition) to NTFS with the windows installer, ensure to pick the correct partition.

Top two best video cards for older Mac Pros?

I have some older Mac Pro towers that vary from:
2.66 GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon
..to this:
2 x 2.93 GHz 6 Core Intel Xeon
Looking for at least the top two video cards that are tried and tested that would work best with at least Premiere Pro and AME. I just need to narrow down the unwieldy list that can be found here: http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/tech-specs.html

MikeJamesG wrote:
Looking for at least the top two video cards that are tried and tested that would work best with at least Premiere Pro and AME.
Are you adverse to using aftermarket cards that have been converted to work properly in a Mac? If you aren't, then I'd recommend talking to Dave @ MacVidCards because he can cook you up an nVidia 700-series card that will boot properly in a Mac Pro, run at PCI-E 2.0 speeds, and work wonderfully in Pr/AME.

How to use on my new iMac the Acrobat X Pro I downloaded 2 years ago on my MacBook Pro?

How to use on my new iMac the Acrobat X Pro I downloaded 2 years ago on my MacBook Pro?

You can use the same installer, if you kept it, and the same serial number, if you still have it, and the old serial number, if it was an upgrade.

What is better a imac or a mac pro

which computer is better a imac or a mac pro?

With Mac Pros you can add fiberoptic PCIe Cards. With iMacs you have to settle for Thunderbolt, which isn't bad, but not quite as fast. With Mac Pros you can have four built-in SATA drives.
With iMacs you are stuck with one, and based on the latest info from http://www.macsales.com/ the internal iMac hard drive is not removable! So if it dies, you are left with external drives and the built-in optical as your only choice. With Mac Pros, you can expand your RAM more.
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New iMac vs older Mac Pro

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