Which MAC better suited for Aperture ?

I've a budget around 1900-2000 euro (more or less the same price in US dollars for the US market)
The choice would be either one of the new iMac or a MacBookPro ...
In both cases there is some level of choice whether to invest money on:
1) either go for the model with more performing video card
2) either the model with more performing CPU or more RAM or (even) a solid-state disk
Just to make it clear: I'm not a pro, I've been able to use Aperture, till now, on a 2007 MacBook
and I didn't feel so bad as regards managing previews, while I'd like some more horsepower
while editing single images (as soon as the list of adjustments applied gets long, the spinning
beach ball takes home on my screen and I have to wait more and more time !)
... The time needed to zoom in at 100% is annoying to ...
So the question is: are these operations (adjustments, zooming into the image) demanding more
on CPU, or on GPU or ... what else ?
To make an example: would a MacBookPro be performing more fast than an iMac
(I don't care of the smaller screen size, since I'm used to adjust images at 100% zoom) ?
Is it worth going to the MacBookPro with Radeon HD 6750M and 1GB memory, or would
a Radeon HD 6490M with 256MB perform as well, investing the saved money in more
RAM ?
Speaking of photo applications I'd naively suppose it's better to go with a more performing GPU,
but probably most of the GPU power is reserved for film encoding/decoding, not for photo adjustments ...
Thank you for your help

Whatever you get you want an SSD. That makes iMacs relatively very expensive.
Mobility is a HUGE benefit. iMacs lack mobility.
Top 2011 MBPs with SSD are true desktop replacement boxes. Very strong performance and Thunderbolt removes the achilles heel of past laptops, i/o. Previously I had a Mac Pro plus Macbook Pro workflow and it worked. Now I have a desktop-replacement 2011 MBP and it is way better. If you sell your current laptop and apply the money to a new MBP + external display the MBP comparison price gets very attractive as compared to MBP plus iMac.
Aperture runs well on 8 GB RAM, and in any event 2011 MBPs will take 16 GB RAM. Currently prices are unacceptably high for the required 8 GB DIMMs but the capability is there when prices fall, which they will. As you do your analyses include RAM to 8 GB (post-purchase via third party, much cheaper).
iMacs have glossy-only displays. Many image pros including me find those displays unacceptable. MBPs have matte displays available. New Macbook Airs (MBAs) are glossy too, but seem to present less glare than iMacs do. Each individual needs to visually compare displays before purchasing.
MBAs are the low end for heavy graphics apps like Aperture, not recommended.
I own a 17" 2011 MBP with SSD and 8 GB RAM and Aperture flies on it. Adding SSD to a top 2011 MBP costs only +$100, and the optical drive can inexpensively be replaced with a third-party hard drive of up to 1000 GB (1 TB) when necessary. IMO an SSD is a necessity, not an option.
During desktop use fast external hard drives like Promise Thunderbolt RAID arrays can be added, as can quality non-glossy displays like the $300 Viewsonic VP2365wb or the better NEC 2490. I have the Viewsonic aligned above a 17" MBP and it is a nice combination. Two displays IMO is much preferable for graphics work.
SSD is a huge boost. I put OS, apps, Library and Referenced Masters on the SSD, then relocate the Masters to external drives when editing is complete. Aperture performance is essentially instant.
BareFeats.com has relative graphics performance tests up at:
http://barefeats.com/mba11_02.html
Insights from Rob Art Morgan at Barefeats:
"Though more than adequate for mere mortal tasks (Safari, Mail, etc.), the 2011 MacBook Air remains at the bottom of the Mac "food chain" when running apps that stress the CPU, GPU, and memory. This will be further illustrated with soon-to-be posted tests using After Effects, Aperture, Final Cut Pro, etc."
From an earlier post of mine regarding Aperture hardware:
Aperture is a hardware hog: GPU, CPU, i/o, RAM. Although many Macs will run Aperture, those intending Aperture as an important app will do far better with the strongest available hardware in a given category.
All new Macs have Thunderbolt, so as of 2011 we can scratch i/o as a performance limiter (except see SSD comments below).
Aperture (3.1.2, OS 10.6.8) seems to like about 4 GB of RAM all to itself. On 2011 boxes 8 GB RAM generally works well with multiple concurrent apps. From the standpoint of cost-effective upgrading, adding third party RAM to achieve 8 GB or more is something every Aperture user should do. By the time we reach v4 Aperture I would bet that having more than 8 GB RAM on board will be useful; it may be already with Lion, but I have not been running Lion due to known issues with Adobe apps.
Graphics in 2011 Macs vary widely, so IMO the graphics processing unit (GPU) may be the most important variable for comparing new Aperture boxes in 2011 . The GPU itself is important, but even more importantly evaluating the GPU strength turns out to be a pretty good way to compare 2011 Mac Aperture performance.
Relatively real-world 2011 graphics hardware test results on pro applications have been performed by well-respected testers, see below. I have not yet seen meaningful Aperture-specific tests, however experience since v1 Aperture has been that Aperture performance has been keenly dependent upon the strength of the graphics processor. E.g. a Mac Pro with lame graphics card will underperform on Aperture.
In my experience (2011 17" MBP) the benefits of SSDs are huge. I consider the fastest Aperture workflow to have both Library and Referenced Masters on SSD, then when work on a Project is complete the Referenced Masters are relocated to hard drives. I am doing that now and everything on the box is essentially instant.
Comparative Final Cut Pro test results for the 2011 MBPs vs. others are up at barefeats.com:
http://barefeats.com/fcpx01.html
Comparative Motion test results for the 2011 MBPs vs. others also are up at barefeats.com:
http://barefeats.com/wst10g12.html
Comparative 2011 MBP Graphics test results at barefeats.com:
http://barefeats.com/mbps04.html
INSIGHTS from BareFeats.com:
"1. The 2011 2.2GHz and 2.3GHz MacBook Pro with Radeon 6750M graphics (1GB GDDR5) is a 'different animal' from the 2011 2.0GHz MacBook Pro with the Radeon 6490M graphics (256MB GDDR5). Is it worth $300 more (comparably equipped). Yes, when you consider you are getting a faster CPU and much faster GPU.
2. The 2011 2.7GHz MacBook Pro with Intel HD 3000 integrated graphics does little or nothing to improve the 3D graphics performance compared to the GeForce 320M integrated graphics in the 2010 MacBook Air and 13" MacBook Pro."
HTH
-Allen Wicks

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I can only say that when faced with the same decision last month, I went with a 2.8 8-core/8800GT/10gb RAM/library stored on 2nd internal drive setup and am completely satisfied with Aperture's speed. Beyond satisfied, really, borderline thrilled to be honest. No beach balls, perfectly responsive adjustment sliders, smooth and quick scrolling through images (even with Quick Preview mode turned off). Aperture 2 definitely takes advantage of all 8 cores - I have MenuMeters installed and can watch its CPU usage across all 8 cores. Exporting, for example, is fast and uses all cores for background processing.
I have seen a couple small anomalies though...when moving photos around in a light table, I get some odd flashing artifacts on the right side of screen that could be graphics card related. Visually annoying but it doesn't affect performance. I'm also seeing some weird behavior with keywords not appearing in Tooltips and in the Viewer, but it's intermittent and is most likely a software bug and not my hardware setup.

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