Which Would You Choose? iMac for Video and Photo PP

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MarcM

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I'm after some opinions here (hopefully based on experience)?

I'm about to pull the trigger on 13 iMac 21.5's, but due to Apple's 'wise' decision to make the RAM non user upgradable, I need to make a decision about About RAM now.

Would you go for:

a) base model with 8GB RAM and a 1TB fusion drive

or

b) base model with 16GB RAM and the standard 1TB 5400 rpm drive?

If budget was no object, it would be 16GB RAM and an SSD, but unfortunately I will already be over budget on this.
 
So you're talking about the 2.7 GHz one at £1099, and either a £160 or £200 upgrade per machine?
If I'm perfectly honest, I'd forego the new version, and look at the previous one, then you can add RAM/change drive as and when you see need.

In the above scenario, I'd propose the drive as being the better option of the two, but ideally I'd be pushing you towards shared RAID over Thunderbolt.
Assuming that's a no-go for financial reasons, then I would suggest this refurb 27" for little more than a £1500 over the present budget, in total.

http://store.apple.com/uk/product/FD096B/A/refurbished-imac-32ghz-quad-core-intel-core-i5

For a bit more again - £50 per machine, plus a 4 or 8 GB RAM from Crucial - http://store.apple.com/uk/product/FD063B/A
As an i7, it should perform better on video editing, and the Geekbench scores show it's 2000 higher (approx 20%)

Obviously all prices are inc VAT, which I presume you'll be reclaiming anyway.
 
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I'd similarly be leaning toward something used - that way, someone else is taking the depreciation hit. After all, whilst systems have certainly become more powerful in the past few years - as always - even my relatively venerable mid-2009 17" MacBook Pro is easily up to Aperture, AutoPano Giga, Parallels, Xcode, and more.

Whatever your decision, I'd highly recommend an SSD. I replaced the DVD-R with a 256GB Crucial M4, and the difference is profound. I can't go beyond 8GB RAM due to the chipset used, but with swap space being so fast, it's all but imperceptible, should I fire up all of the above at the same time.
 
Thanks for the replies so far guys.

PJ S said:
So you're talking about the 2.7 GHz one at £1099, and either a £160 or £200 upgrade per machine?
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Yes, that's the one.

PJ S said:
I'd forego the new version, and look at the previous one, then you can add RAM/change drive as and when you see need.
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I really wish that was possible, but we would need to find 13 of the things, all must be unused and come with/be eligible for the extended AppleCare.

PJ S said:
In the above scenario, I'd propose the drive as being the better option of the two, but ideally I'd be pushing you towards shared RAID over Thunderbolt.
Assuming that's a no-go for financial reasons, then I would suggest this refurb 27" for little more than a £1500 over the present budget, in total.
Click to expand...

You've read my mind and that is the direction we are going. I'm looking to source a reliable Thunderbolt solution for shared RAID system, but there are not many choices on the market and I have heard some not too positive thinks about the reliability and support of the Promise system (the reviews on it on the Apple website).

I suppose I'm wanting my cake and eating it, as I need to make sure we have enough RAM for running the aforementioned type of software in a learning environment, but I also don't want to have 13 machines which feel sluggish one of of the applications, utilities and settings have been applied. Choices, choices!
 
Porsupah said:
I'd similarly be leaning toward something used - that way, someone else is taking the depreciation hit. After all, whilst systems have certainly become more powerful in the past few years - as always - even my relatively venerable mid-2009 17" MacBook Pro is easily up to Aperture, AutoPano Giga, Parallels, Xcode, and more.

Whatever your decision, I'd highly recommend an SSD. I replaced the DVD-R with a 256GB Crucial M4, and the difference is profound. I can't go beyond 8GB RAM due to the chipset used, but with swap space being so fast, it's all but imperceptible, should I fire up all of the above at the same time.
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Now this is very interesting and could be what swings it.

So it seems you've found that the SSD has given you a better all round performance boost, compared to the likely gains of going from 8 to 16GB of RAM.

Thinking about it, we have a mid 2011 i5 iMac with 16GB and a 2 months old MacBook Air which has 8GB and although the iMac used to feel rapid when we first got it, it's not slow now, but it's certainly not feeling as zippy at the little Air.
 
daugirdas said:
Mac mini (with cheap 16GB Crucial RAM) and a much better non-glossy IPS screen of your choice.
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There are unfortunately two reasons why I don't think the mini (even though I think they are fantastic little machines) will not be up to it. You'll see that the first reason is sanity and the second is vanity!

1) Due to the nature of some of the applications we will be running, we need to have the discrete graphics offered by the iMac.

2) The facility has to immediately say 'this is a cool Mac environment'! This isn't my requirement by the way :-)
 
MarcM said:
2) The facility has to immediately say 'this is a cool Mac environment'!
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and it will also say "but we're too stingy to pay for the proper machines...."

If photo PP is simply Lightroom, you will be OK with 8G. If you intend doing a lot of video editing or complex editing in Photoshop, you will need the 16G.

Whilst an SSD may well be faster than a mechanical drive (the big gains with SSDs are in access times, not I/O speed) they are way, WAY slower than memory. Having said that, I don't even run my 5 year old ex-works laptop (which just gets used for general web browsing and network setups and not used heavily) on a mechanical drive....

If you are buying 13 iMacs for serious processing and you also need to have a "cool environment", tell the powers that be they need to up the budget - and ideally get the 27" (sorry, just because it has an Apple logo doesn't make it cool - a lab full of under-spec'd 21.5" iMacs for photo/video editing would scream "wrong tool for the job" to me).
 
MarcM said:
I really wish that was possible, but we would need to find 13 of the things, all must be unused and come with/be eligible for the extended AppleCare.
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Apple refurb'd items are too all intent purposes a full retail model with discount.
They can be cancelled custom orders, 14 day returns, repaired faulty, etc.
There is no difference in package content and warranty, and you can extend that at the end of the first year with Applecare, so you can defer those costs until the next tax year.

MarcM said:
You've read my mind and that is the direction we are going. I'm looking to source a reliable Thunderbolt solution for shared RAID system, but there are not many choices on the market and I have heard some not too positive thinks about the reliability and support of the Promise system (the reviews on it on the Apple website).
Click to expand...

My choice would be Sonnet - they've been catering to the Mac market since way back with the G3 Power Macs.

MarcM said:
I suppose I'm wanting my cake and eating it, as I need to make sure we have enough RAM for running the aforementioned type of software in a learning environment, but I also don't want to have 13 machines which feel sluggish one of of the applications, utilities and settings have been applied. Choices, choices!
Click to expand...

OS X in general has very good memory management, but for the cost of RAM, you're better having more than barely enough.
That was why I steered you towards the higher resolution 27" which will be highly beneficial for video edit and graphic design/photo editing.
Plus they give the option to add RAM if/when it becomes necessary/affordable, and the benchmark score indicates it's a faster machine with the i7 CPU (well known for its ability to plough through video processing).

Would there be 13 of them?
A simple phone call to Apple support or trying to put 13 of them into the online basket will see if that's the case or not.
Maybe you opt for as many as they can supply, and dedicate those to video work, and go for the i5 ones on the refurb section (still 27") for graphics/photo.


Edit: there's 2 of the ones I linked above, and 7 of the next cheaper one (i5), which leaves a shortfall of 2, as well as buying RAM to have 8-12GB across the board.
 
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arad85 said:
and it will also say "but we're too stingy to pay for the proper machines...."

If photo PP is simply Lightroom, you will be OK with 8G. If you intend doing a lot of video editing or complex editing in Photoshop, you will need the 16G.

Whilst an SSD may well be faster than a mechanical drive (the big gains with SSDs are in access times, not I/O speed) they are way, WAY slower than memory. Having said that, I don't even run my 5 year old ex-works laptop (which just gets used for general web browsing and network setups and not used heavily) on a mechanical drive....

If you are buying 13 iMacs for serious processing and you also need to have a "cool environment", tell the powers that be they need to up the budget - and ideally get the 27" (sorry, just because it has an Apple logo doesn't make it cool - a lab full of under-spec'd 21.5" iMacs for photo/video editing would scream "wrong tool for the job" to me).
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It's nothing to do with being stingy, it is a business decision and an upper budget has been set. This project is a pilot and any project I manage must come in on budget. I also don't want to confuse the thread with going into the business details, but suffice to say that 21.5" iMac's will be sufficiently impressive for the target market.

27" iMacs would be nice, but the initial training room for the pilot is just a little too small for that.

Thanks for your input though, all very useful.
 
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Thanks PJS, I didn't realise it was the refurb store you were linking to. I've bought macs from there before, but had ruled it out, as I imagined we would not be able to get identical models (essential for providing a consistent environment - machine imaging etc).

I just tried to put 13 in my shopping basket and it says that the store is only for consumers and for orders over 9 units, you have to speak to business sales.
 
MarcM said:
This project is a pilot and any project I manage must come in on budget.
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As a PM, it is your job to also inform senior management when they are not doing the right thing. If they don't listen, that is not your fault, but at least you will have expressed your opinion. The alternative could be a pilot scheme that looks all shiny on the outside, then disappoints with the wrong hardware and so never gets past the pilot phase...

Not going to have an argument, but as a PM myself I have learned it is also my job to question others judgement.
 
arad85 said:
As a PM, it is your job to also inform senior management when they are not doing the right thing. If they don't listen, that is not your fault, but at least you will have expressed your opinion. The alternative could be a pilot scheme that looks all shiny on the outside, then disappoints with the wrong hardware and so never gets past the pilot phase...

Not going to have an argument, but as a PM myself I have learned it is also my job to question others judgement.
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Thanks for the input, it is much appreciated.

This however is a somewhat unconventional project, where I also have a significant financial interest. I fully take on board your comments, but without wishing to go into the details here, I have learned through experience that sometimes you have to put what the books say to one side and believe me, this is one of those cases.

My many years as a PRINCE2® Registered Practitioner and also a Programme Manager on IT programmes with budgets in the tens of millions is all of little use here! Lets just sat that it's complicated!

I've managed to gather some real-world performance info from some environments that are similar to what we are creating and all have been operating with 4-8GB. Those that have them have also expressed that the SSD option has given a major performance boost in apps such as FCPX and Logic, when compared to similarly spec'd machines with mechanical drives, so this really helps with my decision.
 
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MarcM said:
Thanks PJS, I didn't realise it was the refurb store you were linking to. I've bought macs from there before, but had ruled it out, as I imagined we would not be able to get identical models (essential for providing a consistent environment - machine imaging etc).

I just tried to put 13 in my shopping basket and it says that the store is only for consumers and for orders over 9 units, you have to speak to business sales.
Click to expand...

Have you tried speaking to business sales? There might even be extra discounts available to you through that channel.
 
The other thing to do is speak to a reseller or two. We were only buying three units and a local reseller did us a better deal than the apple business team.
 
I'd buy ram before SSD. (Both if I could).

Also, I read an article yesterday that said you could basically make a fusion drive using an external TB connected SSD and some terminal commands. It's unlikely it would be much cheaper than Apple's version but you could add them later and use next year's budget ;)
 
JonathanRyan said:
I'd buy ram before SSD.
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Why? (Other than it'd be the cheaper option)
Data still has to be read off and stored back onto a drive, which RAM does not have anything to do with.
You can build a 32GB machine all day long, but slapping a 5400rpm drive in it to "save some money" will practically kill off all the benefits of the additional RAM.
Even a 7200rpm drive won't unleash its full potential, and a 10K Raptor will only add more heat than is desirable.

8GB as standard is plenty to be getting on with, if partnered to an SSD - page-ins and page-outs will not be an issue.
 
PJ S said:
Why? (Other than it'd be the cheaper option)
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Because ram requirements always go up.

This is a locked machine which (if you play Apple's game) can never be upgraded. More ram is always good, SSDs won't be mandatory for a little while yet.

Plus more people are finding ways to circumvent the "never upgrade a drive" than the "never upgrade RAM" bit.
 
JonathanRyan said:
Because ram requirements always go up.

This is a locked machine which (if you play Apple's game) can never be upgraded. More ram is always good, SSDs won't be mandatory for a little while yet.

Plus more people are finding ways to circumvent the "never upgrade a drive" than the "never upgrade RAM" bit.
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If you're referring to the current 21.5" the OP was originally considering, then as I've already pointed out, benefits will come in the form of the Fusion drive.

In 3 years time, when OS XI.1 IceMan is out, then the machine "may" be showing some signs of starting to run out of puff, but as I write this on my 2010 C2D iMac still running on Snow Leopard (OS X.6), the only desire to change it has been because I fancy a 27" display.
I'm sure if I stuck an SSD in it, I'd still find the 8GB it has sufficient to contend with.
By that stage, the OP's company may be considering upgrading to newer models - so IMO, RAM vs Fusion is a no-brainer.

I'm sure there's data on how that plays out in the real world on somewhere like Tom's Hardware, which may prove useful for the OP to decide (if he goes with the 21.5") which option gets the nod.
 
PJ S said:
In 3 years time, when OS XI.1 IceMan is out, then the machine "may" be showing some signs of starting to run out of puff, but as I write this on my 2010 C2D iMac still running on Snow Leopard (OS X.6), the only desire to change it has been because I fancy a 27" display.
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Well, if you put it like that, my liquid cooled G5 is still working fine about a decade after I first lugged it home.

As I mentioned, it's perfectly possible to add a homebrew fusion drive later. Not so much with the RAM. And OWC already have a kit allowing you to replace the irreplaceable hard drive.

But there's no need to convince me. I'd buy both.
 
PJ S said:
Precisely the reason why less RAM and an SSD/Fusion is the better combo than more RAM and a slow 5400rpm drive.
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That will be application dependent ;)
 
arad85 said:
That will be application dependent ;)
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There'd be variation between apps, sure, but in the context of what the OP's needing of the Macs, he'd see a better performance from a Fusion upgrade - of that I'm absolutely certain.
Happy to learn if that wouldn't be the case, so might see if TH has anything along those lines.
 
I know I would think twice in choosing between 16g and mechanical or 8g with fusion... The answer is not clear cut...
 
http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=50&q=fusion+drive+performance+vs+RAM

I'll let anyone interested trawl through that themselves rather than link multiple urls to some of the top dozen or so hits, that I read.
Same for the YT videos.

Still recommend refurb'd 27s - screen size will make a big difference in efficiency of using FCPX and PS/Lightroom/Aperture/etc

Interesting to see Jonathan's remark about self-created Fusion drives demonstrated - might just throw an SSD in the iMac and leave the ickle 500GB 7200rpm in there too.


Oh, nd it was Barefeats I was thinking of rather than Tom's Hardware - http://barefeats.com/imac12d1.html
 
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PJ S said:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=50&q=fusion+drive+performance+vs+RAM

I'll let anyone interested trawl through that themselves rather than link multiple urls to some of the top dozen or so hits, that I read.
Same for the YT videos.
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I can see this conversation going the usual way.

None of those links (at least half a dozen of the ones I tried) compare a system running an 8G/fusion drive to a 16G/mechanical with any benchmarks. They talk about app loading times and general feel, and yes, the app loading times and general feel will be quicker but....

Swapping. I'd MUCH rather have everything sat in 25GB/s memory than be paging to something running at a few hundred (max) MB/s. Yes, SSDs are much lower latency, but they are still bottlenecked by controller speeds. Step over the physical barrier on a limited memory machine at your peril! 8G is easy to breach if you are doing heavy PS editing or running PS in parallel with Lightroom and a few other things and then you are 100x slower.

Let me put it this way. I'm sat typing this on a machine that is using 12.8G of memory and has only Lightroom as an image editor open. YMMV, but when memory is extremely difficult to upgrade, I'd go with memory first time, every time.
 
arad85 said:
None of those links (at least half a dozen of the ones I tried) compare a system running an 8G/fusion drive to a 16G/mechanical with any benchmarks. They talk about app loading times and general feel, and yes, the app loading times and general feel will be quicker but....
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Yes, it's extremely disappointing that nobody seems to have tested this - or if they have, nobody has published proper results.

It's a very obvious question to ask "what will make PS/LR/FCPX run faster - ram, drive or graphics card?" and with access to a small number of stock machines and some benchmark s/w it's pretty easy to check.

For example, this article tells you which machine to buy - but not which components to spend your money on if budget is limited.

But saying the machine loads apps faster with a fusion drive doesn't tell us anything useful and extrapolating that fusion drives make things faster is really just guessing along with the rest of us.
 
The OP hasn't given us any details yet of what these machines are meant to be doing so it's difficult to spec a machine. What apps will they be running, how many apps concurrently and how big will the files be? Is video editing involved?

A shared Thunderbolt drive will almost certainly not be the correct solution for 13 workstations

What kind of backup system have you specified? Does this have a host machine and is it one of the thirteen?

Personally I'd swop processor speed for a bigger screen every time, and I'd swop hard drive speed for more RAM. The boot drives on these machines are going to be doing very little - the files are on the external drive, aren't they?

Hooking up eternal devices and building your own fusion drives is precisely the kind of thing you want to avoid with 13 machines. You want one install disk image, complete consistency and a well-managed system for logging software licensing

If you want to buy thirteen machines I can put you in touch with a very large Mac Reseller which can do a good deal on them

Nick Froome
support@pvision.co.uk
 
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All now sorted now and thanks everyone for your interesting input,

We managed to commandeer a MacPro for the instructor's machine, so we only needed to get 12 iMacs. The good news is that because of this stroke of good fortune, we are gong for the fusion and 16GB, so no compromise!

There will be a Mac mini server fitted with a 10GBps LAN connection (Sonnet solution) along with a a professional 12 disk RAID array.

I've done plenty of Mac roll outs in the past, so no question the solution working (it will). The issue was that I couldn't tap into data on any previous projects for my specific question, which was 16GB + mechanical vs. 8GB and Fusion for A/V editing and production applications.

In terms of procurement, we have a trusted supplier and have secured what I'm confident is the best discount (they are getting a lot of business beside the iMacs).
 
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Good stuff. Glad it all worked out.
 
Well done Marc.
Good to hear it's all gone even better than originally planned.
 
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