MBP vs iMac
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I was planning to buy a 24 inch iMac this month, but with no upgrades until next year i felt a bit disappointed. On the other hand the new MacBook Pro looks pretty good, and makes the iMac that i wanted to buy a bit outdated. In terms of benchmarks results and performance, who wins?
I asked many and they are divided on the answer.
(BTW I will use it for video editing, most After Effects and Premiere.
I asked many and they are divided on the answer.
(BTW I will use it for video editing, most After Effects and Premiere.
Comments
The hard drive is also very easy to access in the MBP but not so with the iMac. You have to take the screen out. This means that with the MBP, you can buy your own cheaper drives including 3rd party SSD drives when price/performance is better.
You are also getting a mobile computer, which is even just handy if you feel like working in another room of your house or watching a movie in bed or something.
The iMac does have a bigger screen - the 1440 x 900 screen on the MBP may be a bit cramped for editing (they should really have 1680 x 1050 by now) but you can always get a cheap external display (just make sure to get the right adaptor).
I'm personally squarely behind the MBP over the iMac. There's a remote possibility they can make a quad-core iMac for January but I'd still go for the MBP now for the other reasons. The quad core would be more expensive anyway.
The MBP wins. The 9800GT is faster than the ATI GPUs and there is the possibility for Hybrid SLI in future. The big thing really for graphics apps is the future GPU computing. This isn't possible with the ATI chips right now. This can extend to rendering eventually but at the very least for video encoding, authoring etc.
The hard drive is also very easy to access in the MBP but not so with the iMac. You have to take the screen out. This means that with the MBP, you can buy your own cheaper drives including 3rd party SSD drives when price/performance is better.
You are also getting a mobile computer, which is even just handy if you feel like working in another room of your house or watching a movie in bed or something.
The iMac does have a bigger screen - the 1440 x 900 screen on the MBP may be a bit cramped for editing (they should really have 1680 x 1050 by now) but you can always get a cheap external display (just make sure to get the right adaptor).
I'm personally squarely behind the MBP over the iMac. There's a remote possibility they can make a quad-core iMac for January but I'd still go for the MBP now for the other reasons. The quad core would be more expensive anyway.
What about a 24" iMac, 2.8 ghz, with the NVIDIA 8800 gt?
I suspect thats faster than any MBP, but its probably pretty close and the choice should be made on whether the user needs portability or not.
The MBP wins. The 9800GT is faster than the ATI GPUs and there is the possibility for Hybrid SLI in future. The big thing really for graphics apps is the future GPU computing. This isn't possible with the ATI chips right now. This can extend to rendering eventually but at the very least for video encoding, authoring etc.
You mean 9600M GT, right? Which is still slower than the 8800GS in the most expensive iMac.
You mean 9600M GT, right? Which is still slower than the 8800GS in the most expensive iMac.
Ah yeah so it is and it's cheaper than the lowest MBP. The iMac has more VRam too.
I still think the inability to access the hard drive is a serious flaw in the iMac design though. If you are working on an important project, you just don't want to send your files to Apple while it's being repaired for up to 3 weeks.
Having the ability to pop out the MBP drive within seconds and hook it up to and external adaptor, plug it in to a spare backup machine and boot from it is very handy.
I guess ultimately it will come down to whether or not mobility is needed as they are pretty much evenly priced.
I don't think the iMacs will see much of a spec bump in January. Mobile Nehalem isn't coming for a while. If they pushed the design towards the Cinema display, it would be great but only really an aesthetic improvement.
Looking at the CPU price list:
http://files.shareholder.com/downloa..._1ku_Price.pdf
Intel don't have a mobile chip higher than the 3.06 GHz Core 2 Extreme. The QX9300 is a quad 2.5GHz but for a lot of tasks, you won't notice the difference. In raw rendering, it should be about 40% faster but it's still more expensive.
If you say that in terms of performance there is an acceptable gap I'll go with the MBP that btw is the following:
Intel Core 2 Duo at 2,4GHz
4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
250GB Serial ATA @ 5400
SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
(my god is the ram expensive!)
At the same price I could get:
24" iMac
2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4 GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM - 2x2 GB
500GB Serial ATA Drive
ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO w/256MB GDDR3
Apple wireless Mighty Mouse
Price is about 1700 euros (2.180,07 US dollars)
My fear was to buy a machine that a couple of months lather (Macworld 2009) would be outdated. I mean, the iMac is already pretty outdated and I have the feeling of overpaying what I'm getting.
If you say that in terms of performance there is an acceptable gap I'll go with the MBP that btw is the following:
Intel Core 2 Duo at 2,4GHz
4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
250GB Serial ATA @ 5400
SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
(my god is the ram expensive!)
At the same price I could get:
24" iMac
2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4 GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM - 2x2 GB
500GB Serial ATA Drive
ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO w/256MB GDDR3
Apple wireless Mighty Mouse
Price is about 1700 euros (2.180,07 US dollars)
The iMac is likely to be at least 20% faster.
It has a faster cpu and IIRC a faster HDD. You can also get that iMac configured with an NVIDIA 8800 gt which is a little faster than the ATI 2600 pro. But you don't get portability.
One suggestion; buy the machines with the base configuration of RAM. You can add additional RAM to either machine pretty easily and save some money.
My fear was to buy a machine that a couple of months lather (Macworld 2009) would be outdated. I mean, the iMac is already pretty outdated and I have the feeling of overpaying what I'm getting.
The iMac isn't really that outdated, though. Its processors are not from the current generation, but they have the same specs as current-gen CPUs, so you won't notice any difference there*. Likewise, the graphics are previous-gen, but there hasn't been a whole lot of progress on the graphics front (compare the 9600M GT in the MBP to the 8600M GT it replaced- maybe 20% faster).
*although the unknown factor there is that Apple could get special processors from Intel again
Thanks for all your advices. I have just one more question.
Is it easy to change the RAM on the new MBP? I saw videos and read something but they were all referring to the old MBP. Is it easy? Does it put an end to the warrancy?