iMac : 3.60GHz Intel Core i5 vs 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7

Zak Flaps

Hi. After much thought, I have decided to purchase the iMac (27 inch).
I would only be using it for music production,not surfing the net.

Not sure which one to go for. Have done some research but to be honest I find it all confusing. Many conflicting opinions.
I'll be using it to run Logic Pro 9 along with Omnisphere, Trilian, Reason 5, Stylus RMX, Komplete 7....

Also, might get Final Cut Express later on.

I use lots of 3rd party plug-ins, and sometimes have to freeze my tracks on my Macbook Pro.

Would the i5 be quicker, and i7 be more stable or how does it work?
Which would be the better machine to run Logic 9 and all my plug in/effects?

Dave.

PS: Would hyper-threading or Turbo boost benefit me in using Logic 9 ?

K.O.Kiki

Core i7 trashes the i5, more or less.

Freddie59

Can't comment on the i5, but I've had a quad-core i7 for a few months now (2.8GHz). Have done a few video projects on FCE. Not a bother on it. No freezing/crashing etc like in Windows.

Zak Flaps

Freddie59 wrote: »

Can't comment on the i5, but I've had a quad-core i7 for a few months now (2.8GHz). Have done a few video projects on FCE. Not a bother on it. No freezing/crashing etc like in Windows.

just wondering would the 2.93GHz be much faster?

alexlyons

Technically it should be 4.6% faster, and you more than likely won't see that much of an increase if you were to start timing things (as in a 4.6% reduction in encoding times probably wouldn't be there, maybe slightly so, but not the full 4.6%)

And for that 4.6% your paying an extra 8.9% on the price. The price will definitely be 8.9% more, and the speed will be at best 3-3.5% better, so that's almost 3 times the price of the speed increase. It's not really worth it in my opinion.

Me, with that money, a Mac Pro is a no brainer. No question about it.

Regards

TCP/IP

I have a core i7 2.93ghz with 8gig ram and the SSD drive option. In my opinion the SSD is the real killer option. Its a monster but as much as everybody won't want to hear had to get rid of OSX tried it for three weeks but a god dam terrible OS IMO though I do miss a programe called unison now that was a super app.

Knasher

Definitely the i7 for a myriad of reasons. The biggest reason is that you are planning on using the Mac for processing multimedia, and processing multimedia is extremely easy to parallelize (i.e. its really easy to split it up into smaller parallel jobs each of which can be run in parallel) so you will get almost 100% of the possible benefit of having the extra cores.

Even if you were only running single threaded apps I would still prefer the i7 because it has a faster memory design. But I would be willing to accept the case where somebody might prefer the i5, in your case there really is no contest.

Zak Flaps

Knasher wrote: »

Definitely the i7 for a myriad of reasons. The biggest reason is that you are planning on using the Mac for processing multimedia, and processing multimedia is extremely easy to parallelize (i.e. its really easy to split it up into smaller parallel jobs each of which can be run in parallel) so you will get almost 100% of the possible benefit of having the extra cores.

Even if you were only running single threaded apps I would still prefer the i7 because it has a faster memory design. But I would be willing to accept the case where somebody might prefer the i5, in your case there really is no contest.

Cheers Knasher. I've pretty much made up my mind to go for the i7. Thanks for the extra incentive!