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iMac advice for CS6 - concentrate on CPU, ram or storage?

  • 22-07-2013 10:23am
    #1
    quad_red
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,564 ✭✭✭


    Hi folks,

    I've been tasked with getting a new iMac asap for the Mrs (who is a graphic designer).

    So - priorities are
    1) CS6 performance (photoshop, indesign)
    2) Prioritisation of the performance of parts that cannot be upgraded later (which looks like bloody well everything now..).

    Why Apple don't have a 'lower end' mac pro 'tower' unit is beyond me. The new mac pro looks totally ridiculous with sfa expand-ability (as well as probably costing the same as a car!).

    Anyway, that aside:

    I'm looking at the 27" iMacs. I know Haswell updates are apparently imminent, so it's not an ideal time, but for business reasons this has to be bought asap.

    I'm looking at the two top models - the 2.9GHZ (€1,949 basic) and 3.2GHZ (€2,129 basic). Budget is basically around €2,200.

    I'm looking for opinions on what the best bang for buck options are here.

    Should I go for the basic 2.9GHZ option plus a fusion drive?
    Or the basic 2.9GHZ plus an extra 8GB ram? (making 16GB in total)
    Or go for the 3.2GHZ option and leave the storage and ram as they are?

    Surely I could upgrade the RAM and the hard drive later?

    Thanks for all advice,
    Quad
    Tagged:


Comments

  • #2
    quad_red
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,564 ✭✭✭quad_red


    I actually found that someone has done allot of the donkey work for me!

    http://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2012/20121203_1-new-iMac-advice.html

    Someone else may find this useful.


  • #3
    ZENER
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,163 ✭✭✭ZENER


    When dealing with media both volatile and non-volatile storage is critical. That said, if you can tolerate the slightly longer loading times then RAM is the number one. More memory (RAM) is going to make editing easier and more productive in my experience.

    SSD's are great for loading programmes but once loaded then there's no real benefit. Images opened in these programmes are loaded to RAM so they can be edited, therefore the more RAM you have free the better. I know SSD will be quicker than legacy Hard Drives but once the program and image are loaded then it's down to the amount of RAM you have. If your computer has to use Virtual Memory then you're hitting the Hard Disk and it's interface which will never be as fast as actual RAM, whether it's SSD or Legacy HDD.

    CPU and RAM are the priorities if finances are the deciding criteria. The extra second or two loading the application are soon forgotten once you begin to work on an image or video in my experience.

    You specify InDesign so I gather page layout is the media that's important here, in my opinion and experience maximum RAM is preferable if you need to choose. Get the 3.2GHz basic machine and buy the 16GB RAM from memoryc.ie or crucial.com for a far cheaper price. You can install an SSD and configure it as a Fusion Drive at a later stage if needs be.

    Ken


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