Apple Logic Pro /LogicExpress Discussion

The Imac's were hobbled internally, compared to Mac Pro's - the bus 
speed, L3 cache, graphic boards, audio boards, and throughput to disk 
is usually aways better with a Mac Pro. What you need to do is to go to 
Mac User magazine, or some other site where they do actual performance 
tests, and give a score to compare the actual power.


-----Original Message-----
From: Shawn Thorpe <shawnogordo@...>
To: Logic_Cafe@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sun, May 29, 2011 3:03 pm
Subject: Re: [Logic_Cafe] Mac Pro 2008 vs. iMac 2011


I have no experience running Logic on either of those types of 
machines.Though, I'd imagine they'd both handle it just fine. 
Regardless, I'd behesitant to invest that kinda money in 3-year old 
hardware. If it were me,I'd go with the iMac.On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 
11:50 AM, Irfon-Kim Ahmad <irfon@...>wrote:>>> Hi,>> I'm 
currently running Logic Pro (8, but will be upgrading to 9 with the> 
new system) on a 2006 MacBook Pro with 2GB of RAM and a 350GB hybrid> 
disk. I run into the dreaded system overload with some regularity. I> 
don't run very high track counts and do very little recording, but I> 
tend to use a lot of softsynths (mostly from the NI Komplete suite) 
and> use a very large array of effect plugins per track.>> I've been 
saving up to replace this machine, and was targeting the> 
newly-released 2011 iMac 27" with the 3.4GHz quad-core i7 Sandy Bridge> 
processor, 4GB of RAM (that I was going to upgrade to 12GB after the> 
fact -- the system maxes out at 16GB), the 256GB SSD + 1TB HD disk> 
configuration and the 2GB GDDR5 Radeon HD 6970M. With the AppleCare,> 
this clocks in at $3098 + tax.>> However, it's recently come to my 
attention that a local shop is selling> a gently used 2008 Mac Pro. It 
has two 2.8GHz quad-core Nehalem Xeon> processors (8 cores total), 4GB 
of RAM (maxes at 32GB), a 320GB hard> disk, and an NVidia 8800GT with 
512GB RAM. They'll warranty it for 90> days and you can pay extra to 
extend the warranty if you like, although> it'll be their warranty 
rather than AppleCare. They want $1699 + tax.>> Among my 
geekier-than-me friends, there's been a big debate about the> CPUs in 
these two machines. The iMac's Sandy Bridge architecture> supports SVX 
instead of SSE, which apparently will, once apps are> updated to 
support it, allow it to process eight instructions per cycle> rather 
than four, according to them. Given that it's already clocked> faster 
than the Xeons in the Mac Pro, that would make it noticeably> faster 
CPU-wise. The rest of the Mac Pro's architecture is slower as> well -- 
the memory bus isn't as fast, the 8800GT is about half the> performance 
of the 6970M, etc. However, the Mac Pro offers more> expandability -- I 
could add a RAID card, I could have several internal> disks, I can 
upgrade the video card, etc. And if Logic Pro doesn't> support SVX, 
then I expect that having twice as many cores at a slightly> slower 
speed might be a CPU win.>> But the difference in price is also a big 
factor -- with that much less> money I could perform a lot of ugprades 
(note that I'd have to eat away> some of that buying a monitor, but you 
can get a 27" LCD of good enough> quality for me for $300, and getting 
a disk system comparable to the one> I was speccing for the iMac would 
take away more of that, but I could do> this flexibly over time). I 
mean, at $1699, I wouldn't be particularly> upset if I had to upgrade 
it after only say three years, whereas at> $3100, I'd want the iMac to 
last me a good five years, much as my> MacBook Pro did.>> My only real 
bottleneck is Logic Pro, though. This is going to be my> studio 
machine. I mostly game on the Playstation 3, and I have an iPad> that 
is fine for my needs for travel and surfing. So I'm wondering if> any 
of you have any thoughts or real-world experience between these two> 
machines as they specifically pertain to Logic Pro, and if anyone 
knows> what the status of this SVX issue is with Logic Pro -- if it's 
something> that I should expect to see coming down or that's even 
already there, or> if it's even relevant to Logic Pro's architecture, 
or if having twice as> many cores will still be better when running a 
ton of plugins.>  >-- -Shawn 
Thorpehttp://shawn.mx/http://geminidragon.tv/[Non-text portions of this 
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