Speccing an iMac for Capture One
We shoot fashion, tethered with a Canon 5D Mkiii into CO 7.1.5
We're purchasing a 27" iMac (3.5GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz) with 24GB of RAM and a 3TB Fusion Hard Drive. (We were waiting for a Mac Pro, but I think a high spec iMac will be more suitable that a low end Mac Pro, and £1000 cheaper!)
The main priority of the the machine is to have photos appear on screen as quick as possible while we're shooting.
The machine comes with a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M 2GB GDDR5 Graphics Card.
I can upgrade to a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB GDDR5 for £130.
Would this be worth it?
We're purchasing a 27" iMac (3.5GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz) with 24GB of RAM and a 3TB Fusion Hard Drive. (We were waiting for a Mac Pro, but I think a high spec iMac will be more suitable that a low end Mac Pro, and £1000 cheaper!)
The main priority of the the machine is to have photos appear on screen as quick as possible while we're shooting.
The machine comes with a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M 2GB GDDR5 Graphics Card.
I can upgrade to a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB GDDR5 for £130.
Would this be worth it?
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Absolutely! Get the GTX780 it has also 4GB of VRAM and is more future proof! Many applications use the GPU for heavy tasks and if you skimp on that you'll have a hard time because you can't upgrade the GPU afterwards. 0 -
We were waiting for a Mac Pro, but I think a high spec iMac will be more suitable that a low end Mac Pro, and £1000 cheaper!)
IMO, I could not disagree more, from our experiences here the amount of issues with iMac's are far higher then Mac Pro.0 -
[quote="danielschweinert" wrote:
Absolutely! Get the GTX780 it has also 4GB of VRAM and is more future proof! Many applications use the GPU for heavy tasks and if you skimp on that you'll have a hard time because you can't upgrade the GPU afterwards.
Sound, thanks. I think that's what we'll do.[quote="Ulf" wrote:
We were waiting for a Mac Pro, but I think a high spec iMac will be more suitable that a low end Mac Pro, and £1000 cheaper!)
IMO, I could not disagree more, from our experiences here the amount of issues with iMac's are far higher then Mac Pro.
Really - What kind of issues? That doesn't sound good.
I think we'll be looking at getting a new high end iMac every year or so. This studio is growing quickly (Four photographers and a few retouchers), then the next photographer down will inherit the last iMac.
This might be a more cost effective route than getting a mid range Mac Pro, then holding onto it for 3 years or so.0 -
I agree with Ulf. If at all possible stick with Apple's Pro products. The iMac is an incredible consumer machine. For a professional setting where component quality, voltage variations, and build quality are all vital the Pro line is a better route (albeit at commensurate pricing). 0 -
[quote="Ulf" wrote:
We were waiting for a Mac Pro, but I think a high spec iMac will be more suitable that a low end Mac Pro, and £1000 cheaper!)
IMO, I could not disagree more, from our experiences here the amount of issues with iMac's are far higher then Mac Pro.
How about you tell us what some of these issues are? I mean a statement like this dosent help any one, and the OP is asking for help.0 -
The new Mac Pro is also very new so hasn't had anywhere near the real world testing / development that the iMac has had. 0 -
If you can find a refurb'd Mac pro 2010 -2012 and put in a AMD 7970 or GTX 780 if you need CUDA and couple decent ssd's and NO FUSION drives real SSD's you are going to be much more better off. If you need usb3 there are a few decent pci-e cards and the best thing is NO MAVERICKS 😜 0 -
How about you tell us what some of these issues are? I mean a statement like this dosent help any one, and the OP is asking for help.
There is no specific issues, if any it has only to do with performance.
iMac is an all in one box which which has limited graphical performance and over all performance.
iMac is quite clearly a better option the Mac Mini but not even close to the Mac Pro.
For the average home user it is a great option but for the hardcore professional photographer Mac Pro is clearly the better option.If you need usb3 there are a few decent pci-e cards and the best thing is NO MAVERICKS
We have yet to find a 100% USB3 v1.0 compliant card (We have tested many) for the old Mac Pro so I would take this with a grain of salt.
The USB3 built in to Mac Book Pro works perfect and we expect it to be the same on the new Mac Pro
..and don't say bad things about mac OS 10.9 since now we have far more headache with 10.6 then 10.7, 10.8 and 10.90 -
Have you tested the Sonnett tango 3 we have one that has been great with usb drives and P40 but haven't tested cameras yet. The Caldigit is ………… not great 👿 0 -
[quote="rapdigital" wrote:
If you can find a refurb'd Mac pro 2010 -2012 and put in a AMD 7970 or GTX 780 if you need CUDA and couple decent ssd's and NO FUSION drives real SSD's you are going to be much more better off. If you need usb3 there are a few decent pci-e cards and the best thing is NO MAVERICKS 😜
So no advance.... let's stay in the past and forget any evolution... that is comforting. Careful though there are some new players in the game, DxO being one of them that are catching up fast...0 -
[quote="alececco" wrote:
So no advance.... let's stay in the past and forget any evolution... that is comforting. Careful though there are some new players in the game, DxO being one of them that are catching up fast...
So you attack PO because people here suggest MacPros (previous generations too) over iMacs? No one would ever use DxO in a professional setting - and by that I mean advertising, fashion - clients on set.
(I've bought it in the past - found it clunky to use but maybe that's changed)
Anyway there is a lot of performance on the older MacPros - and I would not get Fusion drives - I wouldn't want software determining which data needs to be on the fast part of the drive while working. Stick with SSD's or even better PCI SSD's you can install in older MacPros.
In the end its Canon's USB2 connections that is slowing it all down. Using a digi back with Firewire or USB3 would be better for previews on screen. Maybe in a year or 2 Canon will do something about that - Nikon already has - Canon is usually last on these things unfortunately.0 -
Have you tested the Sonnett tango 3 we have one that has been great with usb drives and P40 but haven't tested cameras yet.
Just wondering how the Sonnett works with the D800.
Shooting with a d800 on the 2013 imac, 1tb flash drive of course, will bring the image up really fast. USB3 is the ticket for speed. I want faster hi-res tiff processing on-set too, and portability with my usb3, so that's why I am moving to the new MacPro 8core.0 -
[quote="alececco" wrote:
So no advance..et's stay in the past and forget any evolution... that is comforting. Careful though there are some new players in the game, DxO being one of them that are catching up fast...
Just to clarify I don't work for PhaseOne.
I don't care if my tech isn't latest gen if it is reliable and FAST and nor do the photographers I work with.
I haven't tested the tango3 with the d800 yet but have heard it's not great. If I shot more d800 tethered I'd probably move to a windows box for that.0 -
[quote="alececco" wrote:
How about you tell us what some of these issues are? I mean a statement like this dosent help any one, and the OP is asking for help.
To add to what Ulf said we often see significant tethering issues through both USB and thunderbolt (converting to firewire) ports on the iMacs that we do not see on the Macbook Pro or Mac Pro and I would expect this to remain true of the new Mac Pro. The voltage and signal fluctuations of the cheaper iMac ports often create dropped connections and in some cases a complete inability to connect with longer cables.
Part of the question you have to ask yourself when saving money on the computer is "what is my downtime worth?"0
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