Using 27" iMacs to replace Desktop Workstations

Over the weekend I put together some thoughts on using the new 27" iMac to replace many of our "Big Iron" desktop workstations. Essentially I can put together 5 top of the line iMacs for around $16,000 vs. $50,000 for Mac Pros or $56 to $68,000 for similar PCs.

Full Article here on my Blog.

[www.biscardicreative.com]

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

I just did the same thing for 2 systems. Granted not doing a ton of heavy lifting and rendering, but needed 2 pretty good at everything systems. Main focus will be running FCP 7/Avid MC6 with its own local storage. It also needs to be able to do Color/AfterEffects/Photoshop/Resolve etc. as well, although not daily. While they may not have the grunt of a 12 core, even just the base i5 quad core are plenty fast for what I'm doing.

This is for feature work, so I normally always have time to sit and wait for rendering. And because it is feature work, I tend to be in a single place for 5-6 months so it's nice that they are semi easy to maneuver around.

With all of the Thunderbolt support starting to trickle down these machines do pretty well at everything As we start seeing expansion bays there really may be no limit to peripherals installed. There are already so many great things becoming available. Express 34 card adapters to get more FW or esata ports, fibre adapters,adapters galore really, screaming fast hard drives, aja-blackmagic-matrox all have something. Thunderbolt really truly is one of the biggest game changers technology wise for me and my needs.

These systems will be going with me to Romania, and all it takes is a couple of Pelican 1730 cases. So with shipping in mind they are an even better deal, as I am shipping half the amount of weight size and gear.

Nice. Especially that the iMacs support jumbo frames. However,

1) with regards to the price comparison, how does the price fare with a bottom end MacPro? If you're running PPro, more RAM is a good thing. Avid on the otherhand, may not require so much juice, as it doesn't do that much heavy lifting, and may probably need more RAM for larger projects with lots of rushes, so 12 to 16 gigs of RAM may be all you need in an Avid setup.

2) dual displays. Maybe you will get an Apple display of the same size. Working one screen has always felt too cramped for me.

3) Connection to high speed arrays. We're still waiting for more Thunderbolt options- hubs, more storage arrays, etc..

That said, you don't really need a tower for editing, unless you are cutting multicam Prores. My guess is that on an iMac, you may get somewhere between 8 to 14 streams of Prores Proxy HD.



www.strypesinpost.com

strypes Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Nice. Especially that the iMacs support jumbo
> frames. However,
>
> 1) with regards to the price comparison, how does
> the price fare with a bottom end MacPro?

If I'm buying a "big iron" system, then I'm buying a top of the line. To me a bottom end Mac Pro pretty much equals the performance of a top end iMac, so why not get the iMac with the great screen?


>
> 2) dual displays. Maybe you will get an Apple
> display of the same size. Working one screen has
> always felt too cramped for me.

As I said in my article, we have a slew of really nice 24" monitors here, mostly all Dell UltraSharps so every edit suite will have dual monitors as they do now.

>
> 3) Connection to high speed arrays. We're still
> waiting for more Thunderbolt options- hubs, more
> storage arrays, etc..

We'll be connected to our ethernet based SAN as we've been doing for 5 years or so now. We've been editing off iMacs pretty much since we had the thing so we know it works well. In addition, we already know the Promise systems work really well and we know that Promise has Thunderbolt to FibreChannel adapters if we ever wanted to go that route.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

On the use of Resolve, don't you still need the appropriate Blackmagic IO card to run the full app?
Or have I missed new developments at Blackmagic.

Sprocketz Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> On the use of Resolve, don't you still need the
> appropriate Blackmagic IO card to run the full
> app?
> Or have I missed new developments at Blackmagic.

Yes, hence the reason I said ProTools and Resolve will continue to run on "Big Iron." I'm not completely eliminating Big Iron systems from my facility, never said I was. I said I was going to replace most of my editing systems with iMacs.

Finishing Systems will still be Big Iron, though most likely WinTel systems.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

Hey Walter, how do the iMacs perform vs the Mac Pros. Have you run a benchmark on those things yet?

[browse.geekbench.ca]

Just took a look at the benchmark results for the Mac.

[browse.geekbench.ca]



www.strypesinpost.com

For straight editing, can't tell much of a difference. Depending on what filters / effects you have, you'll obviously notice that the renders will be slower than something that has a 12 core processor. But they are very very fast these days.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

Thanks. I don't think I have worked with the current breed of iMacs, but in the past, exports used to feel a tad slower on iMacs, but I think it was because I was working off FW800 drives, while I may be on anything from Fibre to eSATA or PCIE RAID arrays on the MacPros.



www.strypesinpost.com

Yep...never thought I would be saying this...but I have been researching that:

27" iMac 3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
16 GB RAM
2TB Serial ATA Drive + 256GB Solid State (boot) Drive
AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2GB GDDR5
Applecare

= $3,818.00 !!! Holy Smokes that is insane...that's less than I paid for the laptop I am writing this on ($4200) !!

Throw in a thunderbolt expansion chassis for my Kona Card among other things...wow!!

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

You're missing out one thing, Joey... Me and you, we got this thing called "backpack full o' power"!

(typing this on my $500 iPhone next to my $4200 MBP.



www.strypesinpost.com

I will always need my backpack studio. Still...very attractive = Quad Core 3.4 GHz (weren't the first quads 3.4s?)...2 GB GPU...16 GB RAM...2.256 TB SATA / SSD combo...all in that sexy 27" screen frame...sitting next to my other 27" Cinema screen...for $3800. Crazy good. Will make a great AE / C4D render & backup station remotely controlled from my laptop via Screen Sharing. Hey...wonder if I can run 2 apple 27's from a MBP thunderbolt port? that's 71" of glorious hi-res real estate!

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

grafixjoe Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yep...never thought I would be saying this...but I
> have been researching that:
>
> 27" iMac 3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
> 16 GB RAM
> 2TB Serial ATA Drive + 256GB Solid State (boot)
> Drive
> AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2GB GDDR5
> Applecare
>
> = $3,818.00 !!! Holy Smokes that is
> insane...that's less than I paid for the laptop I
> am writing this on ($4200) !!
>
> Throw in a thunderbolt expansion chassis for my
> Kona Card among other things...wow!!

Yep, that's where I was coming from in my article. 5 iMacs for just over $16,000. My Mac Pros are going up for sale next week so we can start swapping them out.

But instead of the thunderbolt chassis, I'm going with the AJA IoXT and the T-Tap for monitoring / I/O. Figure I'll get two IoXTs and three T-Taps. Not every single system needs ingest at the same time. So we'll swap the boxes around as needed.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

Let us know how those AJA IoXTs and T-Taps work out. I haven't ingested anything from tape in over a year (we have 5 Ki Pro's for Game Capture / field recording) so I may not even use the Kona LHe. I may just sell it with it's KL-Box.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.