New iMac Recommendations- where to spend the $$
-
Welcome to SCF.
Does your wife render? or is this machine only for Sketchup?
The reason I ask is because Sketchup is only single core and has not changed a bit since 2006, so her machine is still gonna run fine until SU ever changes to either a 64 bit or multi-core (don't hold breath), however if she does render or use image editing apps then I'd suggest going for a faster machine with more cores like the i7 setup and the best video card available as well as a decent amount of ram, if not then I do not see the need to upgrade to be frank.
-
Well, first of all, part of this is that her machine seems to be on the outs. I haven't been able to get it to boot, even from a SnowLeopard DVD (thank goodness for TimeMachine backups!). But the machine is maxed out at 2GB of RAM, and unfortunately is just under the line for upgrading to Lion (which we want for shared iCloud calendars, etc...)
But yes, she does render. Her landscape firm has been using sketch up for presentation along with DynaScape(?) for the details.
From my experience in video applications, the graphics card gets you the real time OpenGL performance, and the processor is for rendering tasks. And more RAM is always good. Is this the same with Sketchup?
Reading these forums for the last hour, I see lots of threads about problems with the Radeon cards, though someone suggested in one thread that the problem isn't what it used to be. Is this still a problem? What effect does it have on running the software?
Thanks
-
Your assessment sounds pretty spot on. SU uses your graphics card for showing the textures and shadows but with OpenGL spending 10x the amount on a graphics card doesn't mean you'll get much better performance. Anything more than what would be considered a fairly good gaming card is probably overkill for SU. And when rendering the graphics card isn't used at all (there are some new GPU renderers out there but that's not likely what she's using).
SU uses one (and only one) core of your CPU for viewing the geometry so you want the highest clock speed available. Just balance this out with a good overall speed because any decent rendering software will use all the cores. If you can get a hyperthreaded quad core with a clock speed of 3+ you'll be in very good shape.
SU doesn't use much ram but the more ram you have the larger resolution and higher detailed models you can render. 8gb seems to be a nice sweet spot for where she's at in my opinion. If you have too much RAM it just won't get used.
-Brodie
-
Core Duo? Is that the CoreDuo or the Core2Duo?
The former was only 32bit- the latter being 64bit. Also the older Macs only had a maximum of 2 or 3 gigs of RAM and the buss speed was quite slow (667MHz- compared to today's 1333MHz)
Also the old iMac had pretty awful built in graphic cards (Intel GMA). Not that good.
Any upgrade you will notice a vast increase in speed/performance. And as for that huge screen? Everyone loves a huge screen!
If you've got the money, go for it. Why not?
-
I have the i7 chip in my Macbook pro, and it is real workhorse with big poly models. I also have an older 25" Imac, but usually use the MacBook because of speed, but sure miss the screen size.
-
Thanks for the replies, all!
@tfdesign Yes, the CoreDuo- just before they introduced the Core2Duo. So it's a 32bit machine that maxed out at 2GB RAM, enough for me to upgrade her to Snow Leopard last year, but she's cut off from upgrading to Lion. You're right, any machine I buy will see a dramatic performance increase over her existing machine.
I'm going to take it for granted that I want to get the $1999 iMac that comes with the Radeon6970M with 1GB graphics memory, since all the other iMacs only have 512MB graphics cards, and the processor is capped at 2.7GHz.
So here are the options available for customization, I guess more than anything I'm looking for a sense as to which of these things will be worth the upgrade-
$200 to go from 3.1GHz Core i5 to 3.4GHz Core i7
$100 to bump the graphics memory from 1GB to 2GB
$210 to go from 4GB to 8GB RAM (which I know I can buy cheaper elsewhere)Thanks again everyone.
-
I'd do the CPU upgrade. That'll help with both SU and rendering so it's money well spent.
I'd pass on the GPU upgrade. I don't think you'll see any difference at all unless she's also interesting in playing Skyrim on that PC.
If you can upgrade the RAM later (for cheaper) I'd do that. You can start with 4gb and do some occasional checks while she's working in SU or doing a large render to see if she's using all 4gb of RAM. If not, you just saved yourself a bunch of money. If she is using it all, just buy the other 4gb at that point.
-Brodie
-
@unknownuser said:
I'd do the CPU upgrade. That'll help with both SU and rendering so it's money well spent.
I'd pass on the GPU upgrade. I don't think you'll see any difference at all unless she's also interesting in playing Skyrim on that PC.
If you can upgrade the RAM later (for cheaper) I'd do that. You can start with 4gb and do some occasional checks while she's working in SU or doing a large render to see if she's using all 4gb of RAM. If not, you just saved yourself a bunch of money. If she is using it all, just buy the other 4gb at that point.
-Brodie
+1
i would do the same...
the i7 will give you a turbo speed of 3,8GHz on one core compared to 3,4GHz turbo of the i5
2GB video ram won't give you anything for sketchup i think
and the ram upgrade is just LOL!!! $200 for 4GB?!? WTF????? this is just insane... you can buy more than 32GB of 4GB sticks for that money... -
@unknownuser said:
I'd do the CPU upgrade. That'll help with both SU and rendering so it's money well spent.
I'd pass on the GPU upgrade. I don't think you'll see any difference at all unless she's also interesting in playing Skyrim on that PC.
That doesn't make any sense, because you can't 'just upgrade' the CPU and not the GPU on a Mac. You do both at the same time.
FWIW, she'll see a massive difference because of the swap from 32bit to 64bit, even if, yes, SU still only works in 32bit, because the rest of the OS is running in 64bit.
Again there is the jump in buss speed too, as well as the machine being able to deal with up to 32gb's of RAM. (The older machines would only go as high as 2 or 3 gb's).
-
@tfdesign said:
@unknownuser said:
I'd do the CPU upgrade. That'll help with both SU and rendering so it's money well spent.
I'd pass on the GPU upgrade. I don't think you'll see any difference at all unless she's also interesting in playing Skyrim on that PC.
That doesn't make any sense, because you can't 'just upgrade' the CPU and not the GPU on a Mac. You do both at the same time.
I think you've misunderstood the original poster (or perhaps I have?). We're not talking about upgrading an existing computer. He's buying a new mac and asking which of the 3 upgrade options he should get. I've never gone through the mac buying process, but I don't get the impression from his question that it's an all or nothing thing in this case.
-Brodie
Advertisement