iMac i5, 2011 for light mixing and production

[KennyS]

Hey all the title pretty much says it all. I'm grabbing or thinking about grabbing a iMac for my studio. It is an i5 2011 model. Probably 40 to 60 audio tracks in PT 10 with a couple plugs on every channel. Anyone have any experience with these guys.

Thanks,
KennyS

[Igotsoul4u]

They are pretty awesome. I just got one for my production partner to replace his 4 year old mac mini which was also a beast. Its got some horsepower especially with the optional 16GB of memory option. Firewire 800 and thunderbolt are big pluses. Its a great machine. A tower will always be better and be relevant for longer but the mac mini is obviously tons cheaper.

[SSquirrel]

Originally Posted by KennyS

Hey all the title pretty much says it all. I'm grabbing or thinking about grabbing a iMac for my studio. It is an i5 2011 model. Probably 40 to 60 audio tracks in PT 10 with a couple plugs on every channel. Anyone have any experience with these guys.

Thanks,
KennyS

Just something to keep in mind. The Ivy Bridge processors are coming out in March or April. If you need it now, the iMac is pretty nice. I would drop the extra to go to the i7 model, b/c the i5 lacks hyperthreading. That is my plan for a new system, but I'm holding off for the new procs

[KennyS]

What is Hyperthreading other than sounding really important. Haha

KennyS

[SSquirrel]

Originally Posted by KennyS

What is Hyperthreading other than sounding really important. Haha

Hyperthreading turns your 4 core processor into a 4 core+4 virtual cores. Since Mac OS has Grand Central Dispatch built in to help take advantage of every core your system has, it makes sense to have more cores. Max out RAM (done very cheaply via ordering RAM from Newegg, wayyyyy too pricey from Apple) and stack as many processors as you can. Allows you to throw more at your machine at once.

[skira]

Originally Posted by SSquirrel

Just something to keep in mind. The Ivy Bridge processors are coming out in March or April.

Yes. Speed increase could be 10-15% over current models so if you're not buying used or refurbed you might as well wait.

Hyperthreading turns your 4 core processor into a 4 core+4 virtual cores.

Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology

Note to OP: the Core i5 processors in the standard-configuration iMacs do not have Intel’s Hyper-Threading technology, which creates two virtual cores for each physical core present in the processor, improving performance. To get an iMac with a processor that has Hyper-Threading you’ll have to select the an i7-based Mac.

In some cases Hyperthreading actually slows down performance due to poor application programming: the Adobe Lightroom forums had lots of complaints last year that Hyperthreading actually impeded Lightroom performance and that users reported better results after turning it off. (This was for Windows machines and I don't know whether it similarly affected Macs using i7 processors.)