Blackmagic Forum

I'm looking to purchase my very first Apple computer to pair with a workstation PC. I would have loved to max out the iMac specifications (i7, GT 680, etc.) but unfortunately, in my country, I don't have that choice.

I'm looking to get the 27" iMac, and the best specs available are:

3.2 GHz i5
8 GB RAM (Thankfully upgradable)
1 TB 7,200 rpm (not fusion)
NVIDIA GTX 675MX 1 GB GPU

It will cost me $2,500 due to taxes and for whatever reason.

I'm getting a CS creative cloud license, FCP-X and Resolve (full version), and the PC workstation will lift the heavy load. The iMac is 'because I need an Apple product'. All other Apple options, like the Macbook pro, etc., are unreasonable and unpractical for my use.

My question is: Can this iMac run Adobe CS6 and Resolve smoothly? I will not be using it for production or mission critical work, but would like to test both on this machine for various reasons. I'm not looking for intensive work, but the software should run okay, even if it is slightly on the slower side. I'll be running 1080p and 2K footage mainly.

If anybody has been successful with this iMac version I'd appreciate your experiences. Thanks.

Is there nobody at BMD who can confirm if Resolve will run okay on the i5 iMac?

The 675 will run Resolve, but you might might run out of vram if you do too much in it. Are you going to try and edit BMCC footage?

Clark Fable wrote:The 675 will run Resolve, but you might might run out of vram if you do too much in it. Are you going to try and edit BMCC footage?

Thanks, Clark!

Might run BMCC footage through it, but mostly for training and testing. No major or critical projects.

Actually the 675 does well in benchmarks, and I'm sure is definitely capable. I'm more concerned with the i5 (which I can't upgrade)!

We are looking into the Mac specs again with our NAB demo builds of v10 with the intention of publishing a new config guide. With the extra temporal processing and OpenFX plugins the GPU demands are greater and this might affect you more than the i5 vs i7 issue.

Remember the CPU is used for the app, image decompression and compression, disk I/O etc and so if you use compressed files, dont we all, then CPU speed and core count matters.

Images are processed in GPU, and there GPU speed, core count and GPU ram is important. The higher the resolution and more temporal affects (this means more frames to handle at one time) means you need more GPU ram. The 512MB GPU ram in the 21" may not be sufficient for the new features in v10.

FYI at NAB we used the 2GB 680MX GPUs in the iMacs and for HD these worked well.
Peter

Peter Chamberlain wrote:We are looking into the Mac specs again with our NAB demo builds of v10 with the intention of publishing a new config guide. With the extra temporal processing and OpenFX plugins the GPU demands are greater and this might affect you more than the i5 vs i7 issue.

Remember the CPU is used for the app, image decompression and compression, disk I/O etc and so if you use compressed files, dont we all, then CPU speed and core count matters.

Images are processed in GPU, and there GPU speed, core count and GPU ram is important. The higher the resolution and more temporal affects (this means more frames to handle at one time) means you need more GPU ram. The 512MB GPU ram in the 21" may not be sufficient for the new features in v10.

FYI at NAB we used the 2GB 680MX GPUs in the iMacs and for HD these worked well.
Peter

Thanks, Peter. If I had the choice I would have maxed out the iMac, but it isn't possible in India. The 675MX has 1 GB RAM and the i5 processor is quad core. I will upgrade RAM to 16 or 32 GB, but that's all I can do.

If it works as a basic training and workflow testing device I'll be happy. So, will v10 work on this iMac?

Adobe CC and Resolve 9 works fine on the iMac i5 GTX 675MX version.