# New iMacs with Thunderbolt!!!



## midphase (May 3, 2011)

Until now I felt that the biggest stumbling block for us composers using an iMac was the inability of reaching SATA speeds from multiple drives. 

But not with Thunderbolt, is this all about to change?

http://www.macworld.com/article/159611/2011/05/thunderbolt_imacs.html (http://www.macworld.com/article/159611/ ... imacs.html)

In essence the processors (not a huge issue anyway) are really fast (up to 3.4ghz i7's), the RAM can go up to 16gigs, the graphics cards offer top performance, and 2 Thunderbolt ports make sure that you can hook up an array of fast drives running at top speed which should be a welcome relief for us sample streaming fiends.

I'm thinking that my next Mac will be an iMac...any thoughts?


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## jamwerks (May 3, 2011)

Yes this does change the game a bit. Especially for a multi cpu setup (Mac daw + PC slave), maybe no need anymore for a MacPro !


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## midphase (May 3, 2011)

Well...essentially aside from the 5 internal drives, my Mac Pro's PCI slots are unused, and I have 12gigs of RAM which seems to be plenty for my needs. So if someone releases an eSata Thunderbolt enclosure I think I'd be fine with the iMac.
I'm also starting to feel like the dual monitor setup might be unnecessary (although I can see the need for a simple monitor and HDTV connected for displaying the Quicktime movies when scoring to picture).


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## dinerdog (May 3, 2011)

My frist thought this morning was "I wish I needed a new Mac now". I have a MacPro early 2008, but there's no chance I'd buy another desktop again. I think the new iMac looks killer for music and video (can't wait for Final Cut Pro X either).


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## midphase (May 3, 2011)

I'd love to see some CPU benchmark tests against Mac Pros. My guess is that the difference is blurring.

If only Apple would consider releasing an iMac without the screen (which I'm sure contributes to quite a bit of the price tag).


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## midphase (May 3, 2011)

Some comparison shopping:

iMac with i7 running at 3.4ghz, and graphics card upgrade: $2,299.00

Mac Pro Quad running at 3.2ghz with graphics card upgrade: $3,099.00
(add 27" monitor and the price jumps to $4,098.00).

Dunno...I feel like the CPU performance difference is probably not quite worth the extra almost $2k...maybe I'm wrong.

Can anyone chime in with i7 to Nehalem CPU performance differences?


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## jlb (May 3, 2011)

You can't even buy a thunderbolt drive over here in the UK, and even when you can the price is going to be horrendous! I think I will stick with the Mac Pro!

jlb


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## dinerdog (May 3, 2011)

Well, they did leave a FW800 on there too.


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## jlb (May 3, 2011)

Yes but FW800 is TWELVE times slower than TB! :( 

jlb


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## Stephen Rees (May 3, 2011)

They do look interesting.

I think my concern would be hard drive replacement. If one fails in a MacPro its easy to replace. 5 mins to stick in then new one the use Time Machine to copy the files back.

In an iMac the hard drive isn't intented to be a user replaceable part. It looks pretty tricky to do yourself (which might also void the warranty), and probably should be done by Apple. My nearest AppleStore is 50 miles away........

Hmmmmmm......


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## Garlu (May 3, 2011)

midphase @ Tue May 03 said:


> Some comparison shopping:
> 
> iMac with i7 running at 3.4ghz, and graphics card upgrade: $2,299.00
> 
> ...



I did some research, and I found this:

- A benchmark for a "summer" 2010 mac pro quad 3.2 Ghz, 16 Gb ram:

(attached)

According to that, the processor used is the Intel Xeon W3565. 

If you compare that model vs the new i7 sandy bridge 2600k 3.4 Ghz (I guess it will be the one used in the new imacs):

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-2600K+%40+3.40GHz

That´s 6040 (from the W3565) vs 9153 (from the i7 2600k) on the CPU marks. That means probably around 150 % of performance. 

So, the new imac is a really good option! :D 

PS. We will see the real numbers when the new model marks come up...


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## midphase (May 3, 2011)

jlb @ Tue May 03 said:


> You can't even buy a thunderbolt drive over here in the UK, and even when you can the price is going to be horrendous! I think I will stick with the Mac Pro!
> 
> jlb



I don't believe that TB drives will be ridiculously priced. If you think about it they will still just be eSATA drives in an enclosure with a TB chip. Better yet, if someone sells just the enclosure (or an eSATA to TB adapter) I think most of us could be happy with that.

Regarding the internal drive....yeah...it's a PITA to remove and replace...but not impossible...just a bit challenging.


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## jlb (May 3, 2011)

midphase @ Tue May 03 said:


> jlb @ Tue May 03 said:
> 
> 
> > You can't even buy a thunderbolt drive over here in the UK, and even when you can the price is going to be horrendous! I think I will stick with the Mac Pro!
> ...



Bear in mind I am talking the UK here, we are charged a lot more than you guys for the same stuff. A baseline Mac Pro 8 core here is over £2000, that's the equivalent of $3200. The only TB drive I have seen is a Lacie one, which was SSD, and the price was....unconfirmed. That means high! very high! Give it a year

jlb


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 3, 2011)

For me the issues with any iMac are mainly practical: I have my computers and drives in a machine room (AKA the garage on the other side of the wall). I don't want all those drives in here making noise and me irritable.

Plus I have a near-sexual relationship with my 30" Cinema Display, which I have no interest in replacing.

But the lines between laptop and desktop, never mind iMac, are likely to become blurred pretty soon.


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## jlb (May 3, 2011)

Nick Batzdorf @ Tue May 03 said:


> For me the issues with any iMac are mainly practical: I have my computers and drives in a machine room (AKA the garage on the other side of the wall). I don't want all those drives in here making noise and me irritable.
> 
> Plus I have a near-sexual relationship with my 30" Cinema Display, which I have no interest in replacing.
> 
> But the lines between laptop and desktop, never mind iMac, are likely to become blurred pretty soon.



Yes I have two, they are pretty sexy..

jlb


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 3, 2011)

Garlu, those general benchmarks are useful as a reference, but they tend to measure things that don't affect V.I. performance. In other words, what looks like 150% is probably nowhere near that, especially if it's measuring things spread across multiple cores.


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## Garlu (May 3, 2011)

Nick Batzdorf @ Tue May 03 said:


> Garlu, those general benchmarks are useful as a reference, but they tend to measure things that don't affect V.I. performance. In other words, what looks like 150% is probably nowhere near that, especially if it's measuring things spread across multiple cores.



True, I was just trying to put some numbers...  

Nick, thanks for the point anyways!

PS. Your comment about your near-sexual relationship with your 30' monitor was glorious! LOL!


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 3, 2011)

By the way, I do still agree the iMac is probably a good choice!


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## Walra48 (May 3, 2011)

I'm addicted to 4 monitors in an array - do NOT want to consider an all in one. Smaller form Mac Pros... now, that could be interesting. But I doubt that will happen until 2012.


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## rgames (May 3, 2011)

I'm on the fence on this technology - it just doesn't seem like it's that much better than what we already have.

The marketing makes it unclear what you're really getting: usually when a link is bi-directional (like Thunderbolt) the bandwidth is given as the *sum* of the bandwidths in both directions.

So, for samples where we care only about the read speed, that 10 Gbps Thunderbolt is really 5 Gbps. That's 625 MB/s max, in theory. In reality, it's probably more like 500 MB/s.

There are already plenty of drives that can do about 400 MB/s, so the actual increase is really not that much... well, OK, 25% is decent, but I gotta admit it just doesn't excite me that much. I want a huge leap!

We'll know better once these peripherals come out and the benchmarkers get hold of them.

rgames


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## midphase (May 4, 2011)

Well...it's not necessarily the idea of a faster data transfer rate (although that is a good bonus) over what we already have...but rather that there's a technology that allows for as-good-as-SATA data transfer rates which are not achievable with current USB or FW technology.


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## Ryan Scully (May 4, 2011)

This has really got me thinking seriously about moving towards a new iMac vs. Mac Pro. I am still going to wait and see what the 2012 Mac Pros have before leaping but this is very tempting..


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## Mike Connelly (May 4, 2011)

midphase @ Tue May 03 said:


> I'd love to see some CPU benchmark tests against Mac Pros. My guess is that the difference is blurring.
> 
> If only Apple would consider releasing an iMac without the screen (which I'm sure contributes to quite a bit of the price tag).



Benchmark, this is just i5 so the i7 should be even faster:
The imac scored 227 versus 263 for the six core MP.

http://www.macworld.com/article/159631/ ... 31ghz.html

I definitely agree about the screenless imac, people have been asking for a midtower xMac for years. It's been ages since I've needed PCI. What I need is fast CPU, fast disk busses, and plenty of memory slots.

The new iMacs look pretty great, the main downsides are only 4 ram slots (it looks like all models can probably use 32 gigs of ram, but very expensive), and SATA is still II which is really surprising since the last laptop update included SATA III.



Stephen Rees @ Tue May 03 said:


> In an iMac the hard drive isn't intented to be a user replaceable part. It looks pretty tricky to do yourself (which might also void the warranty), and probably should be done by Apple. My nearest AppleStore is 50 miles away........



Good point. But if you have a boot drive failure in a crunch situation, you can boot the iMac off an external drive and keep working.


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## Hicks (May 4, 2011)

That's great news.

I wanted to change my imac, by anted to keep the imac config.

I am a newbie in computer, let's start the 101 questions.

On my current Imac, I got 2 firewire ports, one for soundcard and the other one for the external drive.
With the new one, there is only one firewire for the soundcard and the sata would be for the external hardrive?
Sata are faster than firewires? I am right?
But regarding a software like HS for example. SDD is not Sata? So I couldn't get this librarie with my mac (Appassionata here you come!).

Sorry for the noobs question!

Regards


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## Mike Connelly (May 4, 2011)

One nice thing about the new machines is that the two TB ports are separate busses. I think that macs with multiple FW ports have generally shared the same bus (I think including shared 400 and 800).

With SATA, is each port on a separate bus?


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## midphase (May 4, 2011)

Looks like TB copper lines can be a maximum length of 9 feet. Could be enough for some people to have the drives in a closet, or at the very least in a smaller sound proof enclosure.

I assume the iMac itself is pretty quiet.

One of the nice plusses to me is the fact that the iMac is Energy Star rated, I'm all for saving power and being a wee bit more environmentally friendly.


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## rgames (May 4, 2011)

I believe Intel originally intended the connection to be optical but went to copper so that they could provide power over the lines.

Would be great to offer both copper and optical for devices that don't need power - you could probably go thousands of feet with optical!

rgames


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## Mike Connelly (May 4, 2011)

Providing power, and cost. Optical is still planned as a future update.


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## Ned Bouhalassa (May 4, 2011)

Could you run Hollywood Strings on them?


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## synthnut (May 4, 2011)

From my understanding , the newer 4 core machines bench higher than the older 8 core machines ....My guess is that the new 4 core 3.4 will be faster than the older 8 core 2.26 machine....I'm wondering if it will handle Omnisphere running the optional 3.4 upgrade ...Jim

9 ft run on HD's makes for a nice quiet operation w/HD's in the closet !!....


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## Conor (May 5, 2011)

Couple of questions for folks considering an iMac:

1) Even if you tuck the extra hard drives away in the closet or something, you're always going to have the boot drive and a couple of fans right in front of your face. Are iMacs really quiet enough for that?

2) Would a fully tricked-out 2011 iMac be enough to run some of the more demanding sample libraries? Or would you be looking at a master + slave setup?


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## synthnut (May 5, 2011)

1) You could always run an SSD drive for your applications .....There is another eSATA connection inside the iMac also for another drive .... OWC makes a setup that brings that eSATA port to the outside of the iMac for exteral use .....

2) Depending on how big your setup is going to be you would have to be the judge of that ....As fast as Thunderbolt is suppose to be , and as many drives as you can add, plus the fact that you have 2 SEPERATE channels of Thunderbolt at your fingertips , along with Firewire 800, and the use of an external eSATA if you choose , I think that you have a pretty nice little setup for a MODERATE system .... If I were looking to go with more, I would surely consider a Mac Pro , and slaves .....or you could run slaves off of this computer ..... Again , it's all up to the individual and how big they intend to go with it .....Jim


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## midphase (May 5, 2011)

My point is that I rarely run into CPU issues with my now aging Mac Pro. CPU is no longer the real bottleneck, it's all about RAM and Hard Drive speed with today's libraries.

So with the new Thunderbolt ports and with the iMac's upper RAM limits at 32gigs...coupled with a CPU performance rivaling and even surpassing that of a Xeon processor, I wouldn't view an iMac as a "moderate" system by any stretch of the definition.


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## midphase (May 5, 2011)

Here's a new article on the chipset used in the new iMacs (ahead of everyone else) with some interesting notes about usage of this chipset with SSD Caching:

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/05/app ... new-imacs/


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## adg21 (May 5, 2011)

It seems odd that the new imac doesn't Sata III, especially as the Macbook Pro has it


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## Mike Connelly (May 5, 2011)

adg21 @ Thu May 05 said:


> It seems odd that the new imac doesn't Sata III, especially as the Macbook Pro has it



And especially since the intel chipset they're using includes III. I wonder if it's possible that it really does have III but the OS hasn't been updated for the new hardware and is just showing the wrong info?


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 5, 2011)

> 1) Even if you tuck the extra hard drives away in the closet or something, you're always going to have the boot drive and a couple of fans right in front of your face. Are iMacs really quiet enough for that?
> 
> 2) Would a fully tricked-out 2011 iMac be enough to run some of the more demanding sample libraries? Or would you be looking at a master + slave setup?



1) My wife has a 27" iMac, and it is very quiet - and it's a really nice machine. But I do hear her back-up drive humming even though it's wrapped up in foam on the floor behind the file cabinet under her desk. So whether or not it's going to bother you depends on how sensitive you are; I personally am a super-irritable freak about this and am not interested in having anything that makes any machine noise whatsoever inside the room with me.

Question: does Thunderbolt allow long cables so you can put noisy stuff elsewhere? Good question, Batzdorf - look it up and post the answer.

2) That's a little bit of a "how long is a piece of string" question. The answer depends on how much and what you want to run, of course.


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## synthnut (May 5, 2011)

Midphase,
I mentioned the word "moderate " as you would basically be running this machine with (4)- 4 GB blocks of memory that will cost right around $200 ....I say this because reaching the limit of 32 GB of memory is (4) blocks of 8 GB for a mear $3,000 !!!.... Somehow I don't see many folks going that route !!..... 16 GB of memory on a 4 core machine is what I would consider "moderate " ..... especailly if the HD's are spec'd down to SATA2 rather than SATA3 ......Still a great system for the $$$ ...... I could do what I need to do with it with room to spare ( for now ) and enjoy the system just fine .....Jim


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## Mike Connelly (May 5, 2011)

It is a shame that they used laptop memory, they could have made the machine just a tiny bit bigger and used desktop memory that's vastly cheaper for the 8 gig sticks.

And some good news, there was a firmware update for the iMac and two of the ports are bumped to SATA III (the optical port is still II as in the laptop).


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## midphase (May 5, 2011)

16 gigs from OWC runs about $200. Considering that most apps are still contending with the whole 32bit issue...I think that would go a long way towards a very useable machine.

Personally I run 12gigs on my Mac Pro and that seems to hold me up quite well.


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## synthnut (May 5, 2011)

A very usable machine for sure ......Great news that 2 of the ports are bumped to SATA 3 also .....I'm not concerned about 16 GB of ram until it's time to go 64 bit ....Then it becomes more of a concern .....I'm using an early 3.06 Core 2 Duo iMac now and I'm really pretty happy with it even with it's shortcomings ..... The 3.4 Quad is really a sweet setup for the $$....Jim


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 9, 2011)

adj, please read my post above on the subject.

It's not very difficult, or I should say it's not difficult enough to be the deciding factor in whether or not you go with these machines. If I can do this kind of thing then anyone can; you just have to make sure you have the right tools (which are not expensive) and that you're careful to keep track of what screws went where.


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## Stephen Rees (May 12, 2011)

Nick Batzdorf @ Mon May 09 said:


> adj, please read my post above on the subject.
> 
> It's not very difficult, or I should say it's not difficult enough to be the deciding factor in whether or not you go with these machines. If I can do this kind of thing then anyone can; you just have to make sure you have the right tools (which are not expensive) and that you're careful to keep track of what screws went where.



It doesn't seem as simple with these new 2011 iMacs. Have a look here....

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1152046

If you try and replace the hard drive yourself the iMac's fans will run permanently flat out. It seems like they are trying to very strongly discourage user hard drive replacement.

Stephen


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 12, 2011)

I stand corrected! Sorry.


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## Walra48 (May 12, 2011)

A reason to perhaps re-consider the new iMac as the best choice for a pro DAW:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11 ... imacs.html


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## synthnut (May 12, 2011)

URRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

I'm beginning to think that Apple has comformed to being a government agency !!!.......They are starting to do things that make no sense, and very costly, and while they give to you in one hand , they take away with the other !!......

URRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH !!!!.....

So much for my dreams of an iMac Studio !!.....

Thanks for the info guys ....You saved me a couple of grand !!!......Jim


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## JT3_Jon (May 12, 2011)

WOW! How can they get away with that?! That just seems wrong!!


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## johnhamilton (May 12, 2011)

Before anyone gets excited over the Thunderbolt, please realise that with this being new technology now released it will still be some time yet before third party hardware designers implement the Thunderbolt port into their products!

I call WD to do it first.


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## synthnut (May 12, 2011)

Thunderbolt products I can wait for ....I know it exists , and they will build product for it .....

This main drive bottleneck is totally UNACCEPTABLE !!..... This BLUNDER should really be posted all over the internet .....Jim


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## midphase (May 12, 2011)

Wait a minute guys....how about we all take a deep breath.

Isn't the whole point of TB that we're not reliant on internal drives?

Sure, drives go bad, but my guess is that there will be workarounds and other options by the time one is needed to be replaced which would be a couple of years out.

I don't think this is the deal killer that everyone is making it out to sound, plus there's no telling if Apple will start implementing the same restrictions into Mac Pros and the laptops.

Also, I don't get the sense that Apple is doing this maliciously, they have nothing to gain by it. There must be a real tech-related reason as to why they need to get accurate temperature data from the drives.


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## synthnut (May 12, 2011)

How about anytime you need a new drive you are forced to buy it from Apple ? .....Do you think that these drives are going to be competive if Apple is the only company that can supply them ? ...... You will not have a choice of what drive you want to put in there ..... This just makes me think what stipulations they are going to put on other companies that utilize their "Thunderbolt " technology ..... Talk about proprietary ? ......YIKES !!.....Think about this ....What part of the computer breaks more often than any other part on the computer ? ......Other than ram, what part do we change more than any other part on the computer ? ..... Now , every HD company will probably have to be licensed to use this technology , and it will be paid for by .............you guessed it !!....This is not malicious ....This is progress !!.... :roll: .....Jim

Maybe you're right .....Maybe we have nothing to worry about ......Time will tell .... Jim


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## johnhamilton (May 12, 2011)

tbh I dont care about thunderbolt, I can wait while I transfer stuff over, I just want SSD's to become BIGGER and CHEAPER it's been 2 years now!! Come on!
60GB SSD for the same price as a 1TB HDD?

no thanks.


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## midphase (May 12, 2011)

SSD is hampered by factories being able to crank out enough memory. Guess who their biggest hoarder of chips is? Yup...Apple due to the iPhones and iPods.

The supply can't keep up with demand which means two things...high prices are here to stay, and chances are 1tb and up SSD's are still ways away.


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## Walra48 (May 12, 2011)

I agree with Kays - there's nothing malicious about Apple's actions here. This is new technology - it will take some time to work out all the implementation details. TB & affordable SSDs will come to us all - it's just not quite there yet.


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## JT3_Jon (May 12, 2011)

johnhamilton @ Thu May 12 said:


> Before anyone gets excited over the Thunderbolt, please realise that with this being new technology now released it will still be some time yet before third party hardware designers implement the Thunderbolt port into their products!
> 
> I call WD to do it first.



They better roll something out quick: http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10549


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## midphase (May 13, 2011)

Here's a new article on the availability (or lack of) TB peripherals:

http://www.macworld.com/article/159878/ ... rbolt.html


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## JT3_Jon (May 13, 2011)

Another article about the restricted HD upgrades in imacs, this one from OWC: http://blog.macsales.com/10146-apple-fu ... -new-imacs

btw, if these imacs are quiet, they could be a cool way to add an additional monitor! In theory you could run the imac as an additional monitor for your DAW, while in the background it doubles as a sample slave. Why spend $999 on just an apple 27-inch display, when for $1699 you get a sample slave too!


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## synthnut (May 14, 2011)

JT3_Jon,

I have an older iMac (3.06) 24" monitor and I LOVE the monitor ...... Your suggestion is good !!...
My only hope would be that both channels of Thunderbolt are bootable ....I'd like to know if anyone can figure a way to bypass the internal HD completely and use the Thunderbolt system to boot and run from .....New technology is good but Apple has been known to come out with new technology and leave the old technology behind ....I still have my Kensignton ball mouse that I paid a good buck for YEARS ago that I can't use anymore ...It sits on a shelf with a very expensice graphics tablet !!..... New connections, new ram , new HD's , ..... Now all we need is new money !!....Jim


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## midphase (Jun 10, 2011)

Further proof that my next Mac Pro might be an iMac:

http://www.macworld.com/article/160469/ ... c2011.html


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## gsilbers (Jun 10, 2011)

damn! 

i guess if you have a slave machine handling a samples for a very heavy template then why not. 

and if you build a track from scratch depending on what you need then it should do it. 
streaming samples from thunderbolt on a big ass SDD drive. 

also, if VEP comes out with a way to use thunderbolt instead of ethernet 
and audio interfaces start also using thunderbolt then that would be the best! 

btw.. how cheesy is the name thunderbolt?!? 
maybe TBI (thunder bolt interface)
or TB.


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## Dracarys (Jun 10, 2011)

midphase @ Tue May 03 said:


> Some comparison shopping:
> 
> iMac with i7 running at 3.4ghz, and graphics card upgrade: $2,299.00
> 
> ...




You're better off over clocking safely and cooling properly. You won't notice a diff while composing.


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## gsilbers (Jun 10, 2011)

midphase @ Tue May 03 said:


> Some comparison shopping:
> 
> iMac with i7 running at 3.4ghz, and graphics card upgrade: $2,299.00
> 
> ...



actually, i7 and nahalem are pretty much the same thing except for a few things. 

nehalem can suport ecc ram which imo not that of an issue with samples.

nehalem can couple with another one to make 8 core which u still cannot do with i7. 

nehalem is a type of i7 intel 

also, dunno why u would want a G card upgrade as the ones that come with mac aare usually pretty good and you are not doing high end graphic work that u need motion to be very acurate. 

also, a 3ghz is pretty quick. 
btw i dont think u can overclock a mac or imac. 


here is more about i7 vs nahalem
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=54268

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_i7


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