iMac or MacPro for graphics/animation?

[nimwe]

For graphics and animation work, mainly using Photoshop and Poser, I'm curious about the practical difference between a high-end iMac, like the quad core model, versus a MacPro. Is the major difference between the two builds just the case of the graphics card being built in with the iMac, while the graphics card or cards are separate in the MacPro? If so, how does that impact performance, especially for big Poser projects?

Any thoughts? I'm trying to decide which system I need. Thanks.

[crzy8sal]

The quad-core iMac, especially the i7 is very close to the performance of the current Mac Pro in many tests. Wether there will be a big difference depends entirely on how you'd use the Mac Pro.

If you'd use a Mac Pro with a single drive and the same amount of ram as the iMac, it probably won't matter much. However, using one drive for the OS and another for data that's being processed would make it snappier when working with very large files. Also, when doing things such as encoding video and rendering 3d graphics it'll be faster as it has more cores, and most pro-apps support quad-core processing. (I'm not sure if Poser does, but it probably does)

In everyday usage the iMac will probably be snappier as the processor can increase in clock speed when you're not utilizing all cores.

The biggest difference is the fact that you can have up to 4 internal drives in the Mac Pro. If you actually use all these and say, set up a RAID, you'll have faster performance than the iMac. If you don't, it'll be very close.

Right now the iMac is better value, especially considering the amazing 27" screen.

[nimwe]

Thanks, that helps a lot. I too love the looks of that 27" screen... it's almost as big as a real canvas, and I'm thinking it would be very useful for doing detailed work on a large project.