MacBook Pro 2012 vs iMac 2017

Hi everyone,

I have the opportunity to trade my:

MacBook Pro i7 (3rd gen) quad core 2012 with 16GB ram

with

iMac 21.5 i5 (7th gen) dual core 2017 with 32GB ram

Do you think this iMac will be better in running Logic? I know that i7 is generally better but double amount of ram...

From this comparison with can see that the iMac is better in single core benchmark but worse in multi core: https://everymac.com/ultimate-mac-comparison-chart/?compare=all-intel-macs&highlight=0&prod1=MacBookPro059&prod2=iMacIntel069&prod3=iMacIntel003

Yeah, you wanna avoid dual-cores.

Logic likes more cores.

Personally I would upgrade to a machine that is better on both scores, single and multi-thread.

Do you use a lot of 3rd party stuff?

Yeah, you wanna avoid dual-cores.

Logic likes more cores.

Personally I would upgrade to a machine that is better on both scores, single and multi-thread.

Do you use a lot of 3rd party stuff?

Yes, Kontakt 6, usually one per instrument with about 20 tracks per project when I compose.

A lot of plugins like Waves, Plugin Alliance and similar when I mix/mastering. But in this case I work with audio tracks only.

Logic does work better the more threads you throw at it, which becomes even more important the higher the track count. Well, straight audio and sample streaming relies on hard drive speed, so SSDs are better there, it's also just as important for sample libraries. More memory is also definitely more beneficial there.

Once you start processing the audio or using instrument plugins then that's when the extra CPU speed and higher number of cores and threads become important. Logic looks at each channel strip like as a "single block" of processing commands and so will allocate that block to one of the threads, but it can't split them up as that would cause latency issues. Logic sees keeping latency to a minimum as a high priority, because people track through it, so this kind of approach is very important. Logic does have one of the lowest latencies around too.

So more specifically, the more Kontakt instruments you use in one project, the faster the hard driven and the more memory you will need ideally. But you also will want a faster CPU with more cores/threads, which will also be an advantage when you start processing your tracks with Waves and or Plugin Alliance plugins.