iMac

[Anonymous]

I use AC10 which suits me and therefore I have no need to upgrade. I am using a 3 year old 2.66 Core 2 Duo PC with Windows XP Pro, and thinking about switching to Mac. There are lots of posts dealing with using AC11 or 12 on an Apple Imac, but I wonder if anyone has any experience of AC10 on Imac? I am looking at buying the 24 inch 2.66, Geforce 9400M Imac and my question is: will it work?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[David Larrew]

I have a few clients that have been using iMacs with AC10, 11, and 12 without any major issues. Just remember that you have hardware upgrade limitations with iMacs, so if you do plan to upgrade to more demanding software (64 bit) sooner rather than later you will have issues.

[Karl Ottenstein]

David wrote:
I have a few clients that have been using iMacs with AC10, 11, and 12 without any major issues. Just remember that you have hardware upgrade limitations with iMacs, so if you do plan to upgrade to more demanding software (64 bit) sooner rather than later you will have issues.

As far as 64-bit, the current iMac can have up to 8 GB of 1066MHz memory, which would likely be enough for most uses. ArchiCAD cannot use more then 4 GB today (still 32 bit on Mac), but if you are running two ArchiCAD sessions, and/or other applications, you could utilize the additional memory.

Only one hard drive bay, and no eSata ports limit hard disk expansion - but certainly adequate for a workstation I think.

Cheers,
Karl

[Anonymous]

Thank you, David and Karl.
I won't need any expansion capability as I will retire using AC10! And I only work with small projects, so demand on computer resources is not great. Imac it is ,then.
Thanks again,
Glenn Curran

[Anonymous]

We've been using iMacs for a while and I can't imagine changing now... We keep the project files on a local network file server now but before that I used an external USB RAID drive for storage... I like that set up for a variety of reasons.... Actually, the files are still on that RAID just now attached to a mac mini acting as a server...

[owen]

I can also recommend the iMac as an ArchiCAD workstation .. from the sounds of your type of work you should find it perfect.

8GB RAM will be more than enough for most uses and I wouldn't worry about storage .. the current models get up to a 1TB internal drive which should be more than enough for anyone not producing a lot of large image/video files. External storage is cheap both to expand capacity and for backups (which should be rotated out of the office weekly at the least)

[Anonymous]

Using an iMac right now... 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2GB of ram.

+pablo

[Anonymous]

I am using an imac also. The new 27" quad core to be precise. BUT, I am thinking that is may be overkill for "school" and small freelance drafting / modeling. I am thinking of maybe getting an iMac Mini since the recent refresh just made them comparable to the recently retired 24" iMac.

Has anyone ran AC and any other supporting application Adobe apps. on a mini with out any performance issues?