IMac 21.5 8gb vs 16gb fusion drive ? So I'm about to buy the iMac 21.5, I use lightroom, itunes, google play...no photoshop. The boot time with the fusion drive is impressive..is...

Paayl96 Loc: Boston

So I'm about to buy the iMac 21.5, I use lightroom, itunes, google play...no photoshop.

The boot time with the fusion drive is impressive..is there a down side to a fusion drive ? (only $200 upgrade)

would you pay $200 for the 16gb RAM vs the standard 8gb,
I do not think I need the 16gb now but in 5 years will I be sorry I did not spend the extra $200 ?

What do you guys think.........thanks

minniev Loc: MIssissippi

Paayl96 wrote:

So I'm about to buy the iMac 21.5, I use lightroom, itunes, google play...no photoshop.

The boot time with the fusion drive is impressive..is there a down side to a fusion drive ? (only $200 upgrade)

would you pay $200 for the 16gb RAM vs the standard 8gb,
I do not think I need the 16gb now but in 5 years will I be sorry I did not spend the extra $200 ?

What do you guys think.........thanks

My Mac mini with fusion drive and 16 gb runs lightroom about 10 times faster than my other mac with 8 gb and no fusion drive. I am not sure whether the increase is from one or both things or the fact that it a year newer model. I maxed it out to prepare for use over several years. I have a very large catalog and all photos are on an external hard drive. My advice is to spend now. Macs are not nearly as easy to upgrade as they used to be. I once could order a ram module, unscrew the little access door and pop it right in. Not so simple now.

LaurenT Loc: Northern California

minniev wrote:

My Mac mini with fusion drive and 16 gb runs light... (show quote)

I agree whole heartedly, you are MUCH better off spending the $200.00 now, and not having to worry about it in a few years. Many of the new Mac's are flash drive memory, and cannot be upgraded at all.

f8lee Loc: New Mexico

Of the two options, given that you don't plan on using Photoshop (which uses a lot of disk swaps when processing large images) you may be better off getting the RAM upgrade instead - as you have seen, this can speed up programs, particularly when you have a number of them open simultaneously.

jethro779 Loc: Tucson, AZ

Paayl96 wrote:

So I'm about to buy the iMac 21.5, I use lightroom, itunes, google play...no photoshop.

The boot time with the fusion drive is impressive..is there a down side to a fusion drive ? (only $200 upgrade)

would you pay $200 for the 16gb RAM vs the standard 8gb,
I do not think I need the 16gb now but in 5 years will I be sorry I did not spend the extra $200 ?

What do you guys think.........thanks

Get all the ram you can. In the long run it pays for itself in the ease of editing. Some of the photo editing programs are memory hogs and 16 is much better than 8.

BHC Loc: Strawberry Valley, JF, USA

Paayl96 wrote:

So I'm about to buy the iMac 21.5, I use lightroom, itunes, google play...no photoshop.

The boot time with the fusion drive is impressive..is there a down side to a fusion drive ? (only $200 upgrade)

would you pay $200 for the 16gb RAM vs the standard 8gb,
I do not think I need the 16gb now but in 5 years will I be sorry I did not spend the extra $200 ?

What do you guys think.........thanks

Check to see how much it would cost for a compatible 8 gb upgrade from an Apple authorized repair shop.

queencitysanta Loc: Charlotte, North Carolina

Fusion drive and all the memory you can run

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Paayl96 wrote:

So I'm about to buy the iMac 21.5, I use lightroom, itunes, google play...no photoshop.

The boot time with the fusion drive is impressive..is there a down side to a fusion drive ? (only $200 upgrade)

would you pay $200 for the 16gb RAM vs the standard 8gb,
I do not think I need the 16gb now but in 5 years will I be sorry I did not spend the extra $200 ?

What do you guys think.........thanks

I don't understand. Apple says, "Fusion Drive combines a high-capacity hard drive with high-performance flash storage..."

So this is a mechanical drive with flash memory? Isn't all memory flash?

Whatever it is, I always like to get lots of HD and lots of RAM, at least 16GB.

Alfresco

Fusion is a combination flash drive and mechanical drive, the flash portion is 128 GB, the remainder is in conventional storage. Memory and storage are not the same, memory is what we refers to as RAM, random access memory, the more the better. I just purchased a 27" iMac with a 256 GB of flash storage, as all of my photos reside on an external hard drive and my programs reside on the flash drive, verrrry fast.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Alfresco wrote:

Fusion is a combination flash drive and mechanical drive, the flash portion is 128 GB, the remainder is in conventional storage. Memory and storage are not the same, memory is what we refers to as RAM, random access memory, the more the better. I just purchased a 27" iMac with a 256 GB of flash storage, as all of my photos reside on an external hard drive and my programs reside on the flash drive, verrrry fast.

So the flash storage is used in place of the computer referencing the hard drive for info while a program is running. Is that it?

avengine

I am thinking to get the mini too, but I will replace it with 240g ssd and max out the ram to 16g. and one guy in apple did say wait about 2-3 months until the new model is almost release.
what cpu is the one that you have sound like the speed you get is pretty good too.
thanks.

minniev wrote:

My Mac mini with fusion drive and 16 gb runs light... (show quote)

f8lee Loc: New Mexico

jerryc41 wrote:

So the flash storage is used in place of the computer referencing the hard drive for info while a program is running. Is that it?

In essence, yes - solid state drives (which are variations of memory chips) can access and store data 1000x faster than traditional spinning disk "hard drives", but so-called SSDs are more expensive particularly when you talk about 1TB sizes. So what Apple did was combine both types, SSD and HDD (hard disk drive), in a way that anticipates what data will be accessed most and holds it on the SSD "side" - all of this is invisible to the user, who only sees a single "hard drive" on the desktop.

Alfresco

I'm not understanding your question, but it's probably my explanation where the confusion lies. On my iMac, the flash drive, or SSD, solid state drive, is where all my programs reside. On a fusion drive, it has a smaller SSD, 128 GB with the remainder of the storage in a conventional mechanical drive. My theory is 256 GB is plenty of space for all my programs and my photos reside on external HDs. It took 10 days to have this configuration built to my liking. I maximized the video card, with 4 GB of ram and opted for the faster processor. I was satisfied with 8 GB of RAM and it's easy enough to upgrade to 16 or ever 32 GB of RAM. After three weeks using the system there really isn't anything I would change.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

f8lee wrote:

In essence, yes - solid state drives (which are va... (show quote)

Clever. Before long, we'll have very large SSDs with reasonable prices.

f8lee Loc: New Mexico

jerryc41 wrote:

Clever. Before long, we'll have very large SSDs with reasonable prices.

Well, maybe - certainly, like all other microelectronics, SSDs will drop in price eventually. But the "unspoken truth" about SSDs is that they can fail with use over time, even though there are no moving parts - so it remains to be seen if they will replace HDDs overall.