I'm inclined to say yes but it really depends on what your expectations are. If you want a 5k gaming machine, you are set up for disappointment. For many if not most other tasks, even a lower end model might be more than enough. It really depends on what you are planning to do with your computer.
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1TB Fusion / 24GB SSD
- Thread starter marty1990
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I'm inclined to say yes but it really depends on what your expectations are. If you want a 5k gaming machine, you are set up for disappointment. For many if not most other tasks, even a lower end model might be more than enough. It really depends on what you are planning to do with your computer.
Basically said I just want to have a fast computer where startup of OS X and programs is a matter of seconds. External My Book USB 3.0 8TB I do have already for my backups and most files.
I also would like to install Windows 10 to play GTA 5 Online on the iMac.
You won't be able to run GTA 5 in 5k with decent performance, but should run well in 1440p. If you want to try it in 4k, the M395X would be your best bet, but might be too slow regardless. For lower resolutions (and therefore texture sizes), the M395 or M390 aren't taht much slower.
Windows does benefit from a pure SSD compared to a Fusion Drive, since it will only get HDD speeds otherwise (unless you use an external SSD for Windows). But it runs fine from a HDD as well, it'll just take a little longer to boot. Loading times in GTA don't seem to depend too much upon IO-speed. An SSD will be faster, but not by much. Once the game loaded, there should be very few situations where you'll notice any difference.
But if you plan to switch frequently between OS X and Win 10, the SSD could be worth it because of the faster boot time.
If you are planning to use an external drive anyway, 1 TB SSD is quite excessive in most cases. While the internal SSD is extremely fast, overall file operations always depend on all the involved storage modules. Copying photos from an SD card to a 1.5 GB/s SSD is just as fast as copying to a 200 MB/s HDD.
As for the CPU, it all comes down to what you are planning to do with it. You mentioned starting programs but it depends on what programs these are. For most programs (browser, typical office tasks, almost all games, and so on), you won't get much extra performance from the i7, and starting programs rarely use excessive multi threading.
It's a different story if you frequently do computation heavy stuff, like rendering and encoding videos, then you can expect a performance advantage of around 50%.
But since you asked whether the top specced iMac will be fast enough rather than whether it's overkill: generally, it's quite a fast computer. Ther are some specialized tasks where it won't be the ideal solution and especially the GPU is more on a medium than a top notch level compared to what's on the market. But unless you are expecting stellar gaming performance, I don't think a normal user can be disappointed with the performance of such an iMac.
They speak highly of them because they're all coming from spinning drives. On the other hand, if you typically use an SSD these days, going 'back' to a fusion drive will seem somewhat sluggish.
At this point, fusion drives (which were always a stop gap until SSD prices became more reasonable) are now just another example of Apple semi-crippling their computers in hopes you spring for their insane prices to upgrade to a real SSD - since you can't do the upgrade yourself now, as their computers are almost impossible to upgrade by the end user.
I am not a graphics freak. If GTA, COD etc runs at 5K or 720p doesn't matter for me. I have Windows 10 only for the purpose of gaming but switch between OSX and W10 just few times to play some games for fun.
I also don't do video editing or stuff like that. It's a office machine for me for 99% of the time. I just want decent performance wile playing games.
Someone please help me:
- 3.3GHz QC i7, TB up to 3.8GHz
- Intel Iris Pro Graphics 6200
- 16GB 1867MHz LPDDR3 onboard
- 1TB Fusion Drive
- Apple Magic Mouse
- Apple Num Kybd+User's Guide-B
- COUNTRY KIT-B
That's simply not true. Multiple users in this thread have had machines with both SSD and Fusion drive, and they have commented on almost identical experiences with each.
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...sion-drive-and-ssd-on-latest-imac-27.1934282/
There's always going to be plenty of peaple who just don't care enough to really appreciate the difference between good enough and excellent, that'll always be the case. I'm not saying they're hallucinating, they just don't care enough to really 'notice' it. But there is also a large number of people who experience a definite difference between fusion and SSD, like myself, and I know I'm not hallucinating. On top of that, there's tons of real world testing to back me up.
Well known Apple tech commentator Leo Laporte said this: My experience is that a fusion drive is no where near as fast as a full SSD. Link -
And then there's the fact that a spinning drive (whether it's a full HDD or 'fusion' drive) is significantly less reliable than an SSD. More times than not, the very first thing that fails on any mac will be the spinning drive. But guess what, these iMacs are sealed shut - so what could be an easy replacement/upgrade down the road when the spinning fusion drive fails, instead will mean a trip to the Apple store and a much more costly fix. We all know (and so does Apple) that a lot people will just ditch the old computer at that point and buy a new one.
To lift a phrase from Phil Schiller: Environmentally friendly my ass!
To make matters worse, right now, the 1TB 850 evo is a mere $330, and yet Apple doesn't even offer that size in the 21inch iMac, and they charge $800 for the 1tb SSD upgrade in the 27inch!!! They give you a less reliable, less repairable mac, and then completely rip us off by asking for those insane upgrade prices up front.
The fusion drive will soon be a relic of the past. It would happen sooner except for the fact that Apple still uses it to rip us off, and enough people like you can't appreciate the difference so they'll continue to do so.
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I guess that's me. I like the idea of having gobs of storage (I have the 2TB Fusion), and most of what I store is on the spinning drive, and what I use the most ends up on the flash portion. I'm happy with this, because it saves me from spending an outrageous amount of money for a 1TB SSD, or getting a smaller SSD and then needing to deal with external drives.
Meh, comments like this don't make sense. Of course it will be a relic of the past, All technology will, at some point and people have been proclaiming this for the hard drive for years and while I do think the days are numbered for hard drive. Their end has not yet arrived.
There are also those who can't differentiate between needs and wants. Maybe always will be.
My wife uses a 2013 MBP with SSD. It tops out at about 400MB/s read and write. There is little real world difference between how her MBP feels and my 1TB Fusion drive iMac.
You really "need" your iMac?
Think about how silly your comment is for a second.
Most things in the world today are not really "needs".....
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Well, i have 2gigs of storage as well, and its all SSD. Cost me $650 for two 850 evo's, but its a one time purchase and now i'm set. Thats why i said fusion drives will soon be obsolete, because it wont be long before the prices are so low that no one in their right mind wouldnt just buy a full bore SSD drive
LOL! You nailed it. Hes spending $2000 on a computer, but then says its ok to get chincy on the single part that is most likely to fail: his spinning fusion drive.You really "need" your iMac?
Think about how silly your comment is for a second.
Most things in the world today are not really "needs".....
You really "need" your iMac?
Think about how silly your comment is for a second.
Most things in the world today are not really "needs".....
For my work? Yes, I need my computer. Absolutely.
A hard drive is no more likely to fail than other components (GPU, PSU, CPU, Mobo). Drives that last through the first year are likely to function for six, seven, eight, ten, years without incident.
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That's just flat our wrong. If you have a spinning drive, that is by far much more likely to fail than your cpu, gpu or anything else you mentioned.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/131168/article.html
I honestly think the only reason you feel the need to defend fusion drives is that your stuck with one of them inside your otherwise awsesome computer and you dont want to accept the fact that its a compromised technology.
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Yup, 2%-3%. You didn't have to tell me. I educate myself before posting publicly on the Internet for the entire world to see.
What you have here, is what we call confirmation bias.
You didn't take any time to look up any data on GPU failure rates (1%-3%), CPU failure rates (0.5%), Mobo (1%-3%), and PSU failure rates (1%-3%). If you had taken the time to educate yourself, you would have found that none of these components is by far more likely to fail. The numbers all appear to be fairly close.
Wow, so much bickering in this thread. I can't believe people are actually justifying apple including a 24GB SSD as opposed to a 128GB one (one person even said it was an upgrade!).
IMO the fusion drive is just not a necessary thing. It's like having an auto setting - with a little management, you can achieve a better performing system. I don't have a "fusion" but my 2011 iMac has both SSD and HDD. OS X is installed to the SSD. In my user folder, Documents, Music, Downloads, etc are symlinked to the HDD. Therefore everything that really affects performance is on the SSD, anything that doesn't, isn't (accessing a word document from the HDD vs SSD is going to have very little difference, opening word from both, however, will).
I had a fusion drive at the office (it was a 128GB one though), and while it seems fast, I found it was still accessing the hard drive for most things, which means you always get a slowdown.
TLDR: fusion drive isn't bad, but you can achieve better performance with little effort. Good for basic/non techs users. Apple needs to stop being tight with 24GB (what even is that).
IMO the fusion drive is just not a necessary thing. It's like having an auto setting - with a little management, you can achieve a better performing system. I don't have a "fusion" but my 2011 iMac has both SSD and HDD. OS X is installed to the SSD. In my user folder, Documents, Music, Downloads, etc are symlinked to the HDD. Therefore everything that really affects performance is on the SSD, anything that doesn't, isn't (accessing a word document from the HDD vs SSD is going to have very little difference, opening word from both, however, will).
I had a fusion drive at the office (it was a 128GB one though), and while it seems fast, I found it was still accessing the hard drive for most things, which means you always get a slowdown.
TLDR: fusion drive isn't bad, but you can achieve better performance with little effort. Good for basic/non techs users. Apple needs to stop being tight with 24GB (what even is that).
Yeah, I'm kind of baffled by this as well. We call this addition through subtraction at my work. Basically Apple too away storage and said its
actually better.
I'm happy with the Fusion drive as its stands. True I can split it up, but I feel no compelling reason t
(links below)
You can buy a SAMSUNG 850 EVO 500 GB SSD for less than $150 and an enclosure from Inateck for less than $20. Use it as your main drive and the fusion as your backup. Add in 32 GB memory for around $125 and you have a decent machine that cost a lot less than upgrading through apple. And adorama has the 2nd tier (late 2015) imac's for $1749 today. That is $250 off.
You end up with something like this for $1749:
Samsung ssd $149
ext enclosure supports UASP $16.99
32 GB memory $124
ending up with this for around $2039 :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147373
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00V7L8P08/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A2QGX098CVHYJ7
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2015-imac-compatible-memory-66-39-for-2x8gb-modules.1930096/
You can buy a SAMSUNG 850 EVO 500 GB SSD for less than $150 and an enclosure from Inateck for less than $20. Use it as your main drive and the fusion as your backup. Add in 32 GB memory for around $125 and you have a decent machine that cost a lot less than upgrading through apple. And adorama has the 2nd tier (late 2015) imac's for $1749 today. That is $250 off.
You end up with something like this for $1749:
- 27" Retina 5K IPS Display
- 5120 x 2880 Screen Resolution
- 3.2 GHz Intel Core i5 (Skylake)
- 8GB of 1867 MHz DDR3 RAM
- 1TB Fusion Drive
- AMD Radeon R9 M390 GPU (2GB GDDR5)
- 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0
- Thunderbolt 2 + USB 3.0
- Magic Keyboard & Magic Mouse 2 Included
- Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan
Samsung ssd $149
ext enclosure supports UASP $16.99
32 GB memory $124
ending up with this for around $2039 :
- 27" Retina 5K IPS Display
- 5120 x 2880 Screen Resolution
- 3.2 GHz Intel Core i5 (Skylake)
- 32GB of 1867 MHz DDR3 RAM
- 512 Samsung SSD and 1TB Fusion Drive
- AMD Radeon R9 M390 GPU (2GB GDDR5)
- 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0
- Thunderbolt 2 + USB 3.0
- Magic Keyboard & Magic Mouse 2 Included
- Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147373
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00V7L8P08/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A2QGX098CVHYJ7
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2015-imac-compatible-memory-66-39-for-2x8gb-modules.1930096/
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confirmation bias, you bet. keep defending that pathetic spinning drive technology from 1979 all you want.
Just a FYI. I just purchased the $1999 5K and I found that the SSD on the 1TB Fusion is actually 32GB with 8GB taken up by El Capitan. The real interesting part is that this particular SSD also has NVM Express as where the SSD in the 2 or 3TB Fusion does not. Check it out for yourselves as I was shocked. My hunch is Apple did this to compensate for power. Any thoughts?
Where are you looking that you are seeing this? The Fusion drive appears in Finder as one, large drive and you can't tell where the OS is installed as fas as which physical drive it is on.