I was referring to OSX Drivers downloadable from their website, not the stock ones installed with the system software (OSX 10.11.1)
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Gaming on M395X: I'm satisfied
- Thread starter MandiMac
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I was referring to OSX Drivers downloadable from their website, not the stock ones installed with the system software (OSX 10.11.1)
Your question would have made more sense in a Playstation- rather than an iMac-forum
Nowadays, all 27" iMacs come with a 5120*2880 panel (so called 5k). Until recently, they were also available with a 2560*1440 panel.
1920*1080 is pretty much the smallest you can get for any computer except laptops, there are even some mobile devices that are exceeding this resolution.
So I'm trying to make sense of this thread as I have to replace my iMac, and last year's model was extremely disappointing and ran very hot.
Is this a quick and accurate summary of things: the i5 runs cooler, so get that one (but what speed, 3.2 GHZ? 3.3?); the M395X graphics card is the one to get; best to get the flash storage and not a fusion drive. Does that pretty much sum up people's findings here? I've seen people say the i7 is what is making things run so hot... Any advice would be appreciated.
Is this a quick and accurate summary of things: the i5 runs cooler, so get that one (but what speed, 3.2 GHZ? 3.3?); the M395X graphics card is the one to get; best to get the flash storage and not a fusion drive. Does that pretty much sum up people's findings here? I've seen people say the i7 is what is making things run so hot... Any advice would be appreciated.
This years model runs a lot lot cooler, that's the big leap this year. Small speed increase, big temp and electrical use drop.
i5 runs slower, so it's a little misleading. On a task that would crank the i5 up to it's max heat and power, the i7 will only be running around 70% capacity and will be cooler. On a task that is much higher power that brings both chips to max heat, there is some evidence that the i7 will be hotter (which makes sense cuz it's getting far more done). The up side is that the i7 will finish that task much quicker and therefore not be as hot for as long, meanwhile the i5 will be maxed out for a longer period of time. Basically if you are doing average joe type tasks and gaming, then get the i5 and you'll be thrilled. If you're ripping blu rays, doing a ton of lightroom exports, then get the i7.
Yes get the 395 or 395x. You might not need it now but this will be the first thing to become a bottleneck in the future. The will get a few extra fps in games, but it's biggest difference will be when doing video work (extra vram built in for this purpose)
Fusion will be more than fine for most people and hardly noticable on anything short of benchmarks. If you're a professional who is going to be buying external storage anyway? Get the ssd. If you're a normal guy who never plans on needing more than 3 tb of storage in a hundred lifetimes, then no problem getting the fusion drive.
I'd like to know this as well.
I've been using nVidia GFX cards for ages now so I've been very reluctant with the switch to AMD. Their catalyst software is (in terms of UI) pretty bad for my experience. I can't even download official drivers for M395X... WTF?!
...you wish they'd make a larger Mac Pro that could actually *be* the self contained professional machine it used to be instead of the "hub" of wire & power adapter spaghetti all over the place.
:-(
iemcj, thanks for all of that. That's incredibly helpful to me.
I don't do video editing, and my gaming is pretty much MMO stuff -- World of Warcraft, Diablo, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2 (the latter two in Windows via Bootcamp) -- nothing like the heavy hitter photorealism games out there.
I got last year's model, but WoW running at the previous resolution (1440) was horribly bad (the scaling made everything blurry); running it at the highest resolution was great but ran up the temperatures on the CPU to 100+ C, so I returned it. Still chugging along on my 2012 27" iMac and things run fine, but I want to upgrade and I really don't want to have to go back to a PC to do it; I prefer to stay on a Mac to do the things I want to do. I'm glad to see the heat issues aren't as bad as they were.
No prob, I'd recommend doing the 395x graphics card and the i5 processor. No real reason to spend more on a cpu that'll never a bottleneck for ya. And you may not need the ssd, the price to performance difference on most tax is tiny haha.
Last year's model is one of the best desktop computers ever produced, so I'm sorry you find it disappointing (even though the new ones are, surprise surprise, better). Mine runs cooler than my previous iMac and my MacBook Pro, so, I guess it depends on what you consider 'very hot'.
If you can afford it, sure, but the Fusion Drive (2Gb/3Gb version) is really good. In my opinion a FD beats a 256Gb SSD, but others here would disagree. If you can get a 512Gb or larger SSD, then get that, for sure.
They future proofed it more. Again, most professionals use external raid storage systems anyway, having a thunderbolt cable hooked up to that is hardly spagetti. Think of it more as a regular stand alone pc unit that you set on the floor, don't think of it as an imac with no screen haha.
As I mentioned above, the late 2014 model was climbing above 100º C according to iStat and one other app whose name escapes me, and that was just running World of Warcraft which is not a resource-intensive game relatively speaking. To be fair, shortly after I returned mine, many other people here were complaining about heat issues and also the limitations of the graphics chip they'd put in.
Looks like most of the kinks got worked out this year, at least as far as how I want to use it.
aevan said:
I currently have the 3 Gb Fusion Drive in my 2012 iMac. It was mentioned elsewhere in this message thread that a SSD will produce less heat than the standard drive, or so I read; that was why I was asking. Thanks!
The heat difference is pretty small. Might change your max temp by a degree or two but that's about it. I mean it IS a real thing but it's not much.
Wrong.
Extreme generalization of what "professionals" need first off...
It's also not mutually exclusive. You can have a computer that has internal expansion and upgradability AND can tie into external solutions. Options are the main things professionals like to have.
Your face is wrong. Buuuuuuurn.
And sigh, no need to get nit picky, professionals is obviously a generic term . The macpro is built for a very specific crowd, mainly guys who do intense video and cgi work. That is their main target market. And those guys need TONS of storage space and they already have external storage systems. THAT is the ideal system for most professional photo and video guys, having a fast ssd onboard and easily expandable external storage that is constantly backed up. It was logical by apple to work within that tried and true system. You can complain but that's the reality, it's designed to excel at a certain task and to this day does so quite well. If you don't like it then you're clearly not the target demographic lol. Those guys don't care about internal expansion as much cuz that doesn't fit their workflow, I feel like I'm explaining this multiple times?
It's not "options" that they want, it's the RIGHT option. We don't care if there's 80 options or 1, as long as that 1 option is what will work for us best then that's what counts. The mac pro is a very purpose built machine, the imac is a bit more broad.
You just made my point - There are more professionals in the world than "photo and video". Different strokes for different folks for sure.
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Indeed. I DID however state that was who I was talking about. Apple was pretty open about who it was designed for. Some computers are designed for budget concious people who are just going to surf the web and maybe watch a youtube video once in a while. Some are designed for gamers. Some are designed for videoographers (mac pro).
That was it's purpose. So please don't be nit picky and take exception to a single sentence when you knew full well the context that it was meant in. This is a place of good tidings and happiness, no need to be "that guy" right?
I guess I missed that at some point.
Where does it say the Mac Pro is meant for videographers?
no need to be "that guy" right?
Really no need for this - let's stay on subject and not try to be a forum nanny.
No worries. It's pretty apparent it's target market, when you have a dual processor machine, half a dozen cores, multiple ethernet ports, a crap ton of usb and thunderbolt ports, it's quite apparent that it's designed for creative professionals (mainly videographers) and engineers (guys who need to do high level renders and calucations, working with 3d animation design, cad work, that sorta thing.) Not sure if apple has openly stated "hey guyz, this is for video folks" but just based on what it is, they knew full well it was for them. A normal person doesn't need that level of cpu or graphical power, it's not designed for gaming framerates, it's a workhorse.
It's designed to be the center piece of your setup, it's designed to be an engine that people can build their own custom bodies around. Some guys really only need 1-3 tb of data, some need 20+. So rather than build a giant "tower" setup, apple decided to make a smaller unit and let people do their own design around it. That IS the ultimate flexibility. Not sure why you're taking such a interest in this topic?
It's designed to be the center piece of your setup, it's designed to be an engine that people can build their own custom bodies around. Some guys really only need 1-3 tb of data, some need 20+. So rather than build a giant "tower" setup, apple decided to make a smaller unit and let people do their own design around it. That IS the ultimate flexibility. Not sure why you're taking such a interest in this topic?
Hmm - by your logic, literally anything can be "the ultimate flexibility" it sounds like. Lol
Bottom line. Simply no reason to not offer a tower with both internal and external flexibility as opposed to just external. As you mentioned, pros like options, inside and out.
Don't worry about it. Remember the "don't be a nanny" thing?
It seems you're missing the point. To make it have this rare power of tons of outside AND internal customization, it would need to be bigger. Therefore the people who need that horsepower but don't need a ton of extra storage would be forced to work with a larger unit than they would like. They could have went in this direction but instead what they decided was "we will make it smaller and more of the core parts that the majority of creative professionals and engineers will all need. Those who need to add on stuff externally are free to do so without making everyone else get a larger unit."
Woulda been nice to have two options, one a larger model that has more internal slots for storage, and one at the normal size. Not disagreeing on that. But Apples philosophy has always been "keep it as simple as possible" so this was the logical decision to address all needs.
I'm completely able to ask that question. You're for some reason really wanting to argue about this being bad. Surely you're not just being a contrarian just out of boredom so I'm legitimately wondering why you're so focused on this.
just tested my own iMac 27 with i7 395x DOTA 2:
i'm happy!
- 2560x1440 All settings maxed out -> 50-70FPS
- 5120x2880 All settings maxed out -> steady! 30FPS
i'm happy!
Obviously, I don't sit in total silence. I just don't like "noisy" devices
It's one of the reasons I love SSD drives...
I have tested Witcher 2 with steam last night. I have tried:
What do you think?
- 1920x1080 Ultra settings, windowed mode.
- Loaded really fast but unplayable. A lot of lagging in player movement
- 1920x1080 High settings, windowed mode.
- Loaded really fast but unplayable. A lot of lagging in player movement
- 1920x1080 High settings, Fullscreen mode.
- Loaded really fast. Smooth player movement up to 62fps
- 1920x1080 Ultra settings, Fullscreen mode.
- Loaded really fast. Smooth player movement up to 42fps
What do you think?
As a Warcraft player, we've been used to this since El Capitan dropped... there is something in El Capitan that is now preventing us from playing WoW in Windowed Fullscreen mode where we were able to all the way up through Yosemite (and it's an issue even known to the WoW developers, who can't offer any solutions at this time.) I'm not surprised it's not just limited to Blizzard games.