i7-8700 anyone?

[Bohemien]

Did anyone get the 21.5" iMac with the i7-8700? Could you maybe provide a Cinebench R20 score and report on how loud and hot the machine gets during the test?

Thanks!!

 

[tyc0746]

I bought the above, but it’s still in the box until I get back tomorrow. Will do some benchmarks tomorrow if no one else has replied.

 

[cag6]

Hi.

Just got mine, i7 16gb 560x and 512gb ssd and the result was 3167. The fans started spinning halfway the test and were noticeable but not extremely loud, I think they were somewhere near the mid 30s dB.

 

[macduke]

Hi.

Just got mine, i7 16gb 560x and 512gb ssd and the result was 3167. The fans started spinning halfway the test and were noticeable but not extremely loud, I think they were somewhere near the mid 30s dB.

So about 3/4 the score of my i9 with a little more fan noise. Interesting. I'd have probably gone with this on the 27" if it was available to save some money but there was no i7 option. If I had to do it all over again I doubt I would have gone with the Vega 48 as well.

 

[SkiHound2]

To my mind the 21.5" iMacs only seem like a good alternative if 1) you don't have space for the 27", or 2) your needs are modest and something like the i3 with fusion or 256gb SSD are sufficient. They'd be more attractive if you could add ram. But the prices get uncomfortably close to the 27" when you add some memory and storage options.
[doublepost=1554398326][/doublepost]

So about 3/4 the score of my i9 with a little more fan noise. Interesting. I'd have probably gone with this on the 27" if it was available to save some money but there was no i7 option. If I had to do it all over again I doubt I would have gone with the Vega 48 as well.

Why would you skip the Vega? I'm still debating just what to order. Leaning pretty heavily toward the 9600k / 580x option with an SSD. I certainly think it would more than meet my needs now. Wondering if I might regret not opting for i9 or Vega at some point in the future..

 

[Bohemien]

View attachment 830287 I bought the above, but it’s still in the box until I get back tomorrow. Will do some benchmarks tomorrow if no one else has replied.

Please do-as cag6 kindly posted his experience from the i7/560X combo I'd find it interesting to hear your findings with the Vega 20, please also tell us about fan noise in that configuration.

So about 3/4 the score of my i9 with a little more fan noise. Interesting. I'd have probably gone with this on the 27" if it was available to save some money but there was no i7 option. If I had to do it all over again I doubt I would have gone with the Vega 48 as well.

Same here-judging from this and the Geekbench scores, this i7 sits nicely between the i5-9600K and the i9, with the benefit of low TDP.

I'd also be interested to hear why you would skip the Vega? At the moment I'm trying to decide between a maxed-out 21.5" (i7, Vega 20, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD) and the 27", most probably with the i9, 8GB RAM (update myself to 40GB), 1 TB SSD and either the 580X or the Vega. Plan to use it for the next 8-10 years (currently still working on a 2011 17" MBP which does just fine, but I'd love the bigger screen and faster RAW processing of the new machines).

But the prices get uncomfortably close to the 27" when you add some memory and storage options.

Depends:

(1) 21.5", i7, Vega 20, 16GB RAM, 1 TB SSD - 3439€
(2) 27", i9, Vega 48, 8GB RAM, 1 TB SSD - 4219€, if I add 32GB RAM: approx. 4400€

So yes, the 21.5" with i7 is in the (high) price range of the 27" models, but still ca. 1000€ cheaper than the i9 configuration I'd be looking at. Sure, that one has a faster CPU (with the i7 being no slouch apparently), a much faster GPU, much more RAM (with the option of going even higher) and a nice big screen...

Wondering if I might regret not opting for i9 or Vega at some point in the future..

Yep, that's my dilemma too... as I intend to use the iMac for a couple of years, I'd definitely go with the i9 from what I've read so far. The performance gain in tasks like RAW processing or video encoding seems to be so significant I'd say it's worth the extra €€€.

The point I'm really not sure about is the GPU: people write that it will run cooler than the 580X, which would be an argument for me if somebody posted some hard figures (heat and fan speed/noise levels during benchmarks with both GPUs) to support that notion. The maybe 20% performance gain over the 580X is most probably not relevant for me, as my gaming rig sits under my TV.

Too bad almost all testers from PC magazines or Youtube so far seem to have the i9/Vega combination only.

 

[kaintxu]

So about 3/4 the score of my i9 with a little more fan noise. Interesting. I'd have probably gone with this on the 27" if it was available to save some money but there was no i7 option. If I had to do it all over again I doubt I would have gone with the Vega 48 as well.

could you give more reasons why you would have avoided the vega 48. Just there trying to decide wether to get it or not

 

[macduke]

To my mind the 21.5" iMacs only seem like a good alternative if 1) you don't have space for the 27", or 2) your needs are modest and something like the i3 with fusion or 256gb SSD are sufficient. They'd be more attractive if you could add ram. But the prices get uncomfortably close to the 27" when you add some memory and storage options.
[doublepost=1554398326][/doublepost]

Why would you skip the Vega? I'm still debating just what to order. Leaning pretty heavily toward the 9600k / 580x option with an SSD. I certainly think it would more than meet my needs now. Wondering if I might regret not opting for i9 or Vega at some point in the future..

Well I'm probably going to have to end up adding an eGPU anyway because I'd like to be able to run modern games at 60fps with decent settings. But actually right after I wrote this I kind of changed my tune about being disappointed. People had been posting 580X vs Vega 48 specs from somewhere online, probably for PC. Not sure where they were getting that info but the difference seemed small. Then I finally saw someone's benchmark of the 580X in the iMac and it was nowhere near the Vega 48. I think it was Unigine Heaven 4.0 on Extreme and the Vega 48 scored like 1700 something on Mac and nearly 1900 on Windows and the 580X scored around 1100 on Mac and there wasn't a Windows score. So that was kinda eye opening. It's important to compare iMac to iMac instead of PC to PC when looking up charts because the iMac is more thermally constrained. I also imagine the Vega 48 would probably work better with a Vega 64 or Radeon VII eGPU since they share the same foundation, and at the very least the Vega 48 will give an extra boost when working in tandem. So yeah, kinda swinging my opinion back the other way. It's hard to tell because I haven't been able to do much testing this week on mine because my wife and two little kids have been very sick so I've been taking care of them a lot while trying to catch up on work so I pop in here on my phone or while taking a break from work to see what's going on.
[doublepost=1554408548][/doublepost]

I'd also be interested to hear why you would skip the Vega? At the moment I'm trying to decide between a maxed-out 21.5" (i7, Vega 20, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD) and the 27", most probably with the i9, 8GB RAM (update myself to 40GB), 1 TB SSD and either the 580X or the Vega. Plan to use it for the next 8-10 years (currently still working on a 2011 17" MBP which does just fine, but I'd love the bigger screen and faster RAW processing of the new machines).

See above.
[doublepost=1554408703][/doublepost]

could you give more reasons why you would have avoided the vega 48. Just there trying to decide wether to get it or not

See above.

 

[Bohemien]

I think it was Unigine Heaven 4.0 on Extreme and the Vega 48 scored like 1700 something on Mac and nearly 1900 on Windows and the 580X scored around 1100 on Mac and there wasn't a Windows score.

I just ran the Heaven benchmark on my 2011 MBP, reaching a whopping 4.3 FPS and a score of 108. So I guess whichever iMac I'll get, I'm gonna be blown away by the speed.

 

[macduke]

I just ran the Heaven benchmark on my 2011 MBP, reaching a whopping 4.3 FPS and a score of 108. So I guess whichever iMac I'll get, I'm gonna be blown away by the speed.

Yeah it's pretty fast. It seems slower when you're comparing gaming specs against Nvidia GPUs on Windows. But even on medium settings at 1440p the games still look quite good. It is quite a bit faster than the Xbox One X, the most powerful console, though developers usually tune games more for consoles so it's difficult to directly compare.

As for processing, the only thing that has made it stutter and freeze up for a little bit so far is loading a 150,000x150,000px 22.5GP image in Photoshop. I just wanted to see how far I could push it. Was heavily using the SSD since I think it ran out of memory since I only have 40GB. This is not my normal workflow, I just wanted to kick it in the ass to see what it was made of. After it was loaded in it seemed usable, but when rendering a massive oak tree, something went weird at the end as it was finishing the trunk. I think 64GB of RAM would probably fix the problem, but it might have just been Photoshop crapping the bed.

 

[kaintxu]

Well I'm probably going to have to end up adding an eGPU anyway because I'd like to be able to run modern games at 60fps with decent settings. But actually right after I wrote this I kind of changed my tune about being disappointed. People had been posting 580X vs Vega 48 specs from somewhere online, probably for PC. Not sure where they were getting that info but the difference seemed small. Then I finally saw someone's benchmark of the 580X in the iMac and it was nowhere near the Vega 48. I think it was Unigine Heaven 4.0 on Extreme and the Vega 48 scored like 1700 something on Mac and nearly 1900 on Windows and the 580X scored around 1100 on Mac and there wasn't a Windows score. So that was kinda eye opening. It's important to compare iMac to iMac instead of PC to PC when looking up charts because the iMac is more thermally constrained. I also imagine the Vega 48 would probably work better with a Vega 64 or Radeon VII eGPU since they share the same foundation, and at the very least the Vega 48 will give an extra boost when working in tandem. So yeah, kinda swinging my opinion back the other way. It's hard to tell because I haven't been able to do much testing this week on mine because my wife and two little kids have been very sick so I've been taking care of them a lot while trying to catch up on work so I pop in here on my phone or while taking a break from work to see what's going on.

Great info, thanks a lot.

Could you share were you shaw those comparison stats?

Cheers

 

[macduke]

Great info, thanks a lot.

Could you share were you shaw those comparison stats?

Cheers

The PC to PC ones were in various places linked out to a database that I'm not even sure has very good info on the Vega 48 since it showed it as unreleased. But we were talking about the 580X vs Vega 48 in this thread. I found that screenshot off a YouTube video I had googled where someone was testing the Vega 48 because I'm at work and unable to test Unigine. https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/radeon-pro-580x-27-imac-benchmarks.2176361/

 

[Bohemien]

But we were talking about the 580X vs Vega 48 in this thread.

So you got the Vega over the 580X primarily for gaming, right? Would you say getting the Vega would be worth it for photo and (very) occasionally video editing? Thanks a lot!

(I don't use the Mac at all for gaming)

 

[tyc0746]

Just set mine up, and ran some benchmarks
(for comparison the numbers in brackets are from my 15,1 late 2014 27" iMac 5k with 4-core i7 4790 @ 4ghz and R9 M295X)

All run on their default settings.

Cinebench R20
3228 (1892)
Fans ramped up for the last 4 squares in this benchmark (ramped up with 50% left on the older iMac)

Unigine Heaven
Render:OpenGL, Mode:2048x1152 (2560x1440) Fullscreen, Preset:Custom, Quality:Medium, Tessellation: Disabled
FPS 62.9 (30.9)
Score 1583 (778)
Min FPS 45.8 (19.7)
Mac FPS 113.5 (58.1)
Max temp 65ºc (105ºc)

Unigine Valley
Render:OpenGL, Mode:2048x1152 (2560x1440) 4xAA Fullscreen, Preset:Custom, Quality:High
FPS 47.5 (20.3)
Score 1989 (849)
Min FPS 28.3 (11.6)
Mac FPS 77.8 (38.2)
Max temp 64ºc (106ºc)

Geekbench 4
SC 5983 (4912)
MC 26903 (16795)

Blackmagic
1934mbps write (637)
2635mbps read (677)

 

[Bohemien]

Just set mine up, and ran some benchmarks

Thanks for taking the time to do these! Looks like a pretty solid performer.