Maxed out iMac 27 5k vs iMac Pro

[tanwh]

don't seem to have a big price difference between the two.

For home user main collecting DSLR photos in Photos app, 500Gb on iCloud library, occasional tweak of raw files, managing emails, and virtualising Windows, will there be any perceptible difference?

Any perks with ECC RAM?

Does iMac Pro suck up lots of power when idling?

I'm attracted to the space grey body of the iMac Pro though.

Appreciate your advice.

 

[Shivetya]

Must be me but I see nearly 1800 dollar difference if you buy 32g ram from Apple and swap to 1tb SSD which is the only really comparable similar specs discounting the Pro has ECC memory and the Xenon processor.

talk about total overkill for your listed needs but if 5k for a space gray body is what works for you, the mission accomplished Apple!

 

[Darajavahus]

Maxed out iMac is so not worthed compared to base iMac Pro,
at similar price, you might not care about ECC, or get 1TB SSD instead of 2 (if you really need 2TB and you can afford maxed out iMac you probably can ad to 2TB to Pro) but
Vega is so much better than Polaris,
and the HBM2 is wayyy superior to GDDR5 in radeon pro 580,
AMD even claims that 4GB of HBM2 will outperform 11GB of GDDR5X - the VRAM found on the GTX 1080 Ti!!

the iMac Pro have 8GB HBM2 to 16HBM2. So even thought on iMac 580 8GB GDDR5 and iMac Pro Vega 8GB HBM2 the number the same but I uderstand that the vega 8GB is wayy superior, when 4GB of it would be lot better tha 11GB GDDR5X.
The performance of Vega might be similar to 1080 ti or Titan, probably worse on Windows but with Apple optimization and integration high chances it will outperform similar windows machines with 1080.
HBM2 is what all next gen GPUs have also Nvidia Volta, so regular iMacs with Polaris are already out of date
I was really hoping that they will refresh regular iMacs later with vega(it will be released so soon), maybe not the best vega but worst vega would be lot better than best polaris, probably next year regular iMacs will have vega and 6 core Coffee Lake so then it will be better value, if the next year Pro price won't drop.

 

[Sirmausalot]

Must be me but I see nearly 1800 dollar difference if you buy 32g ram from Apple and swap to 1tb SSD which is the only really comparable similar specs discounting the Pro has ECC memory and the Xenon processor.

talk about total overkill for your listed needs but if 5k for a space gray body is what works for you, the mission accomplished Apple!

As the poster above points out, you shouldn't necessarily be comparing the top specced iMac because you actually won't use the extra computing power you're paying for. Basically, for what you need. I suppose the big question is what programs do you use regularly, especially in a virtual machine as that really may tell us what is the best configuration.

But my guess is what you need is around 2500 and the base iMac Pro is 5000 (plus tax). So that may be the equation you should really look at.

 

[mcnallym]

don't seem to have a big price difference between the two.

For home user main collecting DSLR photos in Photos app, 500Gb on iCloud library, occasional tweak of raw files, managing emails, and virtualising Windows, will there be any perceptible difference?

Any perks with ECC RAM?

Does iMac Pro suck up lots of power when idling?

I'm attracted to the space grey body of the iMac Pro though.

Appreciate your advice.

Only thing would see even possibly worth while in there would be Virtualizing Windows and that is really going to depend upon if 1 VM so can run Windows Apps in the VM or if intending to run multiple Windows VM's. If is just 1 machine then the Quad Core in the iMac will be plenty.

Your needs probably not going to need ECC.

I am looking at the 27" 5K with 4.2Quad 16Gb RAM and 512Gb SSD, which is $2100 less then the base iMac Pro and won't use the additional power that the iMac Pro brings. ( $2899 is what the US price for that spec is ) I live in the UK however kept to $ as that is what the 4999 price is quoted as

Seems a lot to pay to get Space Grey myself.

 

[Dave245]

Unless you actually need the iMac Pro power I think it would be overkill. Although there is no price for the iMac Pro here in the U.K yet!! I've been looking at the new iMac updates to upgrade from my 2012 iMac but I'm not sure if Apple will be doing a redesign next year or not? The 5K screen will be better than the current one i have and these new ones have even been improved above that.

 

[xgman]

Do we know what the raw cpu speed on the base imac pro will be compared to the 2017 imac top end model? For every day computing I'd rather have the faster speed also taking in to consideration the price gap.

 

[tanwh]

Thanks for all the great advice. I am going for the non-pro version.

For rapid browsing of large DSLR images across the Photo app gallery, any idea if the 3TB up to speed? Do I expect a lag in loading them?

Should I got for the 2TB SSD instead?

 

[CWallace]

Honestly, unless you derive a significant portion of your income from your iMac, I don't think the iMac Pro is a necessary purchase.

 

[inhalexhale1]

I wouldn't buy an iMac Pro unless you had a definitive use for it. Meaning, you knew exactly how and why you would need that specific computer over the standard top end iMac.

Of course, maybe maybe your reason is "because space grey"
[doublepost=1496859972][/doublepost]

Vega is so much better than Polaris,

With official support for eGPU I'm not sure the internal graphics are such a big deal anymore. You can just set up something that would be upgradable, which is a much better option IMO.

 

[Cajun_Mike]

Guys, what do i need if i'm wanting to be working with photos and rendering 4k video routinely? what can i get away with or be happiest with? I'm notorious for having Chrome open with 8 tabs and more...

A machine that will last me 7 years like this current late 2009 Imac27 has.

 

[CWallace]

Guys, what do i need if i'm wanting to be working with photos and rendering 4k video routinely?

The Verge says the new 27" 5K is much improved at 4K editing - https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/7/1...-first-look-review-specs-ram-4k-video-editing

 

[HalfNelson]

Must be me but I see nearly 1800 dollar difference if you buy 32g ram from Apple and swap to 1tb SSD which is the only really comparable similar specs discounting the Pro has ECC memory and the Xenon processor.

talk about total overkill for your listed needs but if 5k for a space gray body is what works for you, the mission accomplished Apple!

I'm seeing only $1300 difference between the iMac with 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, and i7 CPU.

 

[tanwh]

and with a more powerful processor.

 

[Sirmausalot]

Honestly, unless you derive a significant portion of your income from your iMac, I don't think the iMac Pro is a necessary purchase.

I think he derives a significant portion of his income from interest and dividends

 

[CWallace]

For $1300 you are getting a significantly more powerful processor (in terms of multi-core performance) and a significantly more powerful GPU. You also get a second TB3 controller and two additional ports.

 

[tanwh]

And 10GbE

 

[Dean Yu]

Maxed out iMac is so not worthed compared to base iMac Pro,
at similar price, you might not care about ECC, or get 1TB SSD instead of 2 (if you really need 2TB and you can afford maxed out iMac you probably can ad to 2TB to Pro) but
Vega is so much better than Polaris,
and the HBM2 is wayyy superior to GDDR5 in radeon pro 580,
AMD even claims that 4GB of HBM2 will outperform 11GB of GDDR5X - the VRAM found on the GTX 1080 Ti!!

the iMac Pro have 8GB HBM2 to 16HBM2. So even thought on iMac 580 8GB GDDR5 and iMac Pro Vega 8GB HBM2 the number the same but I uderstand that the vega 8GB is wayy superior, when 4GB of it would be lot better tha 11GB GDDR5X.
The performance of Vega might be similar to 1080 ti or Titan, probably worse on Windows but with Apple optimization and integration high chances it will outperform similar windows machines with 1080.
HBM2 is what all next gen GPUs have also Nvidia Volta, so regular iMacs with Polaris are already out of date
I was really hoping that they will refresh regular iMacs later with vega(it will be released so soon), maybe not the best vega but worst vega would be lot better than best polaris, probably next year regular iMacs will have vega and 6 core Coffee Lake so then it will be better value, if the next year Pro price won't drop.

lol... I hope you realized the alleged "slide from AMD" is actually WCCFtech's April Fool Parody joke...
That aside, HBCC really is a fantastic tech. AMD has demonstrated Vega running on only 2G of VRAM, and with HBCC on the frame ate of ROTTR is nearly doubled over just running on HBM without controller caching.