Buy the i7, the GPU can be upgrade by Thunderbolt 3 Docks later!
https://developer.apple.com/development-kit/external-graphics/
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Radeon Pro 580 8 GB Preformance?
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https://developer.apple.com/development-kit/external-graphics/
I've looked into AMD's specs and Radeon Pro 580 seems to be on par with desktop RX 480. If I'm right, it can play modern games in 1080p at 60FPS with highest presets (eg. Mass Effect Andromeda).
I'd say it's incredible considering iMacs get notebook chips with a little higher TDP. The price however is not so amazing.
Radeon Pro 570 (low end GPU in 27" iMac) is about 3.5Tflops which is about twice the power of PS4. It should be enough to play modern games in 1080p at stable 30FPS (at highest presets). If you lower stuff down, you'll be able to get 60FPS/1080p.
I'd say it's incredible considering iMacs get notebook chips with a little higher TDP. The price however is not so amazing.
Radeon Pro 570 (low end GPU in 27" iMac) is about 3.5Tflops which is about twice the power of PS4. It should be enough to play modern games in 1080p at stable 30FPS (at highest presets). If you lower stuff down, you'll be able to get 60FPS/1080p.
What games are interesting?
Overwatch will run at 4K High settings in 60Hz. Heroes of the Storm - same.
Overwatch will run at 4K High settings in 60Hz. Heroes of the Storm - same.
Radeon Pro 570 is the same performance as WX 5100 and its faster than GTX 1050 Ti, but slower than RX 470.
You're right. The only issue is that Radeon Pro 580 is the only GPU in the lineup with VR support according to AMD press release. Not surprising, considering it's on par with desktop RX 480 which was considered entry GPU for VR.
So much talk about VR but only people with select iMacs will enjoy it.
So it is or not ?since the 980 is not in the list
Im really asking about 580 vs nvidia 980 not 980 Ti
5k to 1440p will not make a difference as it is already displaying that effectively in retina mode with scaling.
5k to 720p will just look blown up at 4 times scaling and will still be smooth due to individual pixels being extremely small.
I had moved away from Windows as well but wanted a game machine mainly for VR (HTC Vive). A Mac wasn't an option for VR, so I built a nice gaming machine when Ryzen came out. While I like being able to play games occasionally, I regret building a Windows box. There are so many irksome things I'm re-learning. Text on a 4k monitor looks horrible, must install MacType or similar. Windows doesn't seem to handle high resolution monitors nearly as well as macOS. For gaming it is great, but you won't want to use it for anything else.
I would buy one of the new iMacs now that VR is coming to macOS and iMacs have real graphics cards. You might think about buying a cheaper iMac and getting a really nice graphics card in an external enclosure. macOS High Sierra finally supports external GPUs which is really sweet. That being said... you won't be able to play all games. BF1, GTA 5 are win-only... so that may make your decision for you. You could probably use Boot Camp to install Win10 on your iMac though.
Here's hoping this somehow makes Blizzard put a tiny bit of money into the development of Overwatch for Mac. It's the only game I switch to Windows for currently, as HotS and WoW with Metal don't run that much better under Windows on my machine (also my Boot Camp drive is too tiny).
You can do more than one thing with a computer.
Yeah I'm going to have to build a pc now. I wasn't really expecting iMac to be able to handle games I want to play (PUBG now, Destiny 2 when it comes out). A 1070 / i5 is pretty much minimum to run PUBG with good FPS while still on low settings. Game will get better optimized but it won't run 100% on new iMac. Guess I'll keep my current iMac for everyday use and PC just for gaming. Kind of a waste of space and money though.
Exactly.
Want a Mac to edit HD movies, browse internet, create all sorts of documents and also play games?
Best computer for you: iMac with good grfx.
Obviously... but consumer grade hardware often offers similar or better gaming performance for a fraction of the cost. I would bet the standard iMac would be just fine for gaming. This machine is clearly marketed toward professionals that need workstation stability and ECC memory etc... things gamers don't need.
Lightroom is blazingly fast on my late 2015 5k iMac. I know many have issues with Lr performance but I've never had a problem.
I think you're talking about the iMac Pro here.
What I meant is an iMac with a good grfx card is the best computer for the balanced needs for the consumer, i.e. HD movie editing, creative fun (so, not the Pro's) AND gaming.
The lesser specced iMacs usually have pretty bad grfx cards, so that demanding games run badly. Buying a 2nd computer just for gaming is usually not an option.
I think the GPU is really isn't that big a deal of a choice anymore. If you can get use an eGPU, you can not only pu something in there way more powerful than the 580, but upgrade it every year. IMO I would spend the money on CPU and storage is I had to choose.
LOL. Sorry to disappoint.
http://creators.radeon.com/radeon-pro/
Comparing with the desktop RX 480, it is very close in peak compute (5.5 vs 5.8) and memory bandwidth (217 vs 224+).
No, it won't. Which is why it boggles my mind that Apple doesn't offer an option to get a 1080p or 1440p screen on the 21" and 27" iMac respectively. Assuming that the 580 that Apple uses is the equivalent of it's PC counterpart, the 580 is a slightly updated, renamed Radeon 480 from last year. Last year ATI received a lot of praise for the 480, since it is a affordable card for 1080p 60 fps gaming. Now they are getting a lot of flak for that renaming trick, with everybody looking forward to the Vega cards. In the PC space the 580 will cost you maybe 250€. The card is not targeted at anything higher than 1080p gaming. You could run the 5K screen at 1440p, but even that the card is not built for and it will look horrible thanks to the scaling.
In conclusion it looks like Apple continues the stupid trend of using Retina resolutions on desktop machines and then not even offering non-Retina options. In the past it was worse since the Retina desktops didn't even have dedicated graphics cards. As a result even the built-in animations of Mac OS X were jerking along. Now the solution advertised by Apple seems to be an eGPU. Makes sense, since NVidia just started adding native driver support for the 10xx series. Problem is that you have to buy the most expensive gaming card right now to achieve 4K 60 fps in select titles. And 5K? Good luck with that. So now you will buy an over-prized iMac, an 300€ GPU enclosure and a 700€ graphics card just to correct for Apples mistakes.
In conclusion it looks like Apple continues the stupid trend of using Retina resolutions on desktop machines and then not even offering non-Retina options. In the past it was worse since the Retina desktops didn't even have dedicated graphics cards. As a result even the built-in animations of Mac OS X were jerking along. Now the solution advertised by Apple seems to be an eGPU. Makes sense, since NVidia just started adding native driver support for the 10xx series. Problem is that you have to buy the most expensive gaming card right now to achieve 4K 60 fps in select titles. And 5K? Good luck with that. So now you will buy an over-prized iMac, an 300€ GPU enclosure and a 700€ graphics card just to correct for Apples mistakes.
Indeed. The "Radeon Pro" parts that Apple gets are cherry-picked and down-clocked versions of the desktop parts.
e.g. the desktop RX560 has 1024 CUs and 2.4 TFLOPs, with a TDP of ~70 W. The Radeon Pro 560 consumes roughly half the power, (the GPUs in the MBP have a TDP of 35 W) but gives you 1.9 TFLOPs.
Similar story for the RX580 and the Radeon Pro 580 in the iMac. The iMac's Pro 580 gets 95% of the performance of the 185 watt RX580, but there's no way the iMac can cool a 185 W GPU – the iMac part must be using much less power.