Shopping for next Mac Desktop (upgrading from Mac Pro 3,1)

[ssgbryan]

That's exactly my point. Unless you use specific software that takes advantage of the 12 cores from a 4,1/5,1, all those cores/threads are useless. For software that doesn't take advantage of lots of cores, single core performance is more important. Despite it being 2017, most apps don't take advantage of all those cores.

Obviously, on an iMac, GPU choices are limited and the only real solution would be to use an eGPU if you need to use more powerful graphics cards. However, with Nvidia's decision to not release macOS drivers for their latest GPUs, Mac users' options are greatly limited. Plus, FCPX is better optimized for AMD GPUs anyway. If, hypothetically, you use Octane, it makes much more sense to get a Linux or Windows box with tons of PCI-e slots and load them up with Nvidia video cards to use strictly as a rendering box.

As for RAM, the current iMac can be fitted with up to 64GB which should suffice for the apps mentioned by the OP.

Depends on what you define as "most apps" and what you do with your mac pro.

I came to OSX from the OS/2 world, so I was used to having every application in my workflow open and running at the same time. That is very different from the OSX/Windows world, which still seems to be predominately 1 app at a time, as far as the users are concerned.

Even if you are using software that won't take advantage of all cores, more cores means you can have more apps (using as many cores as they can use) running at the same time.

 

[pastrychef]

I really don't know how to make "most apps" more clear...

 

[AidenShaw]

Even regular 64GB of desktop DDR4 costs $400+.

I bought about 2 TiB of RAM upgrades with the end-of-quarter CapEx budget. One interesting thing is that one of our vendors is selling 64 GiB DDR4 2400 DIMMs for a bit less than double the cost of 32 GiB DDR4 2400 DIMMs.

The 128 GiB DDR4 DIMMs are more per GiB than the smaller DIMMs, as you'd expect.