You won't benefit from a new GPU?
The GPU isn't just for games ... especially on the Mac ... and especially for driving the 4K and 5K displays. The GPU is involved in a lot more than you think.
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Should I wait to buy a new iMac?
- Thread starter MyNameIsURL
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You may have seen my thread where I decided to pull the trigger and get mine now, which I did and am thrilled with it, even with the 1TB drive. I don't have heavy computing needs and I've found it to be plenty fast for my needs. So between you and I we have one who is waiting and one who did not, let's see what sort of results we get over the next couple of months. IMO there's no wrong way to go here either way.
I'm waiting to see what the new iMacs have to offer. I'm not a gamer but would like to see better graphics performance to match the 27" 5K Retina display. If nothing else, maybe a nice price cut on the 2015 iMac 27" 3.3 GHz CPU w/2 TB Fusion drive, which would do fine for my needs.
Urgh... This waiting is killing me...I really hope there is an updated imac this October and has a damn impressive update too, not just small bumps.
When were the 2015 October models announced before they went public? Is it realistic that the 2016 models will come out this month even if we haven't heard anything official from Apple?
When were the 2015 October models announced before they went public? Is it realistic that the 2016 models will come out this month even if we haven't heard anything official from Apple?
The 2015 October iMacs were announced on October 13 and were immediately available for purchase. As to whether or not 2016 models will come out this month? Everything is just speculation and conjecture until Apple decides to tell us. And the 2014 retina 5k iMacs were announced/released on October 16 of that year. So.... maybe? Possibly? Hopefully?
I'm on the same boat. I decided to wait for the new iMac already near the beginning of this year. Now when the anticipated, hypothetical release data range is drawing closer, I find myself going on MacRumors every day to read the latest speculation and hoping we're getting there.
.. well, at least there is a positive side: When finally receiving the iMac, the feeling is like being a kid on Christmas Eve. That is very hard to replicate when you're an adult, but having the box of your new (major) tech gadget in front of you comes close!
I'm in the same boat too (there seem to be a few of us).
The wait is killing me and it is especially bad because I used to have a late '15 5K iMac, but I sold it a couple weeks ago because I got an insanely good offer for it (basically the same price I got it for).
I made the decision to wait, but it is difficult waiting so long for something you already had.
I have thought every day about just getting a new 2015 model, if the iMac is released November or later, I will just get the '15 model.
Shouldn't be too long at this point, though I'm one of those folks who took the plunge last year with the Skylake iMacs. I will say that they're wonderful machines and you cannot go wrong. Of course at this point, it makes too much not to waitThe 2015 October iMacs were announced on October 13 and were immediately available for purchase. As to whether or not 2016 models will come out this month? Everything is just speculation and conjecture until Apple decides to tell us. And the 2014 retina 5k iMacs were announced/released on October 16 of that year. So.... maybe? Possibly? Hopefully?
I'm getting a bit obsessive about checking this board for news too...
If it makes the rest of you feel better I'm waiting for my first ever Mac of any description, to replace a 7 year old PC, so those of you with iMacs that are a few years old that you want to replace ain't getting sympathy from me
I'm really very excited about taking the plunge.
If it makes the rest of you feel better I'm waiting for my first ever Mac of any description, to replace a 7 year old PC, so those of you with iMacs that are a few years old that you want to replace ain't getting sympathy from me
I'm really very excited about taking the plunge.
I'm in the same boat with waiting. The thing for me is just longevity. I'm currently using a (refurbished) 2012 Mac Mini with all baseline specs but with 1 TB storage. The update to Sierra did...not go well. Turns out, my pitiful 4 GB of RAM just can't support the OS very well, especially when I do things like work in Photoshop. I considered updating RAM but honestly, my Mac mini has always limped when I did large scale illustrations and it was just supposed to be a temporary solution at a time when my old MBP completely failed and I couldn't afford a new one.
But now I CAN afford one and my wife has even given me the OK to go big! My last iMac lasted until Apple stopped supporting it and beyond, although it was limping a little at the end. And I'd love to go out today and buy one but I KNOW Apple will update really soon and if I buy now, while I'm sure I'll get something that will kick ass at Photoshop and even let me game a little again, I want to make sure my investment is supported by Apple as long as possible. So, I'm waiting and hoping I can get away with using my iPad Pro for my freelance work.
But now I CAN afford one and my wife has even given me the OK to go big! My last iMac lasted until Apple stopped supporting it and beyond, although it was limping a little at the end. And I'd love to go out today and buy one but I KNOW Apple will update really soon and if I buy now, while I'm sure I'll get something that will kick ass at Photoshop and even let me game a little again, I want to make sure my investment is supported by Apple as long as possible. So, I'm waiting and hoping I can get away with using my iPad Pro for my freelance work.
But now I CAN afford one and my wife has even given me the OK to go big!
Snap! I had all these justifications like setting off the VAT and tax etc lined up and couldn't quite believe it when the missus was fine with going top end (so to speak).
Glad to see it's not just my life that works in this way...
They're speculating. Secondly, the earnings call was moved forward.9to5Mac thinks its going to be October 27, to coincide with the earnings call. I sincerely hope we don't have to wait till the end of the month though...
I really don't think Apple would wait until after the earnings announcement to unveil the new lineup.
What is "driving" a display? Every integrated GPU can serve multiple 4K displays nowadays. Displaying 2D-content requires basically no processing power at all. Maybe you're talking GPU-accelerated photo editing (Lightroom 6 for example becomes slow with highres displays because of the additional pixels), GPU computing, gaming, but what else...?
Main thing is the hard drive...replaced old macbook pro--a dog, with new sd drive...WOW!!!
OS X has been using the GPU for compositing for a very long time. Core Animation uses the GPU to do the animation work for performance reasons. So when you scroll, one of the ways scrolling hits good performance is by using the GPU. Safari has been using a GPU accelerated rendering engine for years now as well. I can do live filter effects during compositing in my application UI that depend on the GPU for apps that have nothing to do with graphics (i.e. applying effects to icons/etc.)
Does it stress it as much as 3D, or in the same ways? No. But performance in many cases will still be better with a newer GPU. Should someone buy the M395X model of iMac? Probably not. But should they pass up a newer GPU for the same money? I don't think they should.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but these accelerated tasks are still 2D. I would be highly surprised, if there was any difference at all between the lowest and the highest end graphics solution on the market in regards to user experience, since no stream processors/CUDA cores, ROPs, TMUs etc. are used.
May I ask where did you sell your iMac? I have a 2015 iMac 5k too and I don't really know where should I sell it. eBay, Craigslist?
You kinda need TMUs and ROPs to do the tricks Core Animation does. The content of a view gets written to a texture and then rasterized live by the GPU to produce the manipulated result. In fact, CoreAnimation historically has been built on top of OpenGL directly for that reason. We'll see if it migrates to Metal. I thought Sierra was supposed to do that, but I'm not finding confirmation online. Stream processing is used every time you apply a CIFilter to a CALayer for screen display to handle the filtering on the GPU rather than the CPU so you can do it realtime rather than having to process it all on the CPU. And if you do any sort of complex compositing, such as the frosted "blur" you get from Notification Center, that's a CIFilter more often than not.
Can I build an app on macOS that avoids this stuff? Yeah, I can, since an NSView (AppKit's views) doesn't need to be backed by Core Animation, and Quartz predates a lot of this work that's been added to OS X over the years. But take even a simple app like Doo which relies on animations and it is now doing those tricks via the GPU. Complicated apps like Safari build on it to give you smooth animations like the zoom out animation to see all your tabs and more performant rendering.
On iOS, UIKit is entirely built on top of CoreAnimation and OpenGL ES. So everything is backed by the GPU in some way there.
What I can't tell you all that well is where things break down on the Mac between the accelerated and non-accelerated parts. If even one view is backed by a CALayer, the entire screen really should be using the GPU for final rasterization. If my memory isn't faulty, I believe at this point, all of WindowServer's display is built on top of the GPU. Apps that don't use Core Animation themselves are given a single surface to draw to and then composited during the final pass with everything else. But if I use Core Animation (and a surprising number of bog-standard apps do), then those individual layers will get rasterized by the CPU to surfaces, and then those are treated as textures for the final pass. Assuming CoreGraphics doesn't build out command-lists these days like QuartzGL was supposed to do years ago.
I've worked on apps that explicitly use features in CoreAnimation so we could offload things that amounted to pixel blits onto the GPU and free up more CPU time for other parts of the UI. Things like this are becoming fairly common when working on performant user interfaces on the platform now. 10 years ago? Not really.
Craigslist. To some sucker
The only place IMO that is worth selling your iMac at.
With other options you aren't getting enough for it IMO.
My old machine had an m380, 2tb fusion, 3.2 i5. Piece of junk as far as I'm concerned but someone told me it would be fine. Not the case
I got the pile of scrap for $2000... sold it to some guy off Craigslist for $1900. He wanted it for the 2tb fusion drive
Maybe one of the best Craigslist transactions ever made which is something I'm perfectly fine with
I'm sorry to ramble but it just went so well.
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