Hi, time to ugrade my 2011 17" macbook pro!! Defo want the 27" screen. Most of my work is in Illustrator, Photoshop and Indesign. Ocassionally open RAW files. May in the future want to learn Cinema4D. Which mac would give me the best value for my needs? I've read many i5 v i7 threads and guess this comes down to my own particular usage. Thanks for any advice.
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Which imac for general graphic design
- Thread starter mattmac1974
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The best value would be the base 27". I would upgrade the fusion drive to a SSD.
The better CPUs will help for Cinema4D rendering but since this is only a future possible use I'm not sure it's worth the investment yet. You won't see that much of a difference with Illustrator, Photoshop and Indesign. Same thing for the better GPUs (I just read that Cinema4D doesn't use the GPU natively for rendering but it can use it with 3rd party renderers).
Also consider that the i7 are reportedly running hot quickly, so if you want a quiet machine it might not be a good idea.
The better CPUs will help for Cinema4D rendering but since this is only a future possible use I'm not sure it's worth the investment yet. You won't see that much of a difference with Illustrator, Photoshop and Indesign. Same thing for the better GPUs (I just read that Cinema4D doesn't use the GPU natively for rendering but it can use it with 3rd party renderers).
Also consider that the i7 are reportedly running hot quickly, so if you want a quiet machine it might not be a good idea.
Thank for the reply, very useful. I currently use 650gb, including all apps and docs. Would the best solution be a 512ssd and then buy an external for documents?? Would this machine also cope with streaming Plex movies in hd ok?
Thanks
Thanks
I got the mid-range 27" (3.5GHz i5 with the Radeon Pro 575). I splurged and for the 500GB SSD, I keep all of my project files and media on an external SSD. I went with the mid-range since I tend to do a 5-6 year upgrade cycle.
I personally don't think an all SSD machine is required as long as it's the 2TB Fusion Drive or larger. The 1TB only has 24GB of SSD space, but the 128GB in the 2TB Fusion Drive makes it work much better.
And Plex would be no problem at all. Hell, I see no reason you shouldn't be able to do like 8 streams as once, unless it does some really heavy processing on them all
I'm a graphic designer as well, working mostly in Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop (I might do some retouch work, but mostly design work)/InDesign, occasionally in Sketch and coding in Sublime Text. I'll be working in Lightroom for mostly going thru photos taken with DSLR but not heavy image editing.
I too am considering a 27" iMac 5K, but can't decide between i5 or i7.... Currently I am using Mac mini (Late 2012, 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7) and MacBook Air (2013, 1.7 GHz Core i7). I plan on going with 512GB internal SSD (with external drives for archived jobs and media) and 64GB RAM from OWC.
My question is, will I be completely happy with i5? The cost for i7 upgrade is well within my budget, and if it boosts my productivity then I'm all in. But I'm a little worried about the i7 fan noise issue, which I sometimes have with my i7 Mac mini and MacBook Air. Does the fan kick in that easily for i7 iMac if I'm working in Adobe Creative Cloud apps?
Thanks in advance!
I too am considering a 27" iMac 5K, but can't decide between i5 or i7.... Currently I am using Mac mini (Late 2012, 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7) and MacBook Air (2013, 1.7 GHz Core i7). I plan on going with 512GB internal SSD (with external drives for archived jobs and media) and 64GB RAM from OWC.
My question is, will I be completely happy with i5? The cost for i7 upgrade is well within my budget, and if it boosts my productivity then I'm all in. But I'm a little worried about the i7 fan noise issue, which I sometimes have with my i7 Mac mini and MacBook Air. Does the fan kick in that easily for i7 iMac if I'm working in Adobe Creative Cloud apps?
Thanks in advance!
OP wrote:
"I currently use 650gb, including all apps and docs. Would the best solution be a 512ssd and then buy an external for documents?? Would this machine also cope with streaming Plex movies in hd ok?"
Get the 512gb SSD (unless you want to pay Apple's price for the 1tb SSD, I wouldn't).
Then add external USB3 storage as required. Could be platter-based hard drives; could be SSD's -- your choice.
I'd also suggest spending an extra $200 for the 3.5gb midrange model (instead of the base model). Doesn't add much to the buy-in cost but you get a 7600 CPU (instead of 7500), and a better GPU. From what I've read, the 7600 doesn't "ramp up" the fans quickly as does the CPU on the high-end model.
"I currently use 650gb, including all apps and docs. Would the best solution be a 512ssd and then buy an external for documents?? Would this machine also cope with streaming Plex movies in hd ok?"
Get the 512gb SSD (unless you want to pay Apple's price for the 1tb SSD, I wouldn't).
Then add external USB3 storage as required. Could be platter-based hard drives; could be SSD's -- your choice.
I'd also suggest spending an extra $200 for the 3.5gb midrange model (instead of the base model). Doesn't add much to the buy-in cost but you get a 7600 CPU (instead of 7500), and a better GPU. From what I've read, the 7600 doesn't "ramp up" the fans quickly as does the CPU on the high-end model.
So, the temperatures of the newer CPUs are, across the boar, lower than they were when the 5Ks first started coming out. And the fans could handle it back then (although my fan on an original 5k sometimes goes to 3.300RPM when 2700 is kinda meant to be the max...). Your fan will definitely run faster with the i7, but it's not that huge a difference.
The i5 is still a lot faster than your mini and Air though. If I were to wager a guess, I'd say you'd experience somewhere between 5 and 20% speed ups between your tasks. That's compilation speed at the high end of that estimate, and render speeds on the low end. Adobe's apps generally don't make the most of all the cores you give them so your main speedup there would be from the increased clocks, as the hyper threaded cores tend to sit idle a lot of the time with Adobe apps.
Thanks so much casperes1996 for such an insightful answer! if "the temperatures of the newer CPUs are, across the boar, lower than they were when the 5Ks first started coming out" as you say, I might just go for the i7 option!
Sure - but as I said, also keep in mind that even though the temperature of that i7 will be lower than my i7, it doesn't mean your fans won't go louder than if you were with the i5 still. As mentioned, my fans can go to around 3.300RPM, even though 2700RPM was actually meant to be the maximum. 2700 is still reported to the system as being the max, but when the temps rise, the fan just goes "**** it, 2700 clearly isn't cutting it!"
The i7 is not necessary for graphic design. It would only be really helpful for processing RAW photos (generating previews, etc), rendering stuff and encoding videos.
Design tools (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc) rarely use multithreading which would be the reason to get an i7. In fact most design software is moving to GPU optimisations.
Here are some Photoshop benchmarks with different processors.
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...Intel-Core-i7-7700K-i5-7600K-Performance-879/
Design tools (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc) rarely use multithreading which would be the reason to get an i7. In fact most design software is moving to GPU optimisations.
Here are some Photoshop benchmarks with different processors.
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...Intel-Core-i7-7700K-i5-7600K-Performance-879/
Thanks, pier, for your insights! I do actually have to process RAW photos but only every once in a while...so that extra power is a "nice-to-have" for occasional use case for me. With the same GPU (Radeon Pro 580 with 8GB) it might be wiser to spend that extra $200 elsewhere.... Decisions, decisions....
You should be aware that the i7 runs very hot and will make a lot of noise. I bought the i5 580 myself.
Thank you, sir! I think I'm taking the i5 route, and spending the extra $200 elsewhere...probably on Thunderbolt 3 external hard drive. For a moment though, I saw another thread on Adobe CC performance on iMac Pro and was fantasizing about that machine....
Like the i7, it won't make much of a difference for graphic design. The iMac Pro will only make a difference for RAW photography, video, after effects, 3d, etc.