Hello Anthony,
That 5300. Part of me is saying that must be from a 21 inch update. If it's the 5300 (that thing from the Macbook Pro?) then it might suggest the iPad inspired design is 'slimmer' requiring more heat efficient gpus. Less 'bulge' from the back of the 'tear drop' iMac. 5300? I still think that's a typo for the 21 inch version. If 27 inch? Tier 1. But we 'hear' that the incoming iMac might be getting a price rise. If that is to £1950? A 5300 gpu in the new tier one would be very stingy.
This Navi1+. Rumours. Leaked tables. Tweets. Etc. Have suggested AMD is going to respin the RDNA1 (5700) and this could mean cheaper prices, less heat whilst giving a ten% clock boost for performance. That would suit a 27 inch iMac down to the ground. We can't rule out Apple giving the 5600'm' as a BTO option to the iMac? (£800. No thanks. May as well buy an eGPU with RDNA2 card for that...) My guess would be 5500, 5600, 5700(BTO). And we've seen leaks with that approximate gpu line up for the 27 inches. Any of those cards for you and me both will be a massive step up. Even the 5300 would do better than my 680MX or your current gpu for 3D work. A step up. For me, 8 years later. That's some progress. I'd like more though. Ergo my ambition for 5700(remember, this is a last year gpu...) as BTO/as standard on the top iMac tier with BTO RDNA2 (6500/6600M?) variant.
Any GPU will be progress. But from the sounds of your Vectorworks work loads...it sounds like get the best GPU that you can. That will be either a lower clocked 5700XT from last year? Or the new RDNA1+ process improvement version. For you? Me. This will be a transformative card. It will be worth a £450 BTO in your case. Which means, the fans don't have to kick in as much because it will take far more to push this card from your current workloads.
Using Zbrush (model/sculptor 3d app) I could really load up on polygons. I was surprised how well my 680MX could do. (It was in the top ten gpus of that year...2012...) But a 5700XT will be in another universe by comparison.
Plus. GPU rendering. I hear Cinema 4d (been a while since I've kept tabs on that...I remember it when it was up and coming in Computer Arts mag...) I was on a 3D course with someone who loved it's work flow back in its earlier days. Yeah. Gpu rendering with the 5700XT might speed up preview windows plus give an option for gpu rendering too.
Plus it will help run that 5k display. Much better than last year's gpu contender, the rx580. And if you want to run the casual game in HD 1080p then it should have to get out of bed much.
40 gigs RAM. That will allow your workload to really spread out. I'll go after market like yourself. But it will be nice to have a 3d render going on in the background (Lightwave3d, Blender 3d...) with Affinity software for image editing and design work.
1TB SSD is the smart move for OS and Apps. Though I'll go 1TB SSD. I think I'll have an external drive for apps. And another external drive for data. To keep my boot OS clean of the barnacles. Just a new approach I'm trying for the next iMac. (I found the programs and data eventually overwhelmed my 128 gig SSD portion of Fusion Drive and I ended up with slow boot...)
CPU. 10 core. If you're doing CAD or 3D in Cinema. 'Nuff said. 10 cores. 20 threads? That's the way to go. Plenty of future proofing there. Likely the cpu I'll be going for.
Colour. If they can offer the Macbook Air in colours or the iPad...let's hope we have silver and space grey as options.
And yes. A goddamn new design. Long overdue.
Make biting the Intel legacy bullet a lot easier. It's going to be quite a bit of time before the large screen ARM iMac drops.
Azrael.
