Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

When do you expect an iMac redesign?

  • 4rd quarter 2019

    Votes: 34 4.1%
  • 1st quarter 2020

    Votes: 23 2.8%
  • 2nd quarter 2020

    Votes: 119 14.5%
  • 3rd quarter 2020

    Votes: 131 15.9%
  • 4rd quarter 2020

    Votes: 172 20.9%
  • 2021 or later

    Votes: 343 41.7%

  • Total voters
    822
  • Poll closed .
Ou, seeing this nano texture in the video I'm seriously tempted. It just looks that much better and usable and I always had matte computers until Apple decided to stop them. My last matte was 2011 (I believe) 17" MBP. Also had the 30" ACD which was of course matte too.
Hated the glossy style so I'm pleased with this and it does look amazing.
The question though - do i want to spend that much money on it :(
That is a tough one

Nanotexture iMac in MKBHD video
 
Ou, seeing this nano texture in the video I'm seriously tempted. It just looks that much better and usable and I always had matte computers until Apple decided to stop them. My last matte was 2011 (I believe) 17" MBP. Also had the 30" ACD which was of course matte too.
Hated the glossy style so I'm pleased with this and it does look amazing.
The question though - do i want to spend that much money on it :(
That is a tough one
I plan to get the nano screen on the upcoming ARM laptops
 
Yes.

Well.

You can get a much cheaper PC. £1300. Then you'll need a display. Eg. Dell 4k. Another £400. Which will bring you to about the entry iMac.

The Legacy deprecation/ammortisation of price.

For £1750 you get a Mac with a £1300 5k monitor. (Still the iMac's best feature. One that is difficult to replicate in a 'cost conscious' way on PC.)

But you also get a £1750 'PC' free!!! With Bootcamp.

So?

Well. You're not going to get £1750 worth of 'free' PC with your AS iMac. No Bootcamp. :/

So take that £1750 of free PC to sooth your perception and your Intel iMac's ammortisation.

That '£1750' Free PC absorbs and surpasses any losses with any future AS launch and any 'loss' of value.

Remember. You can keep this Intel iMac and run it as a 5k, 10 core (in my case) 5700XT (with the 16 gigs of vram difficult to replicate on Windows...) and even boost it later with an RDNA2 via eGPU....forever offsetting any such 'loss' of performance.

Just use this Intel iMac until it drops.

I quite like the idea of having a 32 inch AS iMac...with a 27 inch 5k 'PC' alongside it.

I did say I was going for a dual PC/Mac work set up.

I think the penny has finally dropped as to how I'm going to do it. Perhaps I don't need that PC 'tower' after all...

Azrael.


It's also weird how he sais this machine is not future proof. This iMac will run as a decent PC for a long time, even if Apple would phase out intel supported updates of MacOS, xCode, Final Cut and alike in five years (wich i don't think they will, despite every "invite me to events Apple pwueas" YouTube suggesting life ends with ARM).
[automerge]1596734133[/automerge]
I plan to get the nano screen on the upcoming ARM laptops

Will they have it though? It seems like they don't handle wear and tear that great.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Azrael9
Ou, seeing this nano texture in the video I'm seriously tempted. It just looks that much better and usable and I always had matte computers until Apple decided to stop them. My last matte was 2011 (I believe) 17" MBP. Also had the 30" ACD which was of course matte too.
Hated the glossy style so I'm pleased with this and it does look amazing.
The question though - do i want to spend that much money on it :(
That is a tough one

27 inches of Matte.

How much do external Matte displays cost in general? I'm not sure on this.

To someone who absolutely *has* to have this. I'm sure it has 'great' value to them.

You could get the 5700 8 VRAM and offset the cost you would have payed for the 5700XT 16 VRAM against it.

Similarly by opting for the 8 core vs the 10 core.

The cost saving from both would see you close to the Nano glass.

Azrael.
 
The dies are the same but the clocking makes a substantive difference. The 580 sags from

"up to 6.2 TFLOPS"
https://www.amd.com/en/products/graphics/radeon-rx-580

to with Pro 580
" Peak up to 5.5 TFLOPS"

The 580X probably clawed a bit of that back, but there is much bigger gap there with the Polaris , 14nm (maybe 12nn in X case ) implementations and the Navi , 7nm solution.

Don't think I get your point. As you say RX 580 makes up to 6.2TFLOPs but Apple's Pro 580 makes 5.5. That confirms my statement that RX cards are faster than Pro. It also confirms that Pro 580/580X in iMac 2017/2019 are equal to Pro 5500XT in iMac 2020 that makes up to 5.3 TFLOPs. The recent tests shows however that Pro 5300 in iMac is faster than Pro 580X. So Pro 5500XT in top iMac should be even faster and not equal as I wrote. That may be due to far more downclocked cards in iMac 2017/2019 which makes this year's cards look better. Remember I only talked about FP32 performance. :)
 
It's also weird how he sais this machine is not future proof. This iMac will run as a decent PC for a long time, even if Apple would phase out intel supported updates of MacOS, xCode, Final Cut and alike in five years (wich i don't think they will, despite every "invite me to events Apple pwueas" YouTube suggesting life ends with ARM).
[automerge]1596734133[/automerge]

This Intel iMac has at least two OS updates in it. And 5 in general use. And probably 7 years in legacy support.

And by then, AS Macs will have buried this one in performance.

As we say, this will run as a decent PC unobstructed for those 7 years.

It's going to be another year before 10 core becomes mainstream.

6-8 cores is generally seen in PC shops. It will be a while before 16 gig of Vram goes mainstream too.

4k gaming is nowhere near mainstream. Ergo my advice to anyone running this iMac?

Just run gaming in HD with as much loveliness in your settings as you can balance.

AS Macs won't have bootcamp.

So they won't have that 'double' or 'free PC inside...!" value.

So the legacy ammortisation is largely muted by Bootcamp.

Either way. As someone who needed an iMac...I can now watch the transition from a more relaxed vantage point.

The new Intel iMac is a decent value for those that need one. It's faster all around than the 2019 iMac. And you can get 'Nano' glass if you really want a matte screen iMac. Whoda thunk, eh?

If you don't need one you can sit this one out.

Azrael.
 
Decent post. GPU benchmark charts are always a big 'turn on' for me. Phwoar!!!!

Geekbench isn't robust. There are probably corner cases where the 580X works better than a Pro 5300/5500
But is does clearly show that the benchmarks in the Windows (typically skewed to Windows gaming) world don't define everything everywhere.


Did you see the Max video where he talks about the new gpus having better codec support for video rendering? Some of the benches he noted were x2/3 times better...?

At 5:16 here:

That is more about the T2 than the GPUs. And nice if want to primarily export to Youtube but step outside the gamut and bit rate parameters of the T2 fixed function logic then that isn't the end-all-be-all solution.

The DisplayPort Stream compress characterized as a codec. The utility of two 6K XDR versus one is probably lost on those who are buying zero XDR. Hooking two XDRs and a 5K display to a Pro 5300 GB isn't going to fly. (neither for a 5500 XT).

He is probably oversell the Pro 5700 XT. That is not going to be what the Windows PC card is for most apps. If can stuff a substantial amount of workload into the expanded VRAM can probably open gap but there is a catch 22 on being bracketed by the iMac enclosure also. It should do well (versus a 3 year old machine), but probably gong to select what want to to get to the "destroy" classification.


The 5300. (It is a step forward!) No shame in that or a hyperthreaded 6 core.

It is a more than decent upgrade for folks who have been sitting on an iMac 27" since 2016 or before. Probably good for most folks on a 2017 . A 2019? No. But that is a bit normal.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Azrael9
Don't think I get your point. As you say RX 580 makes up to 6.2TFLOPs but Apple's Pro 580 makes 5.5. That confirms my statement that RX cards are faster than Pro. It also confirms that Pro 580/580X in iMac 2017/2019 are equal to Pro 5500XT in iMac 2020 that makes up to 5.3 TFLOPs. The recent tests shows however that Pro 5300 in iMac is faster than Pro 580X. So Pro 5500XT in top iMac should be even faster and not equal as I wrote. That may be due to far more downclocked cards in iMac 2017/2019 which makes this year's cards look better. Remember I only talked about FP32 performance. :)

Is there a way to get GPU frequency on macOS ? iStat Menu doesn't give me this information on my 750M, only Intel iGPU and CPU frequency are reported.
 
So there it is.
And if they also embed RAM in the SoC, with the Unified memory architecture, as they say, then we will have to pay a good extra for it... in advance. Soldered ssd and invisible Ram for the AS iMacs, will they have some RAM slots?
If not, no escape then, no Crucial, no options... also forget the slightest repair.

Well. They may offer 16, 32 and 64 stock options?

There are worse fates.

At least the new AS iMac will have 16 gig as standard? Or a super efficient 8 gigs. :p

Azrael.
 
See my post, but no, this kit is not compatible.

this one work @pldelisle ?

 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
What’s the feeling on gaming via Bootcamp on this new iMac? Presumably you’d need to go up from the base model with its 5300 GPU?

I’m talking about games like Football Manager, Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo. The last 2 are Windows only so I’m either going to need to play them on this iMac via Bootcamp, or get a Windows machine alongside the AS iMac.

To get the 5500XT model is £2299 in the UK which is a fair bit more than I’d hoped to pay but may work out cheaper than the alternative 2 machine approach...
Apparently 5300 is faster than 580X but you should at least buy 5500XT if you can. 3.8 GHz is also better for gaming because it has the highest base speed.
 
Don't think I get your point. As you say RX 580 makes up to 6.2TFLOPs but Apple's Pro 580 makes 5.5. That confirms my statement that RX cards are faster than Pro.

The RX 580 is dropping by about 11% and the 5500 XT are dropping by 2%. You are trying to use the Windows benchmarks to so that they make a good proxy for compares. if one side of the equations drops by 11% and the other side drops by 2% then the comparison is going to be skewed. It would only be a good proxy if the drop was roughly the same. ( e.g. 2% drop and a 3% drop or both were 1.5% ). Here the drop is pragmatically about an order of magnitude different. That is not a reasonable foundation to do a comparison because introducing other factors when you do the proxy "mapping".

Throw in on top the underlying architectures and optimizations are shifting and there is even more noise in the "proxy compare".
 
I'd push for the 5700 if I wanted to do a bit of gaming.

Though the 5500xt on the tier 3 should be more than ample for HD gaming.

Azrael.
 
this one work @pldelisle ?


See https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/will-a-redesigned-imac-arrive-in-2020.2184301/post-28747785
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
Mark your calendars. June 2021 is closer than you think.

But not as close as June 2020, which is what all these yahoos were tweeting claiming a WWDC 2020 reveal. :p:rolleyes:

Hopefully it will not be that long, but I'm not feeling constrained by my 2017 5K so when it happens, it happens and I can make my decision to do one more round with Intel or move to Apple Silicon.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: anthony13

Sound!

'See what I got, I gotta hell of a lot...tell me what you feel, is it real, is it real?' Freddie.

Azrael.
That was a lazy review. 12 min and no benchmarks at all, nothing about heat and fan noise, and he has almost 3mn subs. I guess that's when you get lazy...
 
So which tier are you going to get?

Nobody likes an iMac more than me...apart from my wife...and a few of her friends...

Azrael.
If I go that route it would likely be the 3rd tier with a 1 TB SSD and additional 3rd party RAM. My 2015 is an i7 has a 512GB SSD and an upgraded 4GB GPU. Not sure how much of a performance gain I would really see. A relative just picked up the stock Tier 3 yesterday from a local Apple store. He's waiting on extra RAM. Actually said he was surprised that he didn't see a huge performance gain over his 2015 Macbook Pro, but I personally think it is because he isn't pushing it yet and needs more RAM. He does some video and photo stuff and I have a hard time believing the machine wouldn't smoke his older laptop.
 
The Pro 5300 seems to be holding its own versus the 580X here. These windows GPU card databases aren't the most accurate proxies for compares into the iMac space.
Windows database? I have used AMD's own numbers about Apple's Pro cards. Yes, the recent tests shows that Pro 5300 in iMac is faster than Pro 580X. So Pro 5500XT in top iMac should be even faster and not equal as I wrote. That may be due to far more downclocked cards in iMac 2017/2019 which makes this year's cards look better. Remember I only talked about FP32 performance.
 
Is there a way to get GPU frequency on macOS ? iStat Menu doesn't give me this information on my 750M, only Intel iGPU and CPU frequency are reported.
Don't know. There are no Mac versions of AMD software, only Windows. Maybe via Bootcamp?
 
Last edited:
Is there a way to get GPU frequency on macOS ? iStat Menu doesn't give me this information on my 750M, only Intel iGPU and CPU frequency are reported.
Don't think so. There are no Mac versions, only Windows. Maybe via Bootcamp?

iStat Menu's does. It may just not be able to detect the 750M.
Screen Shot 2020-08-06 at 2.20.57 PM.png
 
  • Like
Reactions: pldelisle
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.