Will there ever be a new large iMac (Pro)?

[iPadified]

Your just have find out what the better part is . If you have a sufficient setup now, wait. I could not because my MBP was not cutting it for extended work from home. If it was not COVID times, and less home work, I would and could have waited.

Good for you. I had iPhone 6 till this year when I finally changed it for SE2. Couldn't be happier as I prefer touchID and overall its a great phone for awesome price.
I did check the iPhone Mini yesterday and to be honest I was impressed. It feels great in the hand. But because I'm like you and I keep my phone for a long time I think I will start to think about an upgrade probably 2023 or 2024 the earliest.

Part of me would love to get the Intel iMac and be done with the waiting but I really know I would regret that decision as soon as Apple showed us the AS iMac. Its tough spot to be in right now as the transition will take a while but buying Intel just doesn't feel right to me. Even though I would love to get a fast computer

Hahahahah, I'm so conflicted but the better part of me has to win

 

[Freida]

I have 2017 MBP which will do. Its not the best but I'm sure I can squeeze another year out of this even though most of the times its like a turbine about to die and hot as hell

Yeah, Covid changed tons of our plans and the year sux. Can't wait for 2021 which will hopefully be better.

Your just have find out what the better part is . If you have a sufficient setup now, wait. I could not because my MBP was not cutting it for extended work from home. If it was not COVID times, and less home work, I would and could have waited.

 

[ravinder08]

I think I'm still going for a 2020 iMac i9 with 5700 XT. I can't wait very long, and I need weird third party and VM support. But also apart from that: I'm a music producer, and I saw in numerous tests that this i9 machine outperforms the M1 machines in large projects with a lot of third party plugins by roughly 2.5 - 3 times. I don't think a lower end AS iMac, if it comes out somewhere in the first half of 2021, will beat that. And I don't think they will release a high-end iMac so short after they released the last one, definitely not before well in the second half of 2021, maybe even 2022.

If they do, I keep wondering about how that will compare to the 2020 i9 iMac with the 5700 XT. Of course, it's wild guessing for now. But I have the feeling that, also in general when making an new chip, it's easier to blow away an 8th gen i3 than it will be to blow away a 10th gen i9 with high end graphics card. Sure, Apple will make sure it beats it, but I don't think by margins we have seen so far in the lower regions. What do you guys think?

I've been waiting for an iMac for a while now, I want to keep my machine for a long time, currently have a late 2012 27"iMac. If you plan on keeping you machine for a long time might be best to wait.

 

[ravinder08]

Not regretting my 2020 iMac purchase at all right now. It wouldn’t surprise me if we didnt see the larger frame apple silicon iMac until 2022 at this point. That’d be about a year and a half between updates and iMac’s have gone longer than that before. Regardless, the machine i have is a beast for my workflow, and more importantly it’s the machine i needed now. I’ll love the next one regardless I’m sure, but for now, this iMac is making me money in a very stalled industry and thats not nothing. View attachment 1678316

congrats on the new machine! nice set up

 

[krazzix]

anytime soon? Have you not been around for the last 2 weeks? Have you not seen what low end chip can do? When AS iMac hits it will hit hard and Lifuka will have the same impact performance surprise as M1 did. I wouldn't be surprised to see 5700 XT performance or better. Before the november event I was sceptical and didn't think Apple could hit such numbers on the first go but now? I'm certain that the iMac will not only surpass the 2020 model but it will do so why being super silent and super cool.

Oh sure the performance is great for those machines, but we don't know how well they scale up. Personally I think they'll smash the competition, but I still like to see some benchmarks first. And 5700XT performance is one thing, but there's also the 6900XT now, and let's not forget the RTX 3080. I'm not saying Apple needs to beat those, but at least they should be competitive with any mid range GPU.

But that's not even the point. The point is that there are very few AAA titles available for the Mac. Developers still need to have enough incentive to port their games to MacOS. Mac users are generally not gamers and Macs still have a single digit market share. This could change of course because of these massive power gains.

Another possibility is that other PC manufacturers will also start switching to ARM and that Windows on ARM will start to become serious. In that case developers will have to develop for Windows ARM. Then Bootcamp might make its return and we would be back at where we are now. Which would also be fine by me ?

 

[Freida]

I agree, you are right. I think AS will actually give Apple more developers than if they were stuck on Intel.
iOS market is huge and if its uniformed and now it goes to Mac also, its probably much bigger incentive than Intel.
I would be ok if Apple matched 5700XT at least. Its not the best but its an ok midrange card but with the new thermals and better cooling, it would give us much better overall product. Now that we know that CPU will be much cooler, if we get the same from Lifuka and we get at least 5700XT performance then I think we are golden.
These days I just have to resist the urge to get Mac Mini :-D

Oh sure the performance is great for those machines, but we don't know how well they scale up. Personally I think they'll smash the competition, but I still like to see some benchmarks first. And 5700XT performance is one thing, but there's also the 6900XT now, and let's not forget the RTX 3080. I'm not saying Apple needs to beat those, but at least they should be competitive with any mid range GPU.

But that's not even the point. The point is that there are very few AAA titles available for the Mac. Developers still need to have enough incentive to port their games to MacOS. Mac users are generally not gamers and Macs still have a single digit market share. This could change of course because of these massive power gains.

Another possibility is that other PC manufacturers will also start switching to ARM and that Windows on ARM will start to become serious. In that case developers will have to develop for Windows ARM. Then Bootcamp might make its return and we would be back at where we are now. Which would also be fine by me ?

 

[iPadified]

I agree, you are right. I think AS will actually give Apple more developers than if they were stuck on Intel.
iOS market is huge and if its uniformed and now it goes to Mac also, its probably much bigger incentive than Intel.
I would be ok if Apple matched 5700XT at least. Its not the best but its an ok midrange card but with the new thermals and better cooling, it would give us much better overall product. Now that we know that CPU will be much cooler, if we get the same from Lifuka and we get at least 5700XT performance then I think we are golden.
These days I just have to resist the urge to get Mac Mini :-D

They could split the GPU from the M1 and make a desktop CPU/Neural engine plus a dedicated GPU setup to gain modularity. However, an improved M1X with 32 core GPU (would be near 5700 XT in metal) and higher TDP is possible. Use 8 CPU performance cores and we have a nice iMac chip at perhaps 60-80W. This would be for the large iMac. The iMac 24 will likely have a smaller "laptop" M1 variant.

 

[krazzix]

5700XT performance is great, but by the time the AS high end iMac will be released we'll be close to AMD's RDNA 3 GPU's release date. If they are 50% faster than RDNA2, then a theoretical 7700XT will be over 2x faster than a 5700XT.

 

[Freida]

I'm just curious to see what they do with Lifuka and M1X in general. Their whole concept for M1 was the unified memory so I wonder how they will go about it with proper GPU (Lifuka) and higher core counts. Are we going to get a bigger chip? Is that physically possible or are there limits ?

They could split the GPU from the M1 and make a desktop CPU/Neural engine plus a dedicated GPU setup to gain modularity. However, an improved M1X with 32 core GPU (would be near 5700 XT in metal) and higher TDP is possible. Use 8 CPU performance cores and we have a nice iMac chip at perhaps 60-80W. This would be for the large iMac. The iMac 24 will likely have a smaller "laptop" M1 variant.

 

[Freida]

Yes, you are right. However, we can agree that 5700XT is the minimum they need to go for, right?

5700XT performance is great, but by the time the AS high end iMac will be released we'll be close to AMD's RDNA 3 GPU's release date. If they are 50% faster than RDNA2, then a theoretical 7700XT will be over 2x faster than a 5700XT.

 

[CWallace]

I'm just curious to see what they do with Lifuka and M1X in general. Their whole concept for M1 was the unified memory so I wonder how they will go about it with proper GPU (Lifuka) and higher core counts. Are we going to get a bigger chip? Is that physically possible or are there limits?

Compared to the die area of a 28-core Xeon, the M1 is tiny, so Apple has a fair bit of room to work with. And the Playstation 5 and XBox Series X have massive Navi 21 GPUs on their SoC packages, so it should be possible for Apple to mate a massive GPU section to a more powerful M-series SoC compute core for the "iMac Pro" and Mac Pro.

Just finished the latest Accidental Tech Podcast and they discussed this very topic ( "M1 Scaling" is the chapter title ) and they noted Apple could just go with a larger die or have the GPU core off the SoC but still part of the package connected with a high-speed bus to the SoC and the UMA.

 

[Moonjumper]

I'm just curious to see what they do with Lifuka and M1X in general. Their whole concept for M1 was the unified memory so I wonder how they will go about it with proper GPU (Lifuka) and higher core counts. Are we going to get a bigger chip? Is that physically possible or are there limits ?

I've been thinking about this as well. The only thing I have come up with is putting the GPU the opposite side of the RAM and connecting in to the memory from there. I have no idea if this is practical.

 

[xgman]

My experience so far with an M1 MBP is mixed. Anything needing Rosetta seems to have an initial struggle to get going and this feeling like things aren't just quite right. right now for instance, can't even get an at work zoom meeting going, which connects fine on an ipad or imac. basically I think it still has a long way to go, but yes much potential.

 

[Freida]

How does the speed etc. feel when it works fine? Is there a difference between Intel and M1 in terms of "feel"?

My experience so far with an M1 MBP is mixed. Anything needing Rosetta seems to have an initial struggle to get going and this feeling like things aren't just quite right. right now for instance, can't even get an at work zoom meeting going, which connects fine on an ipad or imac. basically I think it still has a long way to go, but yes much potential.

 

[iPadified]

Compared to the die area of a 28-core Xeon, the M1 is tiny, so Apple has a fair bit of room to work with. And the Playstation 5 and XBox Series X have massive Navi 21 GPUs on their SoC packages, so it should be possible for Apple to mate a massive GPU section to a more powerful M-series SoC compute core for the "iMac Pro" and Mac Pro.

Just finished the latest Accidental Tech Podcast and they discussed this very topic ( "M1 Scaling" is the chapter title ) and they noted Apple could just go with a larger die or have the GPU core off the SoC but still part of the package connected with a high-speed bus to the SoC and the UMA.

By eye measure, it looks like a 32 core GPU 12 core and all other thing equal M1X would be roughly twice the size if M1. I believe the M1 is around 120mm^2 which is far from the high end GPU and Xeon at +700 mm^2. The about $500 10900k is 200mm^2 (really difficult to get good data on this) so about 200mm^2 chip are quite commonplace and doable. Interesting times ahead whatever you have on the desk now!

 

[krazzix]

Yes, you are right. However, we can agree that 5700XT is the minimum they need to go for, right?

Yeah, and a bit above that, of course they need to able to add a chart like this for the next version: https://www.apple.com/imac/#maxon-cinema-gallery-item-1

 

[Freida]

Oh yeah, well can we assume that we get 6800 performance? ;-)

Yeah, and a bit above that, of course they need to able to add a chart like this for the next version: https://www.apple.com/imac/#maxon-cinema-gallery-item-1

 

[xgman]

How does the speed etc. feel when it works fine? Is there a difference between Intel and M1 in terms of "fee

To be honest, it doesn't feel much different until Rosetta 2 start up with a non optimized app. then, upon first launch of the app, the mac seems to struggle badly with the initial setup, which seems to be only upon first launch of that app. After that, sort of ok, but I can tell there is some early adopter glitchiness lingering. Some of what I am reacting to may be Big Sur related. I'm just not yet sold, but for a first release I'd have to give it props. Could have been a disaster. I can see how this can evolve. Will be watching closely.

 

[Homy]

seems to struggle badly with the initial setup, which seems to be only upon first launch of that app.

If you had to translate your text to a new language you would be struggling the first time too. That's completely normal and even Apple has told that the first time it may take some time for Rosetta to translate the applications.

 

[CWallace]

I am kind of surprised how the 2020 iMac 5K has maintained long lead times for delivery since launch. Even now, it's a full month for the base i7/5500XT model with no BTO options.

On the plus side, it makes it easier for me to hold out for the M1 model.

 

[mtbdudex]

I am kind of surprised how the 2020 iMac 5K has maintained long lead times for delivery since launch. Even now, it's a full month for the base i7/5500XT model with no BTO options.

On the plus side, it makes it easier for me to hold out for the M1 model.

I agree ... I’ve got a late 2015 27” iMac i7 3TB, highest spec stuff.
It holding up quite well actually, but I’m looking for leapfrog performance not incremental.
Hence M1 seems perfect

 

[fireguy286]

Bloomberg: Apple Working on Next-Gen Apple Silicon Chips for MacBook Pro, iMacs, and Mac Pro Due to Launch Next Year

Apple is working on a series of new custom Apple silicon processors to power upgraded versions of the MacBook Pro, new iMacs, and a new Mac Pro for...

www.macrumors.com

 

[xgman]

yeah, that is promising news. hope developers get cracking on compatibility updates soon too.

 

[Freida]

Yeah, I've read it. It certainly looks very promising. Those numbers are making me drool

Bloomberg: Apple Working on Next-Gen Apple Silicon Chips for MacBook Pro, iMacs, and Mac Pro Due to Launch Next Year

Apple is working on a series of new custom Apple silicon processors to power upgraded versions of the MacBook Pro, new iMacs, and a new Mac Pro for...

www.macrumors.com

 

[Homy]

TFLOPS is not everything but the rumored 128-core GPU would be crazy fast. It would be faster than any GPU on the market, including GF 3090!!

M1 8 GPU cores 2.6 TFLOPS
M? 16 GPU cores 5.2 TFLOPS
M? 32 GPU cores 10.4 TFLOPS
M? 64 GPU cores 20.8 TFLOPS
M? 128 GPU cores 41.6 TFLOPS

Radeon Pro 5700 6.2 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 5700 XT 7.7 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro Vega II 14.06 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro Vega II Duo 2x14.06 TFLOPS
GF RTX 3060 14.2 TFLOPS
GF RTX 3060 Ti 16.2 TFLOPS
Radeon RX 6800 16.2 TFLOPS
GF RTX 3070 20.3 TFLOPS
Radeon RX 6800 XT 20.7 TFLOPS
Radeon RX 6900 XT 23 TFLOPS
GF RTX 3080 29.8 TFLOPS
GF RTX 3090 35.6 TFLOPS