Should I wait until Skylake chipset or purchase now?

jeepit92 · Apr 30, 2015

I currently have a 2007 Mac Pro that I use for everyday useage. The main work I do on my computer (use to do because it's now a dinosaur)is photo & video editing. I have done my research and I have come down to choosing the iMac 27" Retina with 4.0 mgz, 8gig (to be upgraded to 32gig) after the purchase, 512SSD, 295X graphics card and track pad. Plan on purchasing a combo SSHD 2TB, blu-Ray,DVD burner, sdxc card reader with usb hub unit. This will hold all the photo and video work.
First question- will the 512SSD be big enough for the internal HD for everyday useage?- Internet, email
I have researched the upcoming chipset and I don't have the expertise in this area to make a well informed decision if I should wait for them or go ahead and purchase. I also don't know if Skylake will be that improved over Broadwell in performance that would justify the expense and TIME that would be needed to wait for the release of Skylake.
Second question- should I wait or not?
Any advice/suggestions/beliefs on how or what manner to progress would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You

Huddy · May 1, 2015

Forget Broadwell we're only going to see two mainstream desktop CPU's but they will contain IGPU, so unless Apple decided they want to drop dedicated graphic cards from the Imac line were not getting Broadwell iMac's.

Skylake at this point has turned out as a bit of a disappointment from the leaked benchmarks, sure it's an increase over Haswell but only ~10-15% real world performance, even 6 months ago a lot more was expected of Skylake, blame lack of market competition for that one. What will be interesting is whether Apple go for the 95w, 65w or even 35w parts, Skylake offers some interesting low wattage options for reducing thermals whilst still offering good Turboboost clocks and 4cores/8threads, the i7 6700T looks very interesting.

At this point if you have a working machine you may as well wait for the iMac refresh which will at a guess be around Sept/Oct this year, if you're desperate to upgrade now Haswell will see you good for a number of years.

Fishrrman · May 1, 2015

The old saying goes, if you NEED it "now", BUY it now.

If you don't mind waiting 6-12 more months, I believe the next round of iMacs will offer some very nice improvements, mainly in the area of support for external displays.

4k video support "as a standard" should be coming soon in the Mac lineup...

Melodeath · May 1, 2015

If you can wait, I would wait. I think Skylake will also bring Thunderbolt 3. In theory, that would allow the 5k imac to be used as a display, I believe. I could be wrong on all of this.

Unfortunately, my 5-year old MBP might not be able to hang on until September/October

Ledgem · May 2, 2015

Melodeath said:
If you can wait, I would wait. I think Skylake will also bring Thunderbolt 3. In theory, that would allow the 5k imac to be used as a display, I believe. I could be wrong on all of this.

Thunderbolt 3, and support for the DisplayPort 1.3 protocol. DisplayPort 1.2 lacks the bandwidth to drive a 5K display from a single port, which is believed to be the reason why the retina iMac can't be used as an external display.

In other words, Skylake is expected to bring about some features beyond a mere speed boost. If you're interested in "future-proofing" as much as possible, this is definitely worth waiting for. But, as said above, the old saying is as true as ever: get it if you need it now, but if you can wait, then wait.

johnnyturbouk · May 4, 2015

Ledgem said:
Thunderbolt 3, and support for the DisplayPort 1.3 protocol. DisplayPort 1.2 lacks the bandwidth to drive a 5K display from a single port, which is believed to be the reason why the retina iMac can't be used as an external display.

In other words, Skylake is expected to bring about some features beyond a mere speed boost. If you're interested in "future-proofing" as much as possible, this is definitely worth waiting for. But, as said above, the old saying is as true as ever: get it if you need it now, but if you can wait, then wait.

Completely agree, have been saying this for a while. It will also include pci-express 3 [i think] HDMI 2.0, DP 1.3, USB 3.1

see this thread

scottish · May 4, 2015

We have a 2007 iMac which is probably overdue replacement (have been considering it for about 6 months) but I have decided to hold out until the next upgrade for all the reasons mentioned above.

Also hoping that the base SSD increases to 512GB which would mean one less thing to consider - 256GB is a bit small and don't really want to return to HDD having used SSD on the 2007 iMac and my MBP.

dyn · May 5, 2015

Huddy said:
Skylake at this point has turned out as a bit of a disappointment from the leaked benchmarks, sure it's an increase over Haswell but only ~10-15% real world performance, even 6 months ago a lot more was expected of Skylake, blame lack of market competition for that one.

No blame unrealistic expectations and not knowing that chipmakers are aiming for efficiency and less energy usage instead of performance. The only market where performance increases is the one for smartphones and tablets. For computers the aim is for more efficiency and less power usage and it has been that way ever since Intel started the Core/Centrino thing. Since then performance increases are around 15%.

That also answers the question if Skylake is nicer to have compared to the current offerings: yes it is if you are buying a notebook, no it isn't if you're buying a desktop (unless you want to have a more energy efficient machine).

What will be interesting is what Apple is going to use as the GPU and whether they'll go with TB3, DP1.3 and/or equip the machine with USB-C.

Pieterr · May 5, 2015

dyn said:
What will be interesting is what Apple is going to use as the GPU....

980M would be nice.

Inksworth · May 5, 2015

Pieterr said:
980M would be nice.

That gets me on board, if nothing else. Haha.

jdiamond · May 5, 2015

I hope you are right about Displayport 1.3...

johnnyturbouk said:
Completely agree, have been saying this for a while. It will also include pci-express 3 [i think] HDMI 2.0, DP 1.3, USB 3.1

see this thread

Last I checked, TB3 only supported Displayport 1.2a, although it did add HDMI 2.0. Displayport 1.3 support isn't even on the official roadmap for Thunderbolt, thought they are expected to evntually add it.

I was *really* disappointed when Intel pulled AVX 3x from non-Xeon Skylakes.

MacNerd1239 · May 6, 2015

Inksworth said:
That gets me on board, if nothing else. Haha.

Definitely the same boat here. I'm waiting to see what the CPU and GPU performance increases will be, attempting to switch back over from a PC here and don't want to have to leave the PC running all the time for tasks like gaming.

My hope is in the end I will be able to phase out my PC entirely, but I'm not quite sure that will be possible. Hoping Apple proves me wrong with whatever they come out with this year

johnnyturbouk · May 6, 2015

jdiamond said:
Last I checked, TB3 only supported Displayport 1.2a, although it did add HDMI 2.0. Displayport 1.3 support isn't even on the official roadmap for Thunderbolt, thought they are expected to evntually add it.

I was *really* disappointed when Intel pulled AVX 3x from non-Xeon Skylakes.

Not that I do not believe you, but do you have an article / citation skylake would be limited to DP 1.2a?

I was under the impression skylake would support TB3 +DP 1.3
which will drive x2 4k screen@60hz, or a 5K screen ,with 40gb/s

From wiki article

expected enhancements include PCI Express 3.0 [possibly 4.0, later with E-model])Thunderbolt 3.0, SATA Express, Iris Pro graphics with Direct3D feature level 12.0 with up to 128 MB of L4 eDRAM cache on certain SKUs

from this site

Intel’s Skylake architecture will bring a number of new features to the table, including higher Instructions per clock (IPC), Thunderbolt 3.0 support (‘Alpine Ridge’ models only), DDR4 memory and native SATA Express.

Read more: http://vr-zone.com/articles/unlocke...ving-by-q3-this-year/86221.html#ixzz3ZOTLshDr

Another source
http://wccftech.com/intels-6th-generation-skylake-processors-scheduled-2h-2015-5th-generation-broadwell-spring-15-updates-2015-2016-mobility-roadmap/

DisplayPort 1.3 cables that will work nicely for powering new 4K and 5K displays over a Thunderbolt input on newer Macs. T

wiki article on TB

Thunderbolt 3 controller (codenamed Alpine Ridge) will double the bandwidth to 40 Gbit/s (5 GB/s), halve power consumption, and simultaneously drive two external 4K displays (or a single external 5K display) instead of just the single one current controllers can drive. The new controller will support PCIe 3.0 and other protocols, including HDMI 2.0 (allowing for 4K resolutions at 60 Hz), and DisplayPort 1.3

another source

crsh1976 · May 7, 2015

Pieterr said:
980M would be nice.

By the time the Skylake iMacs are out, the 980M will be effectively an old GPU.. Whatever comes next would be best.

Pieterr · May 7, 2015

crsh1976 said:
By the time the Skylake iMacs are out, the 980M will be effectively an old GPU...

Or Apple stays with AMD an puts a R9 M380 in.

johnnyturbouk · May 8, 2015

Pieterr said:
Or Apple stays with AMD an puts a R9 M380 in.

Dear god no, without sounding like a nvidia sheep, fresh out of the echo chamber, from personal experience, have always had issues with amds GPUs

johannnn · May 14, 2015

Has anyone ever complained about the CPU in the current retina iMac? All I want is a improved GPU, that's for sure the bottleneck.

fathergll · May 15, 2015

jeepit92 said:
First question- will the 512SSD be big enough for the internal HD for everyday useage?- Internet, email

Yes

Second question- should I wait or not?

?? Nobody can answer this since we don't know whats coming in the fall. Rule of thumb is if your current setup is slow and costing you time/money then buy now.

xgman · May 18, 2015

Is it possible that Skylake will be out early with this Wednesday rumor? Seems very unlikely...

DamnDJ · May 18, 2015

xgman said:
Is it possible that Skylake will be out early with this Wednesday rumor? Seems very unlikely...

Fairly sure they will be Broadwell.

dagamer34 · May 18, 2015

xgman said:
Is it possible that Skylake will be out early with this Wednesday rumor? Seems very unlikely...

Skylake this year will be Core M, much like Broadwell last year only meant Core M.

xmichaelp · May 18, 2015

Skylake is pretty much pointless on a desktop. The only thing I'd worry about is GPU.

thekev · May 18, 2015

Huddy said:
Forget Broadwell we're only going to see two mainstream desktop CPU's but they will contain IGPU, so unless Apple decided they want to drop dedicated graphic cards from the Imac line were not getting Broadwell iMac's.

The imacs currently contain IGPs that are turned off. The cheapest imac uses it. The rest have them disabled and instead use NVidia graphics, although they might just be using something like HD 5000s or whatever model rather than one of the Iris branded variants.

Samuelsan2001 · May 19, 2015

Not turned off!!

thekev said:
The imacs currently contain IGPs that are turned off. The cheapest imac uses it. The rest have them disabled and instead use NVidia graphics, although they might just be using something like HD 5000s or whatever model rather than one of the Iris branded variants.

OSX swithes to the most appropriate graphics card as needed.

thekev · May 19, 2015

Samuelsan2001 said:
OSX swithes to the most appropriate graphics card as needed.

Not in the imacs. That behavior is exclusive to the macbook pros. If you look it up, you'll also see that the IGPs aren't mentioned on the imacs aside from the cheapest one. Look up the cpus and they are included. The cpus that don't include them are the enthusiast class ones, which aren't used in the imac. They retain that behavior on the macbook pros to retain battery life, which isn't an issue on an imac. If you have access to one, you'll also notice that system preferences won't contain a box to enable or disable graphics switching.

Should I wait until Skylake chipset or purchase now?

macrumors newbie

macrumors member

macrumors Penryn

macrumors 6502a

macrumors 68020

macrumors 68000

macrumors 6502a

macrumors 68030

macrumors regular

macrumors regular

macrumors 6502a

macrumors member

macrumors 68000

macrumors 68000

macrumors regular

macrumors 68000

macrumors 68020

macrumors 68000

macrumors 603

macrumors 6502

macrumors 65816

macrumors 68000

macrumors 604

macrumors 604

macrumors 604

Our Staff