2017 iMac for Final Cut Pro X

[gian8989]

Not that I disagree with your post in general, but an eGPU doesn't usually work with the internal display.

OTOH, the 570 is at least as fast as the fastest GPU for the 2015 iMacs, so it's no slouch.

I am not sure but even if you won't be able to use eGPU to play game on internal display all software (FCPX included) should be able to take advantage of the external gpu (ex: when you export a video).
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I don't know the answer here, but I am planning to eventually edit 4k with my base model 27" iMac (i5/570, 512GB SSD) and don't see why it couldn't handle 4k editing smoothly considering you can always edit with proxies.

Of course this is just personal home video stuff at the moment, and I'm never on a deadline. If something is going to take some time to complete, it doesn't matter if it completes 30% or even 50% faster, as I'm usually walking away or working on something else for a while. I usually start an export of my project at the end of the night and go to bed without waiting for it to complete.

If I ever feel the limitations of the 570, I can get an eGPU which High Sierra will support. I'd rather put money into external gear that I can take with me to my next machine (waiting for the next-gen Mac Pro). The exception is that I think a pure SSD is worth the cost, even if it's just a 256GB that only fits your OS/apps and you have everything else external. The 1TB Fusion with it's 24GB SSD seems like a bad choice to me.

I also value low noise / heat / power usage, which is an area I'm guessing the i5/570 has an advantage in (would like to see these things measured, though). Personally I think the base model 27" i5/570 is the best value of all current Mac desktop machines. And of course buy 3rd party RAM with any of the 27" models to save quite a bit (in my case I bought 2x16GB for a total of 40GB RAM).

If you want a quiet machine even when cpu is 100% in use go for the i5.

 

[nilk]

Not that I disagree with your post in general, but an eGPU doesn't usually work with the internal display.

OTOH, the 570 is at least as fast as the fastest GPU for the 2015 iMacs, so it's no slouch.

True that eGPU won't help with rendering to the internal display. It will help with OpenCL, which FCP X does utilize, although I'm not sure which operations will benefit and if I'd really see a difference in my workflow (e.g. if an operation is CPU-bound, GPU is irrelevant anyway).

Barefeats tested out some eGPU combinations, but not with FCP X: http://barefeats.com/imac17egpu.html

Realistically, the 570 is probably going to be fine for my use cases, but it's nice to know eGPU is a possibility.

As a side note, eGPU gives you the possibility of NVidia cards with CUDA (which AMD cards don't have), and some software takes advantage of CUDA better than OpenCL (e.g. Adobe software).

 

[PJivan]

I don't know the answer here, but I am planning to eventually edit 4k with my base model 27" iMac (i5/570, 512GB SSD) and don't see why it couldn't handle 4k editing smoothly considering you can always edit with proxies.

Of course this is just personal home video stuff at the moment, and I'm never on a deadline. If something is going to take some time to complete, it doesn't matter if it completes 30% or even 50% faster, as I'm usually walking away or working on something else for a while. I usually start an export of my project at the end of the night and go to bed without waiting for it to complete.

If I ever feel the limitations of the 570, I can get an eGPU which High Sierra will support. I'd rather put money into external gear that I can take with me to my next machine (waiting for the next-gen Mac Pro). The exception is that I think a pure SSD is worth the cost, even if it's just a 256GB that only fits your OS/apps and you have everything else external. The 1TB Fusion with it's 24GB SSD seems like a bad choice to me.

I also value low noise / heat / power usage, which is an area I'm guessing the i5/570 has an advantage in (would like to see these things measured, though). Personally I think the base model 27" i5/570 is the best value of all current Mac desktop machines. And of course buy 3rd party RAM with any of the 27" models to save quite a bit (in my case I bought 2x16GB for a total of 40GB RAM).

It's much easier to add an external SSD then an external GPU, I don't understand the logic.
I don't think CUDA will work in Mac OS definitely not in FCPro X

 

[nilk]

It's much easier to add an external SSD then an external GPU, I don't understand the logic.
I don't think CUDA will work in Mac OS definitely not in FCPro X

tl;dr; Apple's internal SSD perform extremely well for the money, and faster boot/OS drive improves general performance of the machine more than a better GPU would. However, if this machine will be mainly for FCP X and not much else, maybe the better internal GPU is higher priority.

It's a question of priorities and what will benefit you right now. Currently, an external SSD that performs as well as the internal SSD would be very expensive for the same amount of storage -- Apple's prices for SSD are actually quite worth it for the performance you get (right now at least). I want the benefit of having a very fast SSD for at least on my OS/apps drive -- this would have the biggest impact on my general day-to-day us, and I want it right now, not at a later date. I could boot off an external SSD (which I would do if I had a 1TB Fusion Drive -- which would make the Fusion Drive a bit of a waste), but with my budget that's going to be a slower drive than the internal SSD. If I'm wrong here, point me to an external SSD option that in the same ballpark of speed and price. I think with the base model, spending $100 for the 256GB is worth it over than the 1TB (24GB SSD) Fusion Drive at least (whereas the 2TB/3TB Fusion are a bit better because they give you 128GB SSD).

With the GPU, the 570 is good enough for my purposes, and I don't care to spend for more performance right now as a better GPU only helps with specific operations in specific apps. In the future, eGPU will be Apple-supported through High Sierra. It's a bit rocky right now, but I'd expecting this will sort out over time and it'll be more obvious what options work well. Another thing: eGPU allows you to get a much better card than the 580 right now, and the options are only going to get better.

I can't speak for everyone, but I think getting the speed boost of Apple's internal drive for at least your OS/apps drive is a good idea and will be more of a benefit than a more powerful internal GPU. That might not be the case if you spend most of your time in FCP X, of course, and if you're a heavy FCP X might make sense to spend on on a better GPU.

If I had gotten the 575 or 580 model, I still would've gotten an internal SSD, so it's not an either/or choice for me, I would've just spent more money.

I have not heard that CUDA does not work on macOS. Any more info on that? Maybe not as well as other OSes? As far as I know it works on macOS: http://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/cuda-installation-guide-mac-os-x/index.html
I personally don't care about CUDA at the moment, but maybe other people might (e.g. Adobe app users).

 

[Ethosik]

Just my opinion but even 3tb fusion drive is not that big of a storage and you will eventually need another external hdd (if not for storage for backup). This new iMac has thunderbolt 3 so in 1-2 years we should see fast external 2tb ssd at decent price and at the same time you would have a fast internal ssd without the hdd noise and slowdown.

Not only that, spinning drives do not even saturate SATA 2. Unless they are in RAID or some configuration. Just a simple, single disk, the most I was able to get was 205 MB/s with a Western Digital Black 5TB which had higher cache than other drives. USB3 is good enough for external spinning drives, TB3 will be fine for a LONG LONG time.