2019 iMac 27 for Graphic Design

[Jimmy Mac]

Decided to buy myself a new 27 iMac for home work, but I’m not sure which represents the best value for money and was looking for some recommendations.

I’ll mostly be doing digital design, between Sketch, Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects. Perhaps in the future I’ll take up 3D work, but it’s not too much of a focus.

My main priority is that it runs snappy, though I’m assuming most models will be fine for my needs.

- is the i9 worth the upgrade?
- how much do GPUs differ between tiers? I figured the difference in performance would be negligible, but the price jump is significant

 

[Barney825]

From my experience with my new 2019 iMac 27 (3.7GHz 580X 1TB SSD 24GB RAM) it has been more than enough dealing with large layered photoshop files (2.5GB), things could be a little snappier but a 10% faster i9 wouldn’t warrant £300 for me. I was debating the i9 but glad I put the money towards more storage instead. The 3.7 i5 still beats/matches the top tier MacBook Pro, either way it’s plenty fast for single threaded use.

I can’t speak for Ae, I can’t imagine this would be an issue though. 3D modelling obviously would benefit from the i9 but realistically how much of your time is going to be dedicated to this? For Sketch, Ai and Ps I’m pretty sure the configuration I’ve got would be more than adequate. Also 24GB RAM has been perfect amount for my heavy Ps use.

Anyway hope that’s helpful and good luck with it!

 

[nihil0]

i9 is mostly useful for rendering of any kind (video, 3d scenes, using blur filters in Ps and so on) and multiple export of RAW to JPEG in LR. If that is your main use, you will hugely benefit from more cores and threads. If not, 6-core is enough. For working with large files you will mostly need lot of RAM and fast drive.

Regarding the GPU, the average difference between 575X and 580X is around 10-15% but 580X has 8 GB VRAM which is always useful. And lastly, once you decide to go for i9, the perfect cost-performance ratio is top tier with 580X because mid-tier upgrades are more expensive and you will end up with little difference but you will not enjoy benefit of faster GPU with more VRAM.