I’m looking at possibly replacing my 2014 iMac and I was just wondering if the 580X is worth the extra money over the 575X. I’ve tried to dig up some comparison data but I’m having no luck. The only game I would really play on it is WoW...so not terribly taxing but I would like to have some decent settings with at least around 60fps if possible.
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2019 iMac GPU differences 575X vs. 580X
- Thread starter largefarrva
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Yeah I’ve noticed the RAM difference, but was just wondering if the performance is really worth the extra cost.
I searched around and this was the best I could come up with as far as numbers go.
GPU User Benchmarks 575X page gives an average score of 44%. It's a weird way to report a scoring system, but if you go to the website you'll see FPS values given for their specific tests. Note that it's only based on three user benchmarks, which is a pretty poor sample size.
By comparison, their page for the 580X has a score of 48.6%, based on 22 user benchmarks.
Looking at FPS data, it seems they do DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 tests of some sort. The 575X seems to have scores in the 170's FPS for DX9 and 130's for DX10, whereas the 580X is in the 190-200's for DX9 and mid-140's for DX10. It doesn't seem terribly significant to me, but it's a difference.
Apple doesn't allow you to swap just those two graphics cards, so you're also looking at getting a CPU speed bump of 600 MHz and a doubling of your storage space from 1 TB to 2 TB (assuming you stick with the default Fusion drives) if you want the better graphics card, with the upgrade cost being $300 USD. On one hand, looking at it that way, it's not a bad deal. On the other hand, it could still be a waste of money.
My recommendation? If you don't care about the processor or storage space changes that would come along with the better graphics card, get the 575X. The reason I say it is because you'll be able to use external GPUs with your new system. They're relatively pricey and still a little bit cludgy, depending on the way that you go about it, but costs will go down with time and support - which is already very usable - will improve as well. Hopefully the 575X would be sufficient for the immediate future (and I can't imagine why it shouldn't, given your stated needs), but looking a few years down the road you'll be able to use an eGPU that would outclass any GPU option Apple offers today. (An eGPU with a high-end card would already outperform either the 575X or 580X, but I'm thinking in terms of value and extending the life of your system down the road.) Save the money now, and put it toward that upgrade in a few years.
GPU User Benchmarks 575X page gives an average score of 44%. It's a weird way to report a scoring system, but if you go to the website you'll see FPS values given for their specific tests. Note that it's only based on three user benchmarks, which is a pretty poor sample size.
By comparison, their page for the 580X has a score of 48.6%, based on 22 user benchmarks.
Looking at FPS data, it seems they do DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 tests of some sort. The 575X seems to have scores in the 170's FPS for DX9 and 130's for DX10, whereas the 580X is in the 190-200's for DX9 and mid-140's for DX10. It doesn't seem terribly significant to me, but it's a difference.
Apple doesn't allow you to swap just those two graphics cards, so you're also looking at getting a CPU speed bump of 600 MHz and a doubling of your storage space from 1 TB to 2 TB (assuming you stick with the default Fusion drives) if you want the better graphics card, with the upgrade cost being $300 USD. On one hand, looking at it that way, it's not a bad deal. On the other hand, it could still be a waste of money.
My recommendation? If you don't care about the processor or storage space changes that would come along with the better graphics card, get the 575X. The reason I say it is because you'll be able to use external GPUs with your new system. They're relatively pricey and still a little bit cludgy, depending on the way that you go about it, but costs will go down with time and support - which is already very usable - will improve as well. Hopefully the 575X would be sufficient for the immediate future (and I can't imagine why it shouldn't, given your stated needs), but looking a few years down the road you'll be able to use an eGPU that would outclass any GPU option Apple offers today. (An eGPU with a high-end card would already outperform either the 575X or 580X, but I'm thinking in terms of value and extending the life of your system down the road.) Save the money now, and put it toward that upgrade in a few years.
I was just looking at the eGPU stuff just now, and that is a very good point. Unfortunately our 2014 iMacs don’t have thunderbolt 3 so it’s not an option for us right now, but will be in a few years if we upgrade.
Looking at the fusion drives, the 2TB and 3TB fusion drives have much larger SSD drives associated with them than the 1TB that we have now so even that is a big upgrade as well. I’ve been saying for a while now that I wish we had SSD in our current iMacs because it seems sluggish loading things sometimes. I was looking at making the only upgrade for the time being going from the base 2TB fusion to the 512 SSD, but with the 2TB fusion having 128GB of SSD it wouldn’t be necessary. I would almost be willing to bet that everything that we have on our iMacs right now would fit on the 128GB portion of the fusion drive (we don’t use them for much of anything anymore).
Memory upgrades can be done for cheaper elsewhere than what Apple charges to expand the memory....so that’s something we wouldn’t have to do right away either.
To me, the 3.1/575 model is the middle child, and perhaps not in the good sense.
The 3.0/570 is cheaper, not much slower, and more commonly discounted. Perhaps a deal can be worked out with the other fellow wavering whether to keep their BB price-mistake unit. Otherwise, $200 discounts come around pretty frequently. Fewer buy the 3.1, so it's not stocked as often, and sees little sale or promotional activity.
The 3.7/580 brings even more to the table, and is readily available as a refurb for $50 less than a brand new 3.1. Faster, 9th gen processor, 128GB SSD in the 2TB Fusion, double the memory for the video card. That's not a hard choice to make.
The 3.0/570 is cheaper, not much slower, and more commonly discounted. Perhaps a deal can be worked out with the other fellow wavering whether to keep their BB price-mistake unit. Otherwise, $200 discounts come around pretty frequently. Fewer buy the 3.1, so it's not stocked as often, and sees little sale or promotional activity.
The 3.7/580 brings even more to the table, and is readily available as a refurb for $50 less than a brand new 3.1. Faster, 9th gen processor, 128GB SSD in the 2TB Fusion, double the memory for the video card. That's not a hard choice to make.
You're more likely to find a VRAM bottleneck if you rerun those benchmarks at 1440p or 2880p. The difference between 130p and 140p can't be seen on a imac display. The difference between 60 fps, and 48 fps is more noticeable.