2020 iMac Performance Problem?

[mahaha]

Hi all,
Well I have to say I’m a bit disappointed with our new iMacs performance but I’m wondering if I’m just missing something? I’m sure I am and hopefully someone will simply point out a silly thing we’re not realizing.

We’re coming off of 5,1 macpro’s, 6core, dual ssd in velocity cards with 32gb of ram. We’re a print and retouching studio. We were waiting for the new Macpro’s but simply can’t afford the new beasts as much as we wanted to. And as such, we were waiting for the 2020 iMacs to upgrade even though for us we hate the idea of the screen attached to the computer.

But I digress… so we purchased the new 10core machines, 72gb of ram (8gb originally and 2 32gb other world computing sticks), 1tb ssd and the low end video card as we figured for photoshop work the video card probably isn’t going to make that big of a difference especially coming off of an 8+ year old machine that had far less of a video card.

Previously when we would upgrade machines we would notice a nice increase in speed and responsiveness - that realization of what we’ve been missing. Not so much here. Yes things in the finder are a bit snappier, but not a lot. We’ve seen the beach ball several times working even on smaller files. I was working in inDesign the other day on a simply thumbnail document with a small amount of text after each image and a beach ball would show up for a few seconds every time I selected a block of text. In illustrator it’s very similar. Photoshop just doesn’t feel supper snappy and kind of doggish. We’ve allocated around 45gb or so to photoshop’s memory fyi, history is set to 10 states… We had only about 20 or so allocated on our macpros.

I realize this isn’t much to go on, but last night I was trying to transfer our web design folder from the iMac to our server. Sure there were say 95k files in there, but the iMac literally took 2hrs to prepare to copy and was still preparing when I finally booted up our old Mac Pro and it took 30 seconds or so to prepare to copy and another minute or two to copy if that. The folder was only just under 1gb.

I’ve watched the activity monitor while I was in inDesign, it was using 4% of it’s resources yet still showing the ball when I select the text.

I ran disk speed on both machines and the iMac was clocking in the mid 2k’s while the Macpro was around 600 - obviously showing much slower, but I’m not feeling the difference in real world here.

Yeah, I’m just kind of scratching my head. Anyone have any thoughts? I can post full specs if that’s helpful or let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks!

 

[pldelisle]

72gb of ram (8gb originally and 2 32gb other world computing sticks)

First, you can't do that. You need to run ONLY with the OWC sticks and pull out the Apple stock RAM. This setup will NEVER work.

the low end video card

Depending of your files, this 5300 only have 4 GB of VRAM, which is very, very low. I'm really not surprised if you work on RAW photos and things like that. You should have gone with the 5700XT minimum with 16 GB of VRAM and the 8 core CPU. CPU power clearly isn't your bottleneck.

Best advice would be to return this unit, take the tier-3 iMac with upgraded GPU with 5700XT.

For the file copy, I personally don't know. Maybe indexing was performing something meanwhile. This is strange, I've never noticed this with my own Mac while copying things from and to my Synology NAS.


I don't think softwares are already optimized for RDNA1.0 GPUs. It could simply be a question of software optimization in those you use.

 

[rowqleyr]

I have exactly this setup, except the 16GB video card. (I have Apple 2x4GB + 2x32GB from crucial as RAM and it works just fine). Works fine, everything is snappy. Use Photoshop quite a lot. I came from a 2018 MacBook Pro and it feels a bit more responsive with less beachballs.

 

[pldelisle]

(I have Apple 2x4GB + 2x32GB from crucial as RAM and it works just fine)

If you check your RAM speed, pretty sure it's not at 2666 MHz, so no, it doesn't work fine. And if you placed your sticks in order 8-8-32-32, you are not in dual channel.

 

[mahaha]

Thanks for the replies...

the ram is running all at 2667MHz, it's installed right it seems from all I've found online on how to mix match the ram. Is that true apple and 3rd party can't be mixed? there is a lot of info out there contrary to this it seems?

The iMac is running a 5500XT wit 8gb ram. The old macpro is running a ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1gb ram and the macpro doesn't see these kind of spinning ball hangs ups - well especially outside of photoshop.

Maybe it was the indexing thing that was happening while I was trying to copy the files over, that sort of makes sense to me and I'll keep my eye on it.

Sadly we're out of the 14 day return window right now, so we have what we have and need to make it work. Anything else we can check out?

thanks again!

 

[pldelisle]

Is that true apple and 3rd party can't be mixed? there is a lot of info out there contrary to this it seems?

Every experiment here so far showed that mixing apple stock RAM with aftermarket RAM strictly doesn't work. Either speed is down clocked to 2133 MHz if installed as 8-32-8-32 (in this case) or dual channel is lost but speed is 2666Mhz using configuration 8-8-32-32. In either, there is a performance drop. You need all 4 modules to be the exact same (and exact DRAM manufacturer) for running full speed with dual channel. It has been extensively studied in https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/memory-upgrade-troubleshooting-in-2020-27-inch-imacs.2249254/

The iMac is running a 5500XT wit 8gb ram

This is not the low end. This is the mid-range GPU. It should then be fine for moderate use and a big step up form a 5770 from the Mac Pro as you said.

 

[wilberforce]

I agree with others here, that you should put your 64GB in slots 2 and 4, and toss the 8GB RAM as it is only hurting.
However in reality this should not make a massive difference in performance.

It sounds like there is some other background process going on, such as indexing. This can be within an app, too (like face recognition in Lightroom).
I suggest just let the computer run for a while with your normal apps open and settle down.

If you run Geekbench 5 with no other apps running, it should score near 10000 CPU multiscore.

If you explore Activity Monitor you can usually zero in on a process culprit - CPU, GPU, I/O, Network

 

[rkuo]

For serious effects work, losing dual channel memory is a big big performance hit. Apple really needs to guide customers better on how to upgrade their RAM.

 

[wilberforce]

For serious effects work, losing dual channel memory is a big big performance hit. Apple really needs to guide customers better on how to upgrade their RAM.

I agree. Apple subsequently added this sentence to their memory upgrade instructions for the 2020 iMac (and only for the 2020 iMac), but it is not made very obvious:

"For optimal memory performance, DIMMs should be the same capacity, speed, and vendor."

 

[imagiag20]

I’ve watched the activity monitor while I was in inDesign, it was using 4% of it’s resources yet still showing the ball when I select the text.

Do you have installed all fonts that were on original system?

I just had a similar experience migrating from 2015 to 2020 iMac - Sketch files that worked fine before were unusably slow on the new machine (defying the purpose of upgrade) - until I noticed there were couple fonts missing on the new system (even though unused by designs, they were linked by the documents).

After fixing the missing fonts, everything is way faster as expected.

 

[AZREOSpecialist]

First, you can't do that. You need to run ONLY with the OWC sticks and pull out the Apple stock RAM. This setup will NEVER work.

That's not true. It will work. It will just run slower. Something that runs slower still works. You're being a little alarmist.

If memory is installed as 4-32-4-32 it will be downclocked to 2133 MHz. If it is installed as 4-4-32-32 or 32-32-4-4 it will run at 2667 MHz but only single channel versus dual channel. For maximum speed, do not use the 8 GB Apple provided. Short of the single channel setup, 2133 MHz memory would not cause the symptoms being described.

 

[AZREOSpecialist]

Hi all,
Well I have to say I’m a bit disappointed with our new iMacs performance but I’m wondering if I’m just missing something? I’m sure I am and hopefully someone will simply point out a silly thing we’re not realizing.

We’re coming off of 5,1 macpro’s, 6core, dual ssd in velocity cards with 32gb of ram. We’re a print and retouching studio. We were waiting for the new Macpro’s but simply can’t afford the new beasts as much as we wanted to. And as such, we were waiting for the 2020 iMacs to upgrade even though for us we hate the idea of the screen attached to the computer.

But I digress… so we purchased the new 10core machines, 72gb of ram (8gb originally and 2 32gb other world computing sticks), 1tb ssd and the low end video card as we figured for photoshop work the video card probably isn’t going to make that big of a difference especially coming off of an 8+ year old machine that had far less of a video card.

Previously when we would upgrade machines we would notice a nice increase in speed and responsiveness - that realization of what we’ve been missing. Not so much here. Yes things in the finder are a bit snappier, but not a lot. We’ve seen the beach ball several times working even on smaller files. I was working in inDesign the other day on a simply thumbnail document with a small amount of text after each image and a beach ball would show up for a few seconds every time I selected a block of text. In illustrator it’s very similar. Photoshop just doesn’t feel supper snappy and kind of doggish. We’ve allocated around 45gb or so to photoshop’s memory fyi, history is set to 10 states… We had only about 20 or so allocated on our macpros.

I realize this isn’t much to go on, but last night I was trying to transfer our web design folder from the iMac to our server. Sure there were say 95k files in there, but the iMac literally took 2hrs to prepare to copy and was still preparing when I finally booted up our old Mac Pro and it took 30 seconds or so to prepare to copy and another minute or two to copy if that. The folder was only just under 1gb.

I’ve watched the activity monitor while I was in inDesign, it was using 4% of it’s resources yet still showing the ball when I select the text.

I ran disk speed on both machines and the iMac was clocking in the mid 2k’s while the Macpro was around 600 - obviously showing much slower, but I’m not feeling the difference in real world here.

Yeah, I’m just kind of scratching my head. Anyone have any thoughts? I can post full specs if that’s helpful or let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks!

Something to think about... if you have tinkered with any of the Creative Cloud background tasks, such as removing them from LaunchDaemons folder, your CC apps may beachball more. I didn't like all the background tasks running. Based on what I read online, I removed those items from the Library folder and all of my CC apps started beachballing. After restoring those files, no more beachballs.

WRT fonts, are you using a font management system? Having all of your fonts enabled all of the time will suck resources.

 

[pldelisle]

That's not true. It will work. It will just run slower. Something that runs slower still works. You're being a little alarmist.

Of course. It will work but won't be optimal.

When paying such high price for a computer, I tend to say anything not running optimally just doesn't work.

 

[emac777]

Just bought this 1.5 months ago, and the computer restarted because of an error. Looks like a kernel panic. I'm going to return it. Should I return it?

 

[AZREOSpecialist]

Just bought this 1.5 months ago, and the computer restarted because of an error. Looks like a kernel panic. I'm going to return it. Should I return it?

Yes. Definitely return it.

 

[ADGrant]

Just bought this 1.5 months ago, and the computer restarted because of an error. Looks like a kernel panic. I'm going to return it. Should I return it?

Return window is two weeks not two months.

 

[haddy]

Return window is two weeks not two months.

Depends what country they are in!!!

 

[ADGrant]

Depends what country they are in!!!

Which countries have a two month or greater return Window?

 

[haddy]

Which countries have a two month or greater return Window?

In NZ it is 2 years... if faulty and not working.

 

[ADGrant]

In NZ it is 2 years... if faulty and not working.

Apple doesn't get to attempt a repair or two first?

 

[haddy]

Apple doesn't get to attempt a repair or two first?

We don't have Apple stores in NZ....they get independent repairers to do the repair. The replacement parts come from Apple Sydney AU. However, if it needs repairing/ replacing, under NZs Consumers Guarantee Act, two years is the time frame.

 

[iMi]

Of course. It will work but won't be optimal.

When paying such high price for a computer, I tend to say anything not running optimally just doesn't work.

This isn’t correct. You can run both at full speed. Just need to make sure the configuration is correct. This has been covered in another thread already. Not a problem.

 

[Chompineer]

First, you can't do that. You need to run ONLY with the OWC sticks and pull out the Apple stock RAM. This setup will NEVER work.


Depending of your files, this 5300 only have 4 GB of VRAM, which is very, very low. I'm really not surprised if you work on RAW photos and things like that. You should have gone with the 5700XT minimum with 16 GB of VRAM and the 8 core CPU. CPU power clearly isn't your bottleneck.

Best advice would be to return this unit, take the tier-3 iMac with upgraded GPU with 5700XT.

For the file copy, I personally don't know. Maybe indexing was performing something meanwhile. This is strange, I've never noticed this with my own Mac while copying things from and to my Synology NAS.


I don't think softwares are already optimized for RDNA1.0 GPUs. It could simply be a question of software optimization in those you use.

Wrong. You sure can do that. Yes, there are performance impacts, but if you simply need a large memory pool it’s just fine.

4GB of VRAM isn’t low either. Sure it’s low if you’re trying to game at 4K, but for general use it’s more than enough.

 

[pldelisle]

Wrong. You sure can do that. Yes, there are performance impacts, but if you simply need a large memory pool it’s just fine.

If you really need that much memory, you’ll be willing to make it work correctly.

I’m a data scientist, not a photograph, but correct me if I’m wrong : editing RAW photographic material can be very taxing on VRAM. Professional photography editing is precisely what OP is doing.

 

[ADGrant]

We don't have Apple stores in NZ....they get independent repairers to do the repair. The replacement parts come from Apple Sydney AU. However, if it needs repairing/ replacing, under NZs Consumers Guarantee Act, two years is the time frame.

That is not the same thing as the two week return window, what you are describing is a two year warranty. In the US at least, you can return an Apple product for a full refund for any reason during the first two weeks. After that you are limited to warranty service.