Apple May Launch 27-Inch Retina iMac With AMD Graphics as Soon as Next Month

[wizard]

There are many reasons why Apple might not do this but the price of 5K displays isn't one of them. The retail price does not reflect manufacturing costs. The high prices at introduction are often there to recoup other expenses.

Now consider this Apple owns a good part of Sharps production capacity. Apple can leverage that capacity anyway they want. It is best to wait until Apple ships a machine before you get excited about the price.

By the way if the cost is high, a possibility, they could easily offer the retina model as an option. That allows them to enter the market early while prices come down much like the did with the original MBP-retina.

Currently 5K displays, especially 27"+ are selling, alone, for at least $2000. I can't see even Apple adding a $2000 premium option to the iMac line, which are SUPPOSED to be Apple's entry level gateway drug for Macs since they have invested ZERO dollars into the Mac Mini product in over 2 years. Who want's a $4000+ iMac? Also that is $2000 before Apple's rip off margin factor.

Unless Apple found some supplier of ultra cheap 5k 27" panels, I doubt this rumor to hold any merit.

If Apple releases a 5k 27" iMac for under $3000, I would be highly skeptical of the quality of the display, or at least the components in the iMac.

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(Wipes drool off of keyboard...)

NICE! Wife is giving permission to upgrade this year!

:

Really how nice of her. Are you going for a twenty something blond or maybe an Asian girl in her thirties?

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oh, hell no!

Its useless to me with out a Nvidia card, might as well buy some boat anchors...

Explain yourself!

Are you saying AMD's GPUs don't work?

Or are you tied to proprietary software. If so why?

Maybe you just don't know what you are talking about.

 

[Rizzm]

Oh goodness. How exciting - Apple updating their "desktop" line, now touting 0 upgradeable parts and even lower power graphics cards and processors for the ultimate mobility. But hey, at least it'll be paper thin while it's busy not being moved from the desk.

 

[koyoot]

Explain yourself!

Are you saying AMD's GPUs don't work?

Or are you tied to proprietary software. If so why?

Maybe you just don't know what you are talking about.

First of All, R9 M290X is slower than GTX780M that is in current iMac.

Secondly, it cannot run 5K resolution. 4K it will handle quite good, but not 5K, and were talking about 5K.

Better GPUs are due for next year, and desktop GPUs use too much power, and produces too much heat for them to be used in iMac.

Only way to go for Apple if they want 5K display is to go with Nvidia Maxwell GPUs.

 

[wizard]

They could also special order a locked "K" equivalent. Let's face it Intel has many unhappy customers right now due to the many Broadwell delays. I can imagine Apple and others demanding compromises from Intel.

Beyond that I think you are right about clock rate. Right now that is the only way to get a sizable performance improvement out of an iMac refresh. Frankly it would be good enough to hold the platform over until Skylake ships.

Heh, I'm just glad someone else noticed the K series CPU

I realise that the 4790K is an "unlocked" CPU, and that Apple has never used K parts in an iMac before, that's why it was really more on my dream list (with 4K and 980M being on the more "realistic" side) until now.

That said, I think there are several good reasons for Apple to put the 4790K in the iMac despite their previous lack of interest in such CPUs:

1. Clock Speed: Both the base and Turbo Clock are 400Mhz faster than the locked counterpart (4.0/4.4 Vs 3.6/4.0), a significant difference compared to the usual 100mhz or less deficit between locked and unlocked parts. Furthermore, this would allow Apple to claim significant CPU gains on the high end, something they couldn't do with standard haswell refresh chips.

2. Value: Given the almost non existent clock speed advantage of (other) high end i7 chips vs high end i5 chips, the i7 upgrade option in the current iMacs is a pretty hard sell for anyone who doesn't absolutely need hyper threading. The 4790K would put some real distance between the "base" i5 and the upgrade" i7, likely encouraging more people to opt for that juicy (for Apple) $250+ upgrade.

3. The BIOS (in Apple's case EFI) controls the overlocking options available and given that Apple has full control over the implementation of EFI used in the iMac, I don't think you'll be seeing any iMacs frying eggs @4.7Ghz+.

Anyway, just my 2 cents, I know I'll pony up if they put the 4790K in there (otherwise I'll likely stick with the base i5).

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Noting to do with nonsense on the net,

It is non sense.

loads of well used software cannot use AMD GPU's, full stop the end.

Why would any rational computer user buy software tied to a specific GPU card. That is stupidly on the highest order

Thats it. Useless to so many designers that are the core market, as is the current Mac Pro.

Designers only think they are the core market. Thankfully for the rest of us they aren't. Some of us want the best GPU solution that Apple can manage. In that regard one can hope that there will be a tailored solution in the new iMac.

Beyond all of that you do realize that some software running on AMD GPUs can't even be touched by NVidia solutions. So your whining about your proprietary hardware / software mix will not be well received by those actually needing the performance AMD can offer.

 

[zombierunner]

do macs last a few years only? i want to buy an imac but i see people replacing their computers every 3 years or so .. i can't do that .. i want something that will last 7-8 years ... im using a dell xps 8300 at the moment ... core i7 2600 .. running very well

 

[CelestialToys]

do macs last a few years only? i want to buy an imac but i see people replacing their computers every 3 years or so .. i can't do that .. i want something that will last 7-8 years ... im using a dell xps 8300 at the moment ... core i7 2600 .. running very well

I personally upgrade my macs every three years, not because they no longer work, but because I like to stay fairly current due to my software usage.
At the three year point I find I can sell my old mac for roughly 50% of what it cost me new, after that they tend to depreciate more quickly...In comparison to other makes where after 3 years you'll be lucky to sell them for 10-20% of their original cost.
Three years seems to be the sweet spot for me, and by upgrading every three years I keep my total cost of ownership far lower than I it used to be when I was buying Dells and HPs etc

 

[wizard]

After taking some time to think about it, something definitely smells a bit off about the "AMD graphics" part.

Why would Apple and Nvidia take the time to add support for the Geforce 980 and 970 series GPUs in the Yosemite beta (see the thread in the Mac Pro forum), if they didn't plan on putting them in the iMac?

This is certainly possible. However the NVidia GPUs could be going into the Mac Pro or a Mini follow on machine.

From what I've seen Apple's (and by extension Nvidia/AMD) support for graphics cards which Apple doesn't plan to sell some variant of in an upcoming or current mac tends to be abysmal.

True again. Remember though AMD drivers for the new Mac Pro showed up at least a year before the machine was announced.

This would seem to suggest high end Nvidia cards in upcoming Macs but if you think about it, what else could they put it in besides the iMac?

1. A Mini follow on machine. Not a Mini per say but something slotted between the Low End and the Mac Pro.
2. MBP laptops.
3. The Mac Pro, as either an AMD replacement or a build to order option.
4. An entirely new platform.

Mac Mini: Apple's never put a serious GPU in these before and even if they decided to start doing so, I wonder how well the 980M would fit within the Mini's thermal/power constraints.

The Mini design is not set in stone, it can be changed. You can't look to the past to determine what Apple might build in the future. That being said high performance GPU's have never been the Mini's market niche.

Mac Pro: Possible, but Apple seems fairly committed to AMD at this point (Custom-ish dual GPUs and better Open CL performance for AMD) (and if they were changing to Nvidia for the Mac Pro, why in the world would they then switch the iMac to AMD?)

You answered your own question here, there are some things AMD GPUs do very well OpenCL support being one of them. I wouldn't be surprised to find that Apple is interested in the video decoder sections of AMDs GPUs too.

Macbook Pro 15: This makes some sense, although Apple already "refreshed" this line this year, and the 970M and 980M are a cut above what Apple usually puts in this lineup (although I'd certainly be pleased if they surprised me on this one)

I think Apples motivations in the past have been thermal power related. It seems to be the overwhelming qualifier for choice in the MBPs. That is best performance at a thermal point.

Macbook Pro 13/MBA: Almost no chance, but hey, I'd love to be wrong.

iMac: Perfect fit

Just saying...

Anything is possible. I just have to dismiss the idiots whining about AMD GPUs like they know what they are talking about. Some may prefer NVidia due to proprietary software but even that is ill advised these days.

 

[UK-MacAddict]

Maybe this is why they reduced the price of the current top spec iMac earlier this year by £200 in the UK from £1799 to £1599.

If a retina model shows up they can price it between £1799 - £2000 or maybe just a bit higher which would not be too bad.

But current iMacs run on mobile GPU's. So they may be slightly in laggy performance which the original Retina Macbook Pro had issues with.

 

[wizard]

Forgive my ignorance, as I do not push the limits of my iMac all that much (beyond converting video). Are all the the people upset about the choice of video card upset because it won't work worth a fig in any situation, or it won't work for extreme graphics use such as high end gaming or CAD?

In many cases the AMD cards are a better choice for CAD work and the like. I think most of the whining comes from people tied to NVidia CUDA acceleration which frankly is stupid when open solutions exist.

I totally see the merit in the upset if people consider this machine an essential tool for pro users (although then I wonder why they'd have a Mac Pro and an iMac, which is more consumer-friendly). But for those of us who just want a far more beautiful, sharp-text display, will the graphics card matter if it can drive common use cases?

This is the other thing, iMac serves a very broad market. As such Apple has to find the best all around solution. That might be an NVidia card or an AMD card. It is the total package that counts though and in that regard it really isn't a big deal if they go with AMD.

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Give me a break here. The last thing this world needs is more people that get overly emotionally upset over mole hills.

Sadly my early 2011 iMac is probably the last apple computer ill own, since the decline from computers to disposable items seems now complete with these units being effectively sealed and non-user up-gradable/repairable to encourage people to keep buying new ones every year, im done.

While I don't like the disposable mentality high integration electronics leads us in that direction no matter what Apple does.

As for buying a new computer every year, you need to get real here as nobody with a rational mind does that.

I was planning on buying a mac-pro, then they turned it into a tiny useless box with a mess of wires behind it, so i had to buy a PC to do that job,

It is one of the best work station solutions out there. Further no you didn't have to buy a PC you bought one because you wanted to and couldn't grasp the insight embodied in the new Mac Pro.

I wanted a tablet, but also wanted that tablet to be a usable computer, so i ended up with a Surface PRO because apple didn't think that perhaps the macbook air with a dockable keyboard would have decimated the tablet market because it wanted to keep the iPad and Macbook lines separate so it could sell both to people.

I sue my iPad every day, I don't see a problem at all.

So ill keep my iMac, which i love, and which i have replaced the HDD on, removed the Optical drive and added an SSD which i boot from, and which i purchase and added my own RAM for a fraction the price apple charge.

Which most people don't have any desire to hear about. It is great that you have the technical ability to do this but the mainstream world doesn't care at all.

And i shall feel very sad that apple have gone from being a supurb manufacturer of excellent equipment and transformed into a new money making evil empire.. all hail the new face of corporate greed, Microsoft hand over the crown.

That is complete non sense. Every piece of hardware that I've purchased form Apple over the last few years has been excellent. In fact it is hard to even find stuff that matches the engineering excellence seen in recent Apple hardware.

Mind you I was a Mac Pro owner and switched over to PCI hardware and Linux for years while Apples engineering went to hell. IPhone and the new Mac hardware and OS convinced me to come back. Since then I'm continually surprised by the engineering quality established by Apples products.

 

[xmichaelp]

OMG can't wait to get one of these.

 

[GeneralChang]

I'm gonna go on record right now as saying that this won't be an iMac, it'll end up being false reports for the new display for the Mac Pro.

I say that because if I'm right I get the satisfaction of being right. But if I'm wrong, I get the satisfaction of immediately buying a retina 27 inch iMac who cares about being right.

Bases = covered.

 

[alainmagnan]

isnt that 4 times the resolution?

 

[batistuta]

But what about a retina Mac mini?! I mean, a Mac mini with just enough graphics oomph to power a 4K/5K thunderbolt display? Is that what Apple is waiting for?

Would be nice, and a 4K TB display at 32+" to go with it. Need it to be an upgrade to my current Mini+30" setup in terms of screen real estate. An iMac could also do, but 27 inches won't cut it. 32-40" would be about right

 

[Gti5notrkt]

So we can expect a new Thunderbolt display at the same time I think!

If it is AMD GPU, probably a version of the R9 specifically tweaked for the iMac (Nvidia are now introducing GTX 980, so the iMac has to compete slightly for sure).

I'll hazard a guess of a iMac 3.5Ghz i7 Quad Core, 16gb RAM, AMD R9 4GB, 1Tb Fusion drive, Retina display, being $4500.

All we need now for a AAA Apple year are new 15"+ MacBook Pro's with Alienware type specs.

Dream on. If that config is more than $3,200, the're toast.

 

[entropi]

I will keep off retina macs for as long as I possibly can. I believe computerpower could be used for better stuff than pushing around excessive eyecandy... I can't really see the point with having to update all my apps again OR wait for them to be updated (some of them never will since they aren't updated anymore or the updates have stuff in them that changes the whole apps).

Retina eyecandy is just a way to trying to inventing "progress" that wasn't really that necessary from the beginning... 4K, 8K - I guess something must be done since the MHz just couldn't keep going double each and every year...

Please invent something to make my old soon to be stamp-sized digital photos to be pleasantly upscaled/interpolated without any artifacts or loss of quality, please? :/

(I know it's called development, but puh-leaze...)

 

[SoAnyway]

Well my 27" 2011 iMac has been giving me issues lately, sounds like the HDD may be on its way but for all I know it could be a much more serious issue, so I would definitely welcome a new 5k iMac. Although, I would only get it as long as they put Broadwell chip inside, I was already forced to get a Haswell 15" MacBook Pro.

 

[macduke]

Well, I'm sure if Apple does announce a Retina Imac next month, a retina Cinema Display will also be announced. So you can always get that plus a new MacBook Pro. That way...when you update again to broadwell MacBook in the future, at least you'll already have a huge retina Cinema Display.

I find myself not needing a laptop as often. I'm thinking I'll get that rumored Retina MacBook Air for my wife to mainly use since she needs a new laptop for her business, and I'll have a user account on there and borrow it when I need to. I mainly want a powerful desktop without spending too much. I'd love to be able to use the Mac 80% of the time and then boot camp into Windows to play Steam games. I've been playing a lot on my Mac, but there are so many more available on PC. Maybe I just need an iMac and build myself a Windows gaming rig like I did a couple times way back in high school. I hate using Windows for anything other than gaming. The up-front cost of a Retina Thunderbolt 2.0 Display plus a Mac Pro is probably more than I'm willing to spend, but I could see that being the better long-term option for upgrades. For the work I do outside of gaming, a Mac Pro is probably overkill but would still pay for itself over time—although it might cut into my overall profits.

 

[cult hero]

I'll wait for Rev B with Broadwell chipset. My mid-2010 is getting long in the tooth but I'd prefer to wait for the significant bump. The bigger news here IMO is the probable 5K Thunderbolt Display.

Early Christmas present for myself. Haha.

 

[lincolntran]

PC: You can do anything with our computers.
Apple: We're pretty cute.
PC: You can update hardware for what you're going to use the computer for.
Apple: We'll update it for you in about 2-3 years, okay?
PC: You can play games on us.
Apple: We put chess on for free!
PC: You can hook all your devices up to us.
Apple: We don't consider it incest at all. But you can only use family devices.
PC: We >>>>>> blue screen <<<<<<<
Apple: /snicker/ >>>>>>spinning beach ball<<<<<< /damnit/

I don't understand what you're trying to say

 

[scottrichardson]

Let's hope they move to all-flash storage, but keep that bump in the back for cooling for a desktop-class GPU rather than a mobile one.

Assuming they are going with AMD after their collaboration on the New Mac Pro. Who knows, maybe they have enabled CrossFire support in OS X and we'll get dual GPU's in the iMac!

 

[apolloa]

My brother in law might be interested in this one, he has so many photos and is his hobby.

 

[Aloft085]

I would of expected that the 980M would at least be able to manage at 1440P.

Remind me again why Apple uses mobile GPU's in their desktop machines?

The 980M would 'manage', but it wouldn't be great. Apple really should use a desktop-class card in the iMac. I know it would add space, add a fan, and increase power consumption. But it's worth it, Apple. I shouldn't be able to get far better performance for the price on a Windows desktop.

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Please invent something to make my old soon to be stamp-sized digital photos to be pleasantly upscaled/interpolated without any artifacts or loss of quality, please? ]

A 4k display is only approximately 8.29 megapixels, and that's the entire screen. A 1080p monitor is 2 megapixels. So if you've been taking 5 megapixel pictures and above, it should look fantastic on a 4k monitor, and far better than on your 1080p one.

The rumored 5k resolution, on the other hand, would be an astounding 14.75 megapixels. So yeah... But then again, no one really uses every pixel on the display to look at a picture.

 

[RedBanana]

Dream on. If that config is more than $3,200, the're toast.

I wouldn't expect anything near $3200. You can't spec a similar desktop PC with a 5K monitor at this price either. Say a Gigabyte BRIX Pro 3.2Ghz i7, 5K Dell monitor, 16GB DDR3L RAM, Keyboard, Mouse.... already well over $3300

Apple hardware is usually latest spec (e.g. 5K display) and the top end is aimed at the professional. They aren't known for beating PC equivalent hardware, matching at best on release. I expect the 5K Thunderbolt to be similarly priced, if not a few hundred dollars more than the Dell $2500 5K monitor. Maybe the Dell is overpriced at the moment and it will come down, who knows.

5K is nearly twice as many pixels as 4K. So unless this is all just a rumour and the new screens will be 4K.... they are going to be pricey. Ref: http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/7/6119067/dell-insane-ultrasharp-27-ultra-hd-5k-monitor-announced

 

[OLDCODGER]

If I ever want an expensive mirror, I shall go to an up-market furniture store.

 

[mixel]

I wonder if this is going to be one of those things where the first version is slightlysluggish because of the crazy resolution, but the first revision is pretty much perfect..

I love the idea of a retina iMac but I probably can't justify it. :/