I'm trying to advise someone on buying an iMac. My 2 big things are upgrade to 16gb memory and 512SSD (at least). How important is the 9th generation over 8th generation, and are the 8th generation builds new as well?
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Are the 8th generation i5 2019 iMacs new, or just the $2299 9th generation?
- Thread starter shamash
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The 2017 iMac used Intel 7XXX series CPUs, so yes. Apple never updated to 8th/9th until now.
https://everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/index-imac.html
https://everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/index-imac.html
8th (Coffee Lake) and 9th (Coffee Lake Refresh) generations are architecturally virtually identical and will perform the same at the same frequency and core count.
The only relevant distinction is the upgrade option on the 21.5" iMac where the i7 will have six cores with hyper-threading as it has an 8th gen chip instead of eight cores without hyper threading if it would have had 9th gen.
The only relevant distinction is the upgrade option on the 21.5" iMac where the i7 will have six cores with hyper-threading as it has an 8th gen chip instead of eight cores without hyper threading if it would have had 9th gen.
I have been asking this a bit, is the 8th get i5 8600 pretty much the same as the 9th gen 9600K aside of the clock speed? (3.1 to 3.7GHz)? Would that mean that a 8th gen 8600K (3.6GHz) and the 9th 9600K (3.7GHz) are pretty much the same?
Yes. The 9th gen CPUs have some hardware fixes for Spectre/Meltdown that don't seem to make a difference performance-wise and the 9th gen K-series apparently have a soldered heatspreader that should improve thermals a little bit compared to the 8th gen, but that's all the material differences as far as I know.