Deciding to buy an iMac. Old or new version?

[celo48]

I want to buy an iMac for my wife. Currently, I can get the older one for $200 cheaper but that's not too important if what I read is true.
My wife will use Lightroom and Photoshop a lot for editing photos.


I found this at this link: https://discussions.apple.com/message/24202540#24202540

Question:
These models appear to be exactly alike except the newer one (ME086LL/A) has the Intel Iris Pro graphics processor and the the older one (MD093LL/A) has the NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M graphics processor. Is the Intel Iris better in any respect than the NVIDIA? Thanks.
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 2.2 GHz Intel, 4 GB ram
This solved my question by David M Brewer on Dec 21, 2013 10:38 AM


Answer:
NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M uses what is called CUDA. CUDA uses the graphic card to speed up graphics and video rendering... for example... Photoshop, Final Cut Pro X (I think) and 3d software like Blender. This can speed up rendering time by 4 times or more.

Intel Iris doesn't support CUDA.

I would go with the NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M card.

 

[blanka]

The benefit of CUDA is highly hypothetical. Both GPU's support GPU acceleration using OpenCL, not Cuda, of a VERY SMALL set of filters, and I really doubt if your wife uses any of those (lens flare, fish eye, that kind of crap). Since Apple uses Ati in the new Pro's and came up with OpenCL itself, I think Apple will push towards OpenCL use, not Cuda use. OpenCL works on Intel HD3000 and up and most recent ATI/Nvidia cards (9400M and newer).
Most important thing for your wife will be whether you buy 21 inch with a 2,5 inch stock HD or something with SSD. Photoshop really sucks on notebook hard drives.

 

[celo48]

The benefit of CUDA is highly hypothetical. Both GPU's support GPU acceleration using OpenCL, not Cuda, of a VERY SMALL set of filters, and I really doubt if your wife uses any of those (lens flare, fish eye, that kind of crap). Since Apple uses Ati in the new Pro's and came up with OpenCL itself, I think Apple will push towards OpenCL use, not Cuda use. OpenCL works on Intel HD3000 and up and most recent ATI/Nvidia cards (9400M and newer).
Most important thing for your wife will be whether you buy 21 inch with a 2,5 inch stock HD or something with SSD. Photoshop really sucks on notebook hard drives.

I know but SSD version is quiet expensive. I wonder if is it going to be $200 better going with the old vs new the new. Thanks for the answer.