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Decision time i7 vs i9 for new 2020 iMac?
- Thread starter BasilFawlty
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I enjoy watching MaxTech's videos but they don't prove anything to me. I don't plan to spend anytime encoding video with FinalCut Pro and don't use any of the Adobe products he tests with.
I had a pending order for an i9 when Max Tech did a benchmark video Monday, the one where he suggests maybe forget i9 and go i7. I asked him in the comments and he confirmed to me that the i9 didn’t seem worth it, so I changed my order to an i7 arriving next week. Music production is an important activity for me, along with 3D and flight sim, so I was vacillating between those two processors like a yo-yo, actually placing and canceling orders several times. I’m thinking the i7 was the better choice. If the upcoming Max Tech benchmark video reverses their advice, my regret will be short lived as I go Apple silicon iMac in two years and sell this.
Everyone seems to think these are the last Intel iMacs, but I'm not so sure. While I won't be surprised if the next top performing iMacs are using Apple's chips, I think transitioning the entire Mac lineup to ARM could be a slow multi-year process. Just because Apple announced ARM Macs are coming doesn't mean their relationship with Intel is completely over.
As for this year's i7 vs. i9, choosing the 8-core doesn't seem to be compromising much in the way of performance, so I put the money into a GPU upgrade instead.
I got the i9, 5700xt, 2tb SSD, and 10GbE because I wanted to treat myself, though I do use VMs and Ableton with Komplete. Still have the old BarclayCard with 0% over 18 months and I am planning on using my 20 and 21 tax refunds to chunk it off.
I also got the i9 10 core, 4TB SSD, 5700xt and 10GbE with 128GB of RAM from HyperX (Kingston). Yes, it cost a lot of money. I did the 12 month 0% interest with the Apple Card. I don't want to ever wonder what I could've done or should've done. I want this to last me a long time and have no regrets. To each his own. I plan on splitting that SSD right down the middle to run Windows 10 on Bootcamp, and I also run Parallels with multiple VMs. I intend to do some serious gaming as well. About time there was a Mac that could do this and not cost $10K.
How do they not prove anything to you? They literally cover every aspect of the machine. Even if your not spending any time at all doing anything with video work, they go over benchmarks, thermals, gaming, boot camp, buyers guides, recommendations, etc but apparently that’s not useful to you.
I think you made the right call for music production.
Logic X benchmarks
i7 125 Tracks
i9 131 Tracks
The right decision for music production perhaps. Perhaps not for flight sim though, certainly not if you want to run the new MS Flight simulator.
Couple of weeks/month ago I think Puget Systems did a large comparison of basic Lightroom tasks (import, 1:1 preview build up, export, etc.). They were comparing Intel Xeons, then various Intel CPUs (which also latest iMacs use) and AMD Ryzen CPUs. The results were that all Intel CPUs once you got past 8 cores / 16 threads had almost identical results. For example for 100 RAWs to JPEG it took (not remeber the number so I will just shoot) 120 seconds for i9-9900K and 114 seconds for Xeon 16C/32T and 110 seconds for 24C/48T Xeon. So really for that kind of tasks, the i7 in 2020 iMac will suffice just fine.
As I said, I enjoy watching his videos (except for the RAM adverts) and he does have useful information, but to be honest the thermal behavior running Cinebench doesn't really matter to me. I like having the option of running games in Bootcamp but I have yet to do that. It's nice to know that should I ever decide to decode 8k RAW the 16GB of video RAM in a 5700XT will come in handy. However, the software development workloads I will use my iMac for he doesn't cover at all.
Personally, I would rather have 10 cores than have 8 cores so for me the CPU choice was easy. I actually spent more time worrying about how much SSD to buy or if the 5700XT was worth the extra $500.
The problem with any benchmark based on a single app is a new version of that application could completely invalidate it. Of course if you are not planning on keeping a machine for more than a couple of years that probably doesn't matter.
So I opened a Swift Project in AppCode today, the indexing maxed out all 10 cores for a few minute minutes...
You are correct. However, the state in which Lightroom operates now doesn't make sense to invest into CPU with more cores than 8. And we all know how slowly Adobe improves Lightroom.
I'm debating between the i7 & i9 myself right now.
Currently running a 2012 2.3ghz i7 Mac Mini that I'd like to finally upgrade.
(It's served me well. It's my first Mac and I picked it up Apple refurbished in 2014 and upgraded to 1TB SSD & 16GB RAM)
Decided with the 5700 XT and 8GB RAM (Will upgrade myself to 32GB)
Standard Glass display and 1TB SSD.
My uses are mostly now remote in to work, web use, 4K YouTube, editing photos in Lightroom/Affinity Photo, light editing of compressed H.264 (Sony a6300 and Panasonic GH5) videos in Final Cut.
I do plan to set up bootcamp to get back in to gaming in Windows.
The cheap me wants to save the $400 because the i7 is overkill for my needs, but the gamer in me would probably always question how many more FPS could I have gotten with the i9. ??
Currently running a 2012 2.3ghz i7 Mac Mini that I'd like to finally upgrade.
(It's served me well. It's my first Mac and I picked it up Apple refurbished in 2014 and upgraded to 1TB SSD & 16GB RAM)
Decided with the 5700 XT and 8GB RAM (Will upgrade myself to 32GB)
Standard Glass display and 1TB SSD.
My uses are mostly now remote in to work, web use, 4K YouTube, editing photos in Lightroom/Affinity Photo, light editing of compressed H.264 (Sony a6300 and Panasonic GH5) videos in Final Cut.
I do plan to set up bootcamp to get back in to gaming in Windows.
The cheap me wants to save the $400 because the i7 is overkill for my needs, but the gamer in me would probably always question how many more FPS could I have gotten with the i9. ??
Well the i9 won't really yield any more FPS since nearly all games aren't properly multithreaded so you're going to get the biggest benefit from the 5700 XT upgrade them the i9
Even the 5700 XT you may not be able to fully utilize unless you have a 10 core CPU to feed it with. If you do not go into 8K video editing then just upgrade to the 5700 base GPU that will give you a sure 90 % processing power compared to the 5700 CT and you may not need all that extra memory in that GPU.
I understand your point, however, I don't think anyone would ever turn down more cores in general especially if money isn't an object.
If you could afford it and you intend to keep the iMac for several years then it's an obvious choice to make. When I bought my second MacBook Pro which was the 2013 retina to replace my ageing last of the non unibody aluminums, it was the first time I bought a mac with soldered down ram and I decided to get the max ram even though 16gb seemed like overkill at the time coming from a system with only 4gb. I did it because you couldn't upgrade it afterwards so it would be more future proof and nearly 7 years later to this day I am still using that MacBook which I am typing on right now, after finishing exporting a 4k project in final cut.
Now the difference between having 8 cores vs 10 won't be as important as having enough ram, the former would likely determine how fast you can process things, whereas the latter could literally be the difference between whether you can run an app or not. But even so, I'm leaning more towards getting the i9 iMac for my next upcoming upgrade not only for the reasons listed above, but also because I actually do run apps that max out the cpu such as rendering multiple videos in multiple applications.
The biggest annoyance regards macs and not utilising the max power is due to the way Apple optimises their in house apps. Final Cut never seems to use more then 45% of the cpu when exporting, no matter how weak or powerful the cpu is so getting a 10 core would see little benefit over the 8, but Davinci Resolve on the other hand maxes out your cpu the moment you hit export.
Now the difference between having 8 cores vs 10 won't be as important as having enough ram, the former would likely determine how fast you can process things, whereas the latter could literally be the difference between whether you can run an app or not. But even so, I'm leaning more towards getting the i9 iMac for my next upcoming upgrade not only for the reasons listed above, but also because I actually do run apps that max out the cpu such as rendering multiple videos in multiple applications.
The biggest annoyance regards macs and not utilising the max power is due to the way Apple optimises their in house apps. Final Cut never seems to use more then 45% of the cpu when exporting, no matter how weak or powerful the cpu is so getting a 10 core would see little benefit over the 8, but Davinci Resolve on the other hand maxes out your cpu the moment you hit export.
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For me money is not an object and I actually decided on the i7. Multiple reviews have shown that there is basically no performance difference between the two processors, and then it makes no sense to spend $500 on the i9.
This is a typical example of people being scared that they might be missing out by only getting the i7 - But when tests show that there is barely any difference, then that should be enough to decide. Ram and GPU is different in the way that those two are usually the biggest limitations when a computer grows old. Ram can thankfully be upgraded in the iMac so that is not an issue. The GPU though is what I would always go for the biggest option available if it provides a decent performance increase. Tests of the 5700 XT compared to the regular 5700 shows 15-20% performance difference, in which case it's definitely worth it to get.
People tend to greatly overestimate how much CPU power they need. For 99,9% of all use-cases, the CPU is never the limiting factor. I'm definitely what you would call a power user - I do everything from video editing, photography, development, security research running multiple VM's, some 3D modeling and I tend to have chrome running with 500+ tabs opened for months at a time. I also like to play games once in a while. Currently I'm running a 2013 iMac. The big limitation in that machine is not the CPU, but the GPU and partially the SSD speed. Sure a new CPU will be faster, but unless a task really uses all cores for an extended period you will only feel tiny differences.
You have to keep in mind that the CPU rarely runs anywhere close to 100% and rarely uses all cores, which is why a theoretical CPU increase has very little every day effect. And when the i7 gives you more or less identical performance to the i9, then paying $500 for the i9 seems silly. But upgrading the GPU on the other hand, that will definitely make a huge difference for the longevity of the machine.
A lot of things that used to be CPU based is also being moved to the GPU today, which is why it makes a bigger difference. Video rendering, 3D rendering and a lot of other stuff is offloaded to the GPU and also the T2 chip(for HEVC).
People are thinking so much about the i9 because in their mind it has 20% more cores and therefor should be quite a lot faster than the i7. But this is why we have benchmarks and real-world testing - Because performance is not a linear thing.
How much the CPU is used greatly depends on the application and how well it's optimized. Most rendering processes are being offloaded to the GPU and to the T2, which is also why the actual CPU usually doesn't make much difference in most situations. The i9 is a maximum of around 10% faster which has been shown in many benchmarks. That means that in a purely CPU dependent workload with all cores running at 100%, you will see no more than a 10% difference(In most situations it would probably be no more than a few percent).
But when you look at most video editing software they use the GPU much more than the actual CPU, meaning that in those situations there will be absolutely no performance difference between the i7 and the i9. And if you export HEVC then the limitation is the T2 chip which handles that part - And that one is identical between the two machines.
When people are discussing the i7 vs the i9, there is a lot of focus on stuff like video rendering and similar. I'm guessing that 99% of all people in this forum don't ever do video editing or similar tasks. But people tend to forget that when you actually do video editing, 3D modelling and similar heavy tasks - You spend 95% or your time on editing, finding clips, deciding on the story etc. All things where the CPU is only used lightly. So you spend 8 hours editing a video but then people worry about saving 15 seconds on a video export which takes 8 minutes. So unless you do non-stop video export or you export super hi-res formats such as 6K or 8K RED footage, then you won't see any difference and even with those formats you will barely be able to see a difference.
So the additional $500 is for peace of mind and not actual performance. So if you feel better by spending the $500, then do so. But don't do it because you think you're going to get a good boost to performance.
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