iMac 2020 Reviews And Benchmarks - The Last Intel iMac

[Patchwork]

I forgot to include the Blackmagicdesign speed test resuts with a wirte speed of 2,985 and a read speed of 2,604 for a 1 TB drive. Must admit it's a bit odd that the write speed is faster than the read spead but get the same results each time I run it.

 

[filmak]

Hi, I thought I'd post some benchmarks as there aren't that many for the i7 with 5700. There's a few reasons why I didn't spend the extra on the 5700XT - I wanted a quiet computer, I don't paly games (have a switch and PS4 for that) and I only expect to keep this iMac for 3 to 4 years and then will switch once Apple Silicon transition has settled down. For my usage Lightroom/Photoshop for personal use and running virtual machines for work, the standard 5700 is probably more than enough.

Geekbench score was 1,270 single core and 8,771 multicore. My office is relatively quite at 30.5 dBA. The fans briefly kicked in towards the end of the run when the cpu temperature hit 90.5C but the noise only went up to 34.0 dBA very briefly. I reran it straightaway but couldn't get the fans to kick in this time., which was odd.

Cinebench score was 4,703 and this time I really managed to get the fans to kick in with a peak sound of 42.8 dBA. I reran it a couple of times and the fans kick in just beyond 90C but did see a maximum cpu termperature of 99.2C. For comparison my 2012 i7 iMac peaked at 35.4 dBA, so quite a bit louder when the fans kick in.

Finally for geekbench gpu testing I got 44,812 in OpenCL and 52,439 in metal. No fans kicked in so stayed at the same base sound level of 30.5 dBA. Note all sound levels were taken at 18 inches (about 46cm) from the front of the mac and my iMac has 64GB memory.

I hope that helps when deciding on what spec to go for if you haven't alreay ordered.

Thanks a lot for your helpful post!

 

[scotttnz]

Hi, I thought I'd post some benchmarks as there aren't that many for the i7 with 5700. There's a few reasons why I didn't spend the extra on the 5700XT - I wanted a quiet computer, I don't paly games (have a switch and PS4 for that) and I only expect to keep this iMac for 3 to 4 years and then will switch once Apple Silicon transition has settled down. For my usage Lightroom/Photoshop for personal use and running virtual machines for work, the standard 5700 is probably more than enough.

Geekbench score was 1,270 single core and 8,771 multicore. My office is relatively quite at 30.5 dBA. The fans briefly kicked in towards the end of the run when the cpu temperature hit 90.5C but the noise only went up to 34.0 dBA very briefly. I reran it straightaway but couldn't get the fans to kick in this time., which was odd.

Cinebench score was 4,703 and this time I really managed to get the fans to kick in with a peak sound of 42.8 dBA. I reran it a couple of times and the fans kick in just beyond 90C but did see a maximum cpu termperature of 99.2C. For comparison my 2012 i7 iMac peaked at 35.4 dBA, so quite a bit louder when the fans kick in.

Finally for geekbench gpu testing I got 44,812 in OpenCL and 52,439 in metal. No fans kicked in so stayed at the same base sound level of 30.5 dBA. Note all sound levels were taken at 18 inches (about 46cm) from the front of the mac and my iMac has 64GB memory.

I hope that helps when deciding on what spec to go for if you haven't alreay ordered.

Thanks! That’s the config I ordered, and it was hard to find any benchmarks. Everyone has been testing the i7 with 5500xt or i9 with 5700xt so if you are interested in a different CPU/GPU combination it is hard to find information. Your numbers give me peace mind while I wait for delivery.

 

[Azrael9]

idk whats up with @Azrael9 and SC2 but i played it yesterday no problem.

@Azrael9 maybe you trying to open it before it finished is the reason u crashing

Deleted. Life is too short.

I tried 12 times.

A veteran of playing WoW on my older iMac...I'm quite aware of Battle Front's short comings.

Enough to go to the Blizzard forums to see PC and Mac users getting the 'rub' on SCII.

If you got it to run. Well done to you. Perhaps post your HD and QHD benches for Voyeur who requested I bench it for him.

WoW also deleted.

Having really got the time to game a lot.

But for those that do? This iMac can handle HD and QHD no problem.

For anyone that wants to toast 4k gaming? There's Ampere or a PS5.

Azrael.

 

[Azrael9]

Hi, I thought I'd post some benchmarks as there aren't that many for the i7 with 5700. There's a few reasons why I didn't spend the extra on the 5700XT - I wanted a quiet computer, I don't paly games (have a switch and PS4 for that) and I only expect to keep this iMac for 3 to 4 years and then will switch once Apple Silicon transition has settled down. For my usage Lightroom/Photoshop for personal use and running virtual machines for work, the standard 5700 is probably more than enough.

Geekbench score was 1,270 single core and 8,771 multicore. My office is relatively quite at 30.5 dBA. The fans briefly kicked in towards the end of the run when the cpu temperature hit 90.5C but the noise only went up to 34.0 dBA very briefly. I reran it straightaway but couldn't get the fans to kick in this time., which was odd.

Cinebench score was 4,703 and this time I really managed to get the fans to kick in with a peak sound of 42.8 dBA. I reran it a couple of times and the fans kick in just beyond 90C but did see a maximum cpu termperature of 99.2C. For comparison my 2012 i7 iMac peaked at 35.4 dBA, so quite a bit louder when the fans kick in.

Finally for geekbench gpu testing I got 44,812 in OpenCL and 52,439 in metal. No fans kicked in so stayed at the same base sound level of 30.5 dBA. Note all sound levels were taken at 18 inches (about 46cm) from the front of the mac and my iMac has 64GB memory.

I hope that helps when deciding on what spec to go for if you haven't alreay ordered.

The 5700XT is quiet. This iMac is very quite most of the time. I didn't hear the fans on Open GL or Metal. The 5700XT is very down clocked. I suspect most of the heat concerns will come from the Intel CPU. Again. If you push the 3D rendering in the Blender bench which is the one bench that pushed my machine the hardest.

But like any system. If you run synthetics to push it to test its optimal performance. You'll hear the fans.

The £2300 tier 3 is more than good enough for anyone coming from any previous iMac. It's decent value. Anybody who needs the extra knows who they are.

Azrael.

 

[Azrael9]

idk whats up with @Azrael9 and SC2 but i played it yesterday no problem.

@Azrael9 maybe you trying to open it before it finished is the reason u crashing

More like, 'what's up with Blizzard.'

Moments of time. Perception.

Or just Blizzard having the bleep together at a given 'instance.'

Azrael.

 

[costica1234]

@Azrael9: Did you experience the graphical glitch discussed at https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/imac-2020-5700xt-graphical-glitch.2251034/ ?

 

[PBG4 Dude]

My work Dell laptop made more noise than my iMac when I ran a Blender GPU-only render test in windows 10. Unfortunately, Blender does not support GPU rendering on AMD in macOS.

 

[Homy]

Don't buy the 10-core i9!

 

[oneafour]

returned the i9 and got the i7 today w/ 64gb of ram:
Geekbench 5:
i7 8 core:
Single core: 1294
multi core: 8747


i9 10 core:
Single core: 1284
Multi: 9784

updated the i7 8 core w/ 128gb of ram:
Single core: 1381
multi core: 8777

 

[pldelisle]

Don't buy the 10-core i9!

Really depends. I know I can leverage the 2 cores/4 threads more.

 

[getrealbro]

Don't buy the 10-core i9!

Hmmmm… has anyone benchmarked the 2020 iMac i7 with the high end 5700XT 16GB graphics?

FWIW what’s missing from these YouTube benchmark videos is a screen-grab/video-clip of Intel Power Gadget, Activity Monitor CPU history and Macs Fan Control so we can see the Power usage, CPU freq., Temps, CPU utilization and fan speed, like this…



GetRealBro

 

[Mizouse]

i personally havent seen any reviews of the i7 with the 5700 XT, they've all been the i9 with the 5700XT or the i7 with the 5500 XT

 

[Homy]

i personally havent seen any reviews of the i7 with the 5700 XT, they've all been the i9 with the 5700XT or the i7 with the 5500 XT

There are a couple of reviews on the first page with 8-core i7 and 5700 but not 5700 XT.

 

[oneafour]

I have an i7 w/ a 5700xt what do you all need

 

[Andrea Pini]

I have a “problem”. I’ve installed windows with bootcamp for gaming and then assassin creed odissey.
The game looks in full screen, but it only takes a “band” in the screen.
What’s the problem? I have changed all the possible settings but I always see it only in the same central band.

i also installed heroes 7 and it is perfectly in full screen.

PS: the game is incredible. Ultra setting in 5 k and there aren’t slowdowns

 

[getrealbro]

I have an i7 w/ a 5700xt what do you all need

In the linked video benchmarks the i7 scored very close to the i9 in CPU intensive tasks. But fell short in graphics intensive tasks. So I began wondering if the best all around 2020 iMac configuration might be the i7 CPU with the 5700XT graphics.

In Candide’s “best of all possible worlds”, I’d like to see these guys do the same set of benchmarks run on an i7 w/ a 5700XT. But the most important would be the graphics intensive benchmarks, where the i9 w/ 5700XT did quite a bit better than the i7 w/ 5500XT and the reviewer ascribed that difference more to the 5700XT graphics than the i9 cpu.

I know this is a big ask. So feel free to ignore it. But even one of the graphics intensive benchmarks would be great

GetRealBro

 

[oneafour]

In the linked video benchmarks the i7 scored very close to the i9 in CPU intensive tasks. But fell short in graphics intensive tasks. So I began wondering if the best all around 2020 iMac configuration might be the i7 CPU with the 5700XT graphics.

In Candide’s “best of all possible worlds”, I’d like to see these guys do the same set of benchmarks run on an i7 w/ a 5700XT. But the most important would be the graphics intensive benchmarks, where the i9 w/ 5700XT did quite a bit better than the i7 w/ 5500XT and the reviewer ascribed that difference more to the 5700XT graphics than the i9 cpu.

I know this is a big ask. So feel free to ignore it. But even one of the graphics intensive benchmarks would be great

GetRealBro

uhm I don't really want to watch the video to figure out what benchmarks they ran if you tell me which ones you're interested in (Mac, windows, res, graphic settings, maybe a link to the video w/ time stamp to where the reviewer ran the benchmark?) including a link to download it, I can run the tests and report back with screenshots and stuff.

 

[getrealbro]

uhm I don't really want to watch the video to figure out what benchmarks they ran if you tell me which ones you're interested in (Mac, windows, res, graphic settings, maybe a link to the video w/ time stamp to where the reviewer ran the benchmark?) including a link to download it, I can run the tests and report back with screenshots and stuff.

Fair enough

They ran two “standard” graphics intensive benchmarks that would be nice to compare…
At 3:11 they run the Blender BMW rendering benchmark

Download — blender.org

The Freedom to Create.

www.blender.org

And at 6:22 they run the Unigine Heaven gamming benchmark

UNIGINE Benchmarks

Performance benchmarks by Unigine

benchmark.unigine.com

In both cases they say that the benchmark stresses the graphics more than the CPU.

Further in they also run some video editing & exporting tests. But these tests used their own videos.

Thanks — GetRealBro

Edit: I forgot to include the link to download the blender demo file for the BMW

Demo Files — blender.org

Home of the Blender project - Free and Open 3D Creation Software

www.blender.org

 

[PBG4 Dude]

Blender just released version 2.90, so the video may have run their tests on 2.83, which could cause a variance in those results.

Edit: v2.83 took 2:42 to run, while 2.90 took 2:50 to run. I only ran each test once, so not a real benchmark as it were.

 

[getrealbro]

For those wondering how a 2018 Mini i7 with the internal Intel 630 graphics does using Blender 2.9 ….

The Blender BMW CPU test took 4:48.09
The Blender BMW GPU test took 6:31.90

What the Blender BMW CPU test looks like on screen…


And the GPU version…


GetRealBro

 

[oneafour]

Fair enough

They ran two “standard” graphics intensive benchmarks that would be nice to compare…
At 3:11 they run the Blender BMW rendering benchmark

Download — blender.org

The Freedom to Create.

www.blender.org

And at 6:22 they run the Unigine Heaven gamming benchmark

UNIGINE Benchmarks

Performance benchmarks by Unigine

benchmark.unigine.com

In both cases they say that the benchmark stresses the graphics more than the CPU.

Further in they also run some video editing & exporting tests. But these tests used their own videos.

Thanks — GetRealBro

Edit: I forgot to include the link to download the blender demo file for the BMW

Demo Files — blender.org

Home of the Blender project - Free and Open 3D Creation Software

www.blender.org

I've attached the Unigine Heaven benchmark

for the Blender benchmark there's two files one for testing the GPU and one for the CPU which one should I run?

 

[getrealbro]

I've attached the Unigine Heaven benchmark

for the Blender benchmark there's two files one for testing the GPU and one for the CPU which one should I run?

Thanks.

I ran both of the Blender BMW files just to see the difference. From what the presenter said, I think he ran the GPU version.

GetRealBro

Edit: It looks like Max Tech actually combined the results of the BMW and Classroom renders


Or maybe my Mini is faster

 

[getrealbro]

I've attached the Unigine Heaven benchmark

That puts your i7 w/5700XT at 92.8fps just a little slower than an i9 w/ 5700XT at 96.2

 

[creativityrules]

That puts your i7 w/5700XT at 92.8fps just a little slower than an i9 w/ 5700XT at 96.2

View attachment 950410

@oneafour How much system ram do you have, and is it running in dual channel mode?