Well, just like full-screen vs windowed, which was a clue I guess, the Unigine Valley Benchmark is basically insensitive to how many physical pixels are getting updated, at least for the M290X.
Here are the results for an external 1080p display:
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iMac 5K GPU Performance
- Thread starter robertojorge
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Well, just like full-screen vs windowed, which was a clue I guess, the Unigine Valley Benchmark is basically insensitive to how many physical pixels are getting updated, at least for the M290X.
Here are the results for an external 1080p display:
M290X and M295X, how about OpenCL?
Probably these are much more differentiated as compute engines for GPU-accelerated software as opposed to these Unigine benchmarks.
Here's a benchmark that is very easy to download and run (http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/LuxMark), and the default test ("Sala") that it just launches into on startup:
Probably these are much more differentiated as compute engines for GPU-accelerated software as opposed to these Unigine benchmarks.
Here's a benchmark that is very easy to download and run (http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/LuxMark), and the default test ("Sala") that it just launches into on startup:
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The reports of excessive heat are not giving you the whole picture.
AMD's new generations of GPUs are designed to operate at 95c before throttling down:-
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7457/the-radeon-r9-290x-review/7
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-radeon-r9-295x2-review
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2013/10/28/is-the-amd-radeon-r9-290x-too-hot/1
One poster decided to blanket swarm lots of threads here with the same information before they ascertained whether an operating temperature of 95 was within the M295X's operating range.
Now I can't (and nobody can) say whether heat will be a long term issue in the riMac, it's not totally unheard of:- https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4766577?start=0&tstart=0.
But consider this:-
1. The overheating laptops as linked above are the exception rather than the rule.
2. Companies like Apple heat stress their designs in industrial ovens and simulate this over the lifetime of the device.
3. All the important components (CPU, GPU, m/board etc) inside the iMacs have temp. sensors and the system is designed to throttle down or shut off to avoid any damage from overheating. This has been the case for many years now.
steve23094,
You seem to be rather well informed of the new 5k iMacs. Did you notice discussion elsewhere of these temperature issues? I've looked through the WHOLE INTERNET and have trouble finding other people having issues then the one poster here on macrumors. There are reports that the fans start audibly running, but nobody seems to complain they would be loud.
I've ordered an iMac (i7/295x), but am on the fence of cancelling due to fears of heat, throttling and loud fan noise.
Two things guys.
When a display is in a resolution thats not its optimal one, the picture will look blurry, its the same if you have 1080p monitor and use 720p on it.
So thats why iMac screen looks blurry in lower resolutions. Problems with this, that most games doesn't run well in 5K, so you have to lower resolution, and the screen will look subpar.
Also, about the temps, i said it before, when you put a 100W GPU in a thin chassis you will get problems. Having a GPU over 100 degrees C, is exactly quite dangerous, and will make your components last much shorter, and in return make your iMac have a shorter life.
This is basic engineering. heat isn't good, and over 100 degrees is quite bad, gpu should be around 70-80 celsius under load. And while components work at higher temps, its not good for them to do so. And yes Apple has of course tested, and the iMac has sensors to throttle etc. But then again, a machine like this should not throttle that means just the cooling is not good enough, or that the GPU draws to much power/creates to much heat.
For example, the gtx980m hovers around 70-80 degrees in laptops, but then again, those are not 100W either.
People dont buy laptops that throttle, because if you play games in Windows and it throttles the fps dies. So this throttling will make gaming on this iMac unpleasant. Because the FPS will drop due to throttling etc.
When a display is in a resolution thats not its optimal one, the picture will look blurry, its the same if you have 1080p monitor and use 720p on it.
So thats why iMac screen looks blurry in lower resolutions. Problems with this, that most games doesn't run well in 5K, so you have to lower resolution, and the screen will look subpar.
Also, about the temps, i said it before, when you put a 100W GPU in a thin chassis you will get problems. Having a GPU over 100 degrees C, is exactly quite dangerous, and will make your components last much shorter, and in return make your iMac have a shorter life.
This is basic engineering. heat isn't good, and over 100 degrees is quite bad, gpu should be around 70-80 celsius under load. And while components work at higher temps, its not good for them to do so. And yes Apple has of course tested, and the iMac has sensors to throttle etc. But then again, a machine like this should not throttle that means just the cooling is not good enough, or that the GPU draws to much power/creates to much heat.
For example, the gtx980m hovers around 70-80 degrees in laptops, but then again, those are not 100W either.
People dont buy laptops that throttle, because if you play games in Windows and it throttles the fps dies. So this throttling will make gaming on this iMac unpleasant. Because the FPS will drop due to throttling etc.
Put it this way. I'm considering ordering a riMac and the heat (non) issue is not factoring into my thinking. I'm waiting for the Anandtech review before making my final decision because I'm most interested in the real world GPU performance of the M295X. I'm waiting for a reply to a Tweet I sent them about when the review will be posted, they confirmed they are preparing a review just that the last info coming out was that they didn't know if they were going to do the M290X or M295X.
Here is a link to my Tweet, favourite it if you like and it might nudge them to get a move on. https://twitter.com/steve23094/status/526722808383283201
There are not a lot of gaming benchmarks out there at the moment. Synthetic benchmarks are all well and good but many of them have faults or pick on things that don't translate to the real world.
Actually ArsTechnica just released their review and they seem to say everything looks great at 2560x1440 and even the standard 4K resolution (because Windows 8.1 does not support 5K).
Max fps is a useless number. According to a thread on guru3d, the number is generated while graphics elements are still being loaded. Ppl report getting numbers that don't make sense. I'd ignore it.
Also, Alien Isolation was used because it has a built in benchmark but it's not exactly the most taxing game graphics wise. Techspot ran a review of the benchmark and game and they were pretty underwhelmed. The ars bench is useful for comparison versus the 760M but people should be aware this is a game where techspot found a 4 year old GTX 460 could get 27fps at 1920x1200. the retina imac numbers are very playable for alien isolation but you won't necessarily get similar high average fps in other games.
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You forget that 1440p is exactly 4 pixels to 1 on 2880p.
where 720p on 1080p is only 2 pixel to 1.
This means on riMac schould not be so blurry.
wait what? blurry and pixelated like hell? I'm currently writing this on a bootcamped Win 7, using the 1440p res and even on Windows, everything is sharp.
Also not sure where all this talk about heat is coming from. I wrote before that I felt the fan was louder when trying to play Tomb Raider on Yosemite than it was on Win 7 - I have both copies under Steam.
Anyway, I have been playing Civ:Beyond Earth, Dota2, Heroes of Newerth, CS:GO, L4D, Tomb Raider and Shadows of Mordor on full settings and all at 2560x1440.
I tried 3840x2160 (the max that Win7 lets me) on a couple of games and it was less than ideal
Here's the benchies from Shadow of Mordor. All on Ultra. Decent frames of 36+ avg. Also a couple of screenshots of the video taken with Fraps.
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Habeeb, when playing is the fan like loud loud like apple laptops or reasonable or ...? Mainly, does it get annoying?
Benchies from Tomb Raider. Again everything ultra. I play this game a bit stealthily so I'm ok with avg fps of 30. Will probably turn down the settings a bit to get to 30.
also including a couple of screenshots taken with fraps.
also including a couple of screenshots taken with fraps.
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Is it louder than my 2012 rMBP? No... that one is definitely not suited for gaming.
Is it louder than my old 2007 Dell XPS 1710 laptop with its 7900GTX? No! that one was even louder and could heat a small town when I was gaming with it. (I also had to literally give it away after 3 years after paying almost USD 3k for it)
With the 5K, ambient room temp is about 23c. Normally the aircon is switched off and I have the table fan running. I hear that more than the 5K's fan. I tend to switch the AC on if I feel a bit hot and let it cool the room for 15-20 mins before switching it off again.
So maybe that helps with the 5K's cooling and any fan noise.
780M. Yeah, the comparison was kind of my point. The M295X does not look good against the 780M which I was opening to discussion, was the benchmark bottle necked, driver issues, or something else?
I wish they (these online tech sites) would actually post the base model benchmarks against the upgrades. In the words of Jeremy Clarkson, "how hard can it be?" (besides system availability) though the base units are in stock in many places now, you would think we would have seen more benchmarks on that already. I also am not a PC gamer so most don't matter to me, but I do encoding w/Handbrake and Lightroom 4 photo editing w/some FCPX video editing.
For example I would love to see:
i5/8GB RAM/1TB Fusion/290
vs
i7/8GB RAM/1TB Fusion/295
and
i5/16GB RAM/256GB SSD/290
vs
i7/16GB/256GB SSD/290
For example I would love to see:
i5/8GB RAM/1TB Fusion/290
vs
i7/8GB RAM/1TB Fusion/295
and
i5/16GB RAM/256GB SSD/290
vs
i7/16GB/256GB SSD/290
Nice! Do you have the Ultra pack installed? I read it needed 6GB VRAM, but the 295 only has 4GB. Looks like it still worked nicely?
I'm also wondering about noise. That's the one thing I don't like about my 2010 MBP. The fans are so loud. They're fine at 2k RPM, but rarely are they at 2,000RPM!
Well, the processors are standard Intel CPUs that have been out for a while. Maybe you can find something by looking directly for CPU comparison.
I believe they are i7 4790 and i5 4690 if I don't recall wrong.
steve23090235458 said:
Oops my mistake. Honestly the M295X looks pretty impressive now that solid benchmarks are coming out. Slower than the 980M but faster than the 970M and a good improvement over the last AMD mobile GPU. A very solid chip and worth the upgrade I think.
I would weigh the near equivalent benchmarks in alien isolation in the context of other gaming benchmarks which show the m295x significantly outperforming the 780m. Like you mentioned, it could be a bunch of things capping fps in alien isolation.
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I was quite surprised to get ~35FPS in WoW at full native 5k res on the 295.
https://www.icloud.com/photostream/#A2G6XBubGs7ofm
Settings displayed at the end of the video.
https://www.icloud.com/photostream/#A2G6XBubGs7ofm
Settings displayed at the end of the video.
I also feel the same about my order. Heat and noise are deal killers for me. What to do?