Is this year's top-of-the-line i5 machine faster than 2017's 4.2ghz i7?

[Whackintosh]

I'm kind of arguing with myself to not pull the trigger and buy the 8-core i9, since I want to get the Vega 48 and the two upgrades together come in at just under $1000 in Canada

 

[Whiteman007]

I was think about asking this exact question. If the i5 3.7 6 corr 9th gen is better than the i7 4.2 quad

 

[zooland]

2019 i5 9th gen versus mid 2017 i7: single core about the same, multi core i5 is better.

https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/13398965


https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/13399763

 

[Bohemien]

For single applications, from what I've seen so far, the i9 gives only a marginal benefit over the i5-9600, because they don't seem to really make use of more than 6 cores anyway. The i9 will give you an advantage if you use more than one CPU-hungry app at a time or if you do stuff that exploits having more than 6 threads available for one app.

 

[SkiHound2]

Benchmarks I've seen indicate the i5 in the 2019 27" iMac is at least on par and perhaps a bit faster than the i7 in the 2017. It's 6 actual cores vs a 4 core processor with multi threading. I never really heard anyone say they felt the 2017 i7 was too slow. It's one of the things that convinced me to go i5 rather than i9 in the 2019 iMac. Doubt there's much, if any, real world performance difference between the 2017 i7 and current i5 iMacs. As Bohemiem noted, where you'd notice much difference between the i9 and i5 in the 2019 iMac would be when using software that really exploits the extra cores and multi-threading, or when running many programs simultaneously.

 

[Whackintosh]

Thanks, everyone. Sounds like I'd be more than happy with the i5 / Vega 48 combination. That being said, with the ice being so steep. it's awfully tempting to spend around $1300 more and go for a refurb iMac Pro base model!