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Lightroom performance on 4k/5k iMac
- Thread starter mpe
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The 4K has a little weak little baby iGPU.
All of the 21.5s from previous years had better dGPUs, and their screen was a lot worse than the one on the 4K.
The 4K iMac cannot perform any gpu intensive work competently now.
All of the 21.5s from previous years had better dGPUs, and their screen was a lot worse than the one on the 4K.
The 4K iMac cannot perform any gpu intensive work competently now.
Well, there is no doubt that even when the 5K Mac is maxed out, it is not the most powerful machine there is.
A more powerful machine is a workstation class desktop or a top end gaming computer.
Luckily I am merely a consumer user so even the quad core i5 on my 5K iMac is powerful for my needs.
But what none of those little PC workstations have and the reason I still recommend people to go Mac (maybe Mac Pro if you need that level of performance), is that Mac has OS X. OS X or macOS is so superior to 'garbage-ows' (Windows), that it is difficult to even put an exact dollar amount on how much better it really is.
While I would not classify the iMac as the most powerful machine available because of where it lies in the objective technical hierarchy, for a consumer level machine, it flies, and that is what I'm concerned about.
For graphics professionals I recommend the Mac Pro with its dual FirePro GPUs. For someone like me who doesn't use it for that, the iMac is undoubtedly the best there is.
A more powerful machine is a workstation class desktop or a top end gaming computer.
Luckily I am merely a consumer user so even the quad core i5 on my 5K iMac is powerful for my needs.
But what none of those little PC workstations have and the reason I still recommend people to go Mac (maybe Mac Pro if you need that level of performance), is that Mac has OS X. OS X or macOS is so superior to 'garbage-ows' (Windows), that it is difficult to even put an exact dollar amount on how much better it really is.
While I would not classify the iMac as the most powerful machine available because of where it lies in the objective technical hierarchy, for a consumer level machine, it flies, and that is what I'm concerned about.
For graphics professionals I recommend the Mac Pro with its dual FirePro GPUs. For someone like me who doesn't use it for that, the iMac is undoubtedly the best there is.
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I know it's not what you asked, but I run Lightroom 5 on my non-retina 2013 i7 16GB 27" iMac. The Develop module can get a little laggy, but from my non-pro perspective it's not the worst thing in the world.
If you're serious about photos, max out to your budget (and no more than that). When you're in the Develop module, take a sip of whatever you're drinking when something takes longer than you think it should. When you set your cup/glass down the task should be completed.
Sorry, my 2¢.
If you're serious about photos, max out to your budget (and no more than that). When you're in the Develop module, take a sip of whatever you're drinking when something takes longer than you think it should. When you set your cup/glass down the task should be completed.
Sorry, my 2¢.
When I last tried the 5k iMac few month back there was a seconds long latency such as when doing clone operations on RAW images. Barely usable. It is the huge resolution thats was a problem. GPU has nothing to do with that. Same operation on Macbook Pro and external 1080p display is perfectly fine. I was hoping if Adobe/Apple have done something to improve things.
I don't think 2013 Mac Pro is the best computer for Lightroom. It could be even slower than the i7 iMac and its internals are close to obsolescence already. It lacks proper display connections for driving hi-dpi screens, etc. Perhaps for video and scientific computations that can be easily parallelised, but not for photo editing.
Offloading operations to GPU can easily make interactive editing slower and Mac Pro isn't even using two GPUs effectively.
I don't think 2013 Mac Pro is the best computer for Lightroom. It could be even slower than the i7 iMac and its internals are close to obsolescence already. It lacks proper display connections for driving hi-dpi screens, etc. Perhaps for video and scientific computations that can be easily parallelised, but not for photo editing.
Offloading operations to GPU can easily make interactive editing slower and Mac Pro isn't even using two GPUs effectively.