Retina iMac opinions

[zockermiller]

Hey people of Macrumors!

I have been looking for months now at upgrading to a new Mac. I have an early 2010 Macbook Pro that is slowly showing its age. I have been going back and forth between if I should get an iMac or a Macbook, but I do want Retina. Now I have decided that a desktop would be better as I do not do much on the go like I did in college. I have an iPad for that anyways.

Now that Apple introduced the lower end riMac, I have been looking at that. However, I wanted to know if it is worth it, as the $300 difference is a jump for me, and I want to make sure I make the right choice in the long run. I know that the fusion makes a difference, but is it that drastic to spend the extra money?

Thanks all for the help.

 

[yjchua95]

Hey people of Macrumors!

I have been looking for months now at upgrading to a new Mac. I have an early 2010 Macbook Pro that is slowly showing its age. I have been going back and forth between if I should get an iMac or a Macbook, but I do want Retina. Now I have decided that a desktop would be better as I do not do much on the go like I did in college. I have an iPad for that anyways.

Now that Apple introduced the lower end riMac, I have been looking at that. However, I wanted to know if it is worth it, as the $300 difference is a jump for me, and I want to make sure I make the right choice in the long run. I know that the fusion makes a difference, but is it that drastic to spend the extra money?

Thanks all for the help.

You should snap this one up instead: http://store.apple.com/us/product/F...z-quad-core-intel-core-i5-with-retina-display

PS - never get one that doesn't have at least a Fusion Drive option.

 

[loekf]

Maybe this one helps:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6679/a-month-with-apples-fusion-drive/6

However, also keep in mind that in the 2014 5k model, the SSD runs off a x2 PCIe interface, while in other models Apple used a x4 configuration.

Fusion drive definitely helps, you get performance somewhere between a full SSD and a HDD.

Having my first (5K retina) Mac, I have no experience with other 27" models, with a HDD. My sister has a 21.5" with a HDD. This is a 5400 RPM 2.5" HDD. The difference in responsiveness is "night and day".

 

[joudbren]

If you are going to go with a 5K iMac, trust me, spend the extra on the Fusion drive or a bigger SSD. I had a 27" 2011 i7 iMac previously with a standard SATA hard drive and finally added an SSD drive via the thunderbolt interface to run OSX. The performance difference was night and day. You really don't want to be booting from and running an old school SATA drive these days if you can help it.

I now own a new 5K base model iMac from late last year with the Fusion drive and the performance of the Fusion drive is fantastic. So much so that I haven't bothered adding back my old TB SSD drive as the internal Fusion drive is performing admirably. You have to remember that the internal SSD portion of the Fusion drive is 128GB which would be perfectly acceptable even as a stand alone boot drive. The two drives work seamlessly together and at least for the stuff I do I haven't seen any performance issues at all that would drive me back to my external SSD.

Just my two cents worth and good luck with whatever you buy!

 

[Kubaton]

A few weeks ago, I bought a base model late 2014 27" 5K retina iMac, coming from a mid-2010 MacBook Pro. I love the iMac. The gaming performance is incredible, although, I haven't tried any newer games on it but some of the ones I did try were still graphics intensive and they ran buttery smooth. Soon, I'm going to get some 3rd party RAM and max it out at 32GB. Do yourself a favor and don't buy the RAM upgrade from Apple, as it'll cost you twice as much as doing it yourself and it couldn't be more simple to do. The only thing that has me worried is the hard drive failing, as they're not user accessible. Hopefully the hard drive will last until my next upgrade.

I agree with others, get at least a fusion drive, if not total SSD. The performance is outstanding.

 

[aevan]

iMac 5K with Fusion Drive is going to be amazingly fast on El Capitan and will be powerful for years to come, but yeah - a Fusion Drive/SSD will really improve performance and general feel.

 

[iConnected]

It's worth the extra money - go for it. Even go for full SSD if your budget permits.