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Retina iMac or 2013 non retina iMac

D

dondon4720

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 12, 2012
34
2
I will be going to school for industrial design so I will be using CAD software as well as photoshop and premiere for my various hobbies as well as gaming on windows. So I was wondering would it be better to get the retina iMac or just get the 2013 iMac with the 780m?:apple:

I usually use computers for about 5 or 6 years before getting a new one so I want to make sure that whatever I get will last that long
 
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The retina works great for graphic design and video editing. If you want to keep it for a while I can guarantee that future models will be retina all the way and you won't fall behind in that regard. So go for it.
 
You pretty much answered your own question. For those high end applications you want the most powerful machine you can get. That's the retina iMac with 295X and i7. If you can afford it, get the 512 SSD, otherwise I would opt for the fusion drive.
 
rkaufmann87 said:
For school work, get a non-retina.
Click to expand...

It's university level. Not high school level.

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dondon4720 said:
I will be going to school for industrial design so I will be using CAD software as well as photoshop and premiere for my various hobbies as well as gaming on windows. So I was wondering would it be better to get the retina iMac or just get the 2013 iMac with the 780m?:apple:

I usually use computers for about 5 or 6 years before getting a new one so I want to make sure that whatever I get will last that long
Click to expand...

Buy the retina variant.

Spec it up with an i7, 512GB SSD and 4GB R9 M295X. You can upgrade RAM yourself. Apple's pricing for RAM upgrades are daft.
 
Yeah, your work is gonna require a lot of fine work on a screen and many hours there. I would think a retina screen would be priority number one, since you interact the most with it. It would trump any theoretical slowness IMHO.
 
It sounds like You need a CAD computer firstly. You better find out the hardware requirements for the CAD software you're going to be using before buying a computer.

You might need a Windows PC or run Windows on a Mac using Bootcamp or one of the PC emulators for the Mac. I know CAD software usually uses a dongle for copy protection so that could be an issue
 
I have a laptop that I got last year for gaming / computer programming ( switching majors) that I am living off of until I can get an Imac it is a i7 3.4ghz with a 675mx in it, I thought about getting a mac pro but I don't want to invest in the expensive monitors that come with it :p. I am half tempted to wait it out til the next retina cycle to see if they have nvidia cards in them, I have had bad experiences with AMD cards in the past. 1440p is still an insane resoloution for me because I am used to 1440 x 900 19" dell displays, my laptop has a 1080p screen and I love it. Also I had intended to run bootcamp on it for gaming anyway.
 
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Should I just wait til next year save up some money and get a mac pro?? or wait for an iMac refresh (hopefully by next summer / early fall :p)
 
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