Retina or More memory?

[ckka]

I realize the talk is all retina these days. But I am torn.

Graphic Designer. Primarily working with adobe cs 2014 suite. Most of my days spent in Indesign, Illustrator and Dreamweaver. Some big Photoshop projects come my way now and then.

I desperately need to upgrade my 2009 iMac. It has served me wonderfully but it is way to slow these days.

I am torn between the standard Retina

3.5GHz Quad-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
8GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB
1TB Fusion Drive
AMD Radeon R9 M290X 2GB GDDR5

or the 27" with a Fusion upgrade and More memory added.

3.4GHz Quad-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz
16GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2X8GB
1TB Fusion Drive
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M 2GB GDDR5

Is more memory better than more pixels?
and is the GeForce that much better than the Radeon for my needs.

Pipe in. 2¢ welcome.

 

[rkaufmann87]

Easy, buy the Retina and you add the RAM on your own. Use only OWC (www.macsales.com) or Crucial for the RAM. NEVER buy extra RAM directly from Apple, it's too expensive. Installing RAM is a 5 minute task.

 

[boast]

I wouldnt use memory for comparison since ram is user upgradable on 27" iMacs. (Unless you really disliked Lego and dont want to install ram)

 

[nrubenstein]

I wouldnt use memory for comparison since ram is user upgradable on 27" iMacs. (Unless you really disliked Lego and dont want to install ram)

Retina. You can always add more memory (for a lot less) later, but you can't upgrade the screen.