The Definitive riMac graphics benchmark thread

[fruitpunch.ben]

This is my benchmark (i5-6600 - M395):

View attachment 595356

I hope the settings were correct. I didn't here any fans. Should I disable sound while benchmarking or doesn't it effect the result?

Awesome. That fills in a gap. Results make sense too, given what we know, I think your settings were correct. For me it shows that the 395 is worth the upgrade, but the 395X is not. Thanks!

Technically, only the first post is supposed to be interesting, assuming that fruitpunch.ben is keeping up.

I am. Checking every day and updating when the results come in.
If there is ever a consensus on a different benchmark, I'm willing to keep adding to my post.
E.g. if people want a pro benchmark in addition to the gaming ones...

 

[Textureboy]

No one has been able to answer my question. But as someone who is buying this machine mainly for photo and video editing does the 395X benefit in anyway? (2GB vs 4GB)

I went for the upgrade not to get a higher FPS on games but to have a better overall experience when rendering and working on a 5k workspace. I really want the smoothest experience possible with no stutter on a 5K screen.

Mine is coming in on Friday so I'll be able to test it out myself until then I want to make sure I made the right decision.

 

[sn0man1]

Awesome. That fills in a gap. Results make sense too, given what we know, I think your settings were correct. For me it shows that the 395 is worth the upgrade, but the 395X is not. Thanks!



I am. Checking every day and updating when the results come in.
If there is ever a consensus on a different benchmark, I'm willing to keep adding to my post.
E.g. if people want a pro benchmark in addition to the gaming ones...

I may have pulled the trigger on the $2299 config as it sat. Not prepared to give first impressions other than mother of .... retina 27'' desktop is insane and i am glad they opened the box in front of me and swapped me the trackpad (very worth $50).

I have a series of tabs that show the M395 is (other than memory) 87% of the M395X. Good job on this thread by the way!

 

[SBruv]

Does your "firestrike" test suggest a playable framerate?

My combined frametrate was "9.63 fps" which strikes me as a real stutterfest, but then, my card scored 4852, so...

Where's the combined frame rate? I'm not seeing it...

 

[jerwin]

Where's the combined frame rate? I'm not seeing it...

Click on Show Result Details, and then on "Detailed Scores". There it is, in black and grey

Graphics Test 1
25.14 fps
Graphics Test 2
22.49 fps
Physics Test
23.32 fps
Combined Test
9.63 fps

Haven't a clue what it means. Spiffy looking benchmark, though.

 

[SBruv]

Click on Show Result Details, and then on "Detailed Scores". There it is, in black and grey

Graphics Test 1
25.14 fps
Graphics Test 2
22.49 fps
Physics Test
23.32 fps
Combined Test
9.63 fps

Haven't a clue what it means. Spiffy looking benchmark, though.

Ah, right. Okay, I got 6917 Firestrike score this time, and the FPS are:

1: 36.42
2: 31.22
Physics: 40.42
Combined: 13.0

So... yeah.

 

[Brewing]

I have a series of tabs that show the M395 is (other than memory) 87% of the M395X. Good job on this thread by the way!

I am confused by this statement. Could you please clarify what you mean by tabs, and where you get the 87% figure. Sorry my head is just spinning at this point.

 

[cynics]

Yea Im saying, whats the difference between these two cards besides RAM? The 395x is maybe clocked slightly higher than the 395? I don't see why heat would be that different

Here is a video on the desktop 390. He benchmarks the temp difference of the 290 and 390 albeit desktop.

 

[Nirurin]

I am confused by this statement. Could you please clarify what you mean by tabs, and where you get the 87% figure. Sorry my head is just spinning at this point.

I want to know the same thing.. I thought the 395 was the same card, but with only 2gb of vram?

 

[Fl0r!an]

I think M395 is small Tonga (equals desktop R9 380 in size) while M395X is full size Tonga.

 

[Nirurin]

I think M395 is small Tonga (equals desktop R9 380 in size) while M395X is full size Tonga.

Would anyone be able to check this on their own 395/395x machines? If there is any way of looking at the numbers of cores/shaders etc on the system itself.

 

[jerwin]

m395: GPU-Z shows 1792 shaders
m395x: presumably, the full 2048 shaders, just like the m295x has.

 

[AppleHater]

How's Final Cut Pro make use out of GPUs? More GPU dependent than Premiere?

 

[Nirurin]

m395: GPU-Z shows 1792 shaders
m395x: presumably, the full 2048 shaders, just like the m295x has.

I just found this out, and posted in a different thread with it, but I'll add it here too -

m395 = 1792 shaders, 834mhz, 2gb DDr5

m395x = 2048 shaders, 909mhz, 4gb DDr5

 

[sn0man1]

I just found this out, and posted in a different thread with it, but I'll add it here too -

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/27-imac-late-2015-i5-3-3-amd-m395-benchmarks.1928943/

M395 = 1792 shaders, 834mhz core, 1365mhz memory, 2gb DDr5


https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/gaming-on-m395x-im-satisfied.1931695/

M395x = 2048 shaders, 909mhz core, 1365mhz memory, 4gb DDr5

FTFY, not that it matters but people are putting desktop chip videos and stats and we want this to be clear that they aren't exactly the same to my knowledge. (I may be wrong so please don't think I'm trying to be a know it all. Just presuming someone will be using these threads for information in a year or so).

From http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/10/the-retina-imac-and-its-5k-display-as-a-gaming-machine/ :

M295X = 2048 shaders, 850mhz core, 1362mhz memory, 4gb DDr5


My guess is that they are both 28nm chips and that they are binning the M395Xs w/ minor flaws and using them for M395s. The clock-speed bump is quite modest and the benchmarks thus far are boring that out.

If you want to know why there is any benchmark/speed improvements I would assume it is largely to do with going from a core i5/i7 - 4 series at 22nm to a i5/i7 - 6 series at 14nm.



The takeaway I see is that unless you need the 4 extra compute units (256 shaders) for OpenGl/Metal or you have a texture set that requires 4gb of ram (very recent game releases come to mind), the M395 is a solid part.

 

[Nirurin]

FTFY, not that it matters but people are putting desktop chip videos and stats and we want this to be clear that they aren't exactly the same to my knowledge. (I may be wrong so please don't think I'm trying to be a know it all. Just presuming someone will be using these threads for information in a year or so).

From http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/10/the-retina-imac-and-its-5k-display-as-a-gaming-machine/ :

M295X = 2048 shaders, 850mhz core, 1362mhz memory, 4gb DDr5


My guess is that they are both 28nm chips and that they are binning the M395Xs w/ minor flaws and using them for M395s. The clock-speed bump is quite modest and the benchmarks thus far are boring that out.

If you want to know why there is any benchmark/speed improvements I would assume it is largely to do with going from a core i5/i7 - 4 series at 22nm to a i5/i7 - 6 series at 14nm.



The takeaway I see is that unless you need the 4 extra compute units (256 shaders) for OpenGl/Metal or you have a texture set that requires 4gb of ram (very recent game releases come to mind), the M395 is a solid part.

Sorry, the figures I quoted were for the mobile versions, but I forgot to put 'm' at the start of the number because I forgot that the desktop ones use the same name. I've edited my post now

 

[magbarn]

FTFY, not that it matters but people are putting desktop chip videos and stats and we want this to be clear that they aren't exactly the same to my knowledge. (I may be wrong so please don't think I'm trying to be a know it all. Just presuming someone will be using these threads for information in a year or so).

From http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/10/the-retina-imac-and-its-5k-display-as-a-gaming-machine/ :

M295X = 2048 shaders, 850mhz core, 1362mhz memory, 4gb DDr5


My guess is that they are both 28nm chips and that they are binning the M395Xs w/ minor flaws and using them for M395s. The clock-speed bump is quite modest and the benchmarks thus far are boring that out.

If you want to know why there is any benchmark/speed improvements I would assume it is largely to do with going from a core i5/i7 - 4 series at 22nm to a i5/i7 - 6 series at 14nm.



The takeaway I see is that unless you need the 4 extra compute units (256 shaders) for OpenGl/Metal or you have a texture set that requires 4gb of ram (very recent game releases come to mind), the M395 is a solid part.

Here's the thing anybody buying the 5k iMac for work and not gaming should stick to the m390. Even the extra 2gb of vram isn't going to help gaming much as the gpu doesn't have the power to really game at 5k where the 4gb of ram would really come in handy. The m390 is just a slightly cut down m395x. In the past these were the much better values (TitanX vs 980ti, 290 vs 290x etc...)

 

[Textureboy]

Here's the thing anybody buying the 5k iMac for work and not gaming should stick to the m390. Even the extra 2gb of vram isn't going to help gaming much as the gpu doesn't have the power to really game at 5k where the 4gb of ram would really come in handy. The m390 is just a slightly cut down m395x. In the past these were the much better values (TitanX vs 980ti, 290 vs 290x etc...)

Is the extra 2GB actually useless? I'm using it for for work and I thought the 2GB would help performance on a Retina screen.

 

[magbarn]

Is the extra 2GB actually useless? I'm using it for for work and I thought the 2GB would help performance on a Retina screen.

For what though? From what I understand of gpu compute, the frame buffer is hardly being used. The extra 2gb of vram would only be useful if your loading textures into the vram. Afaik the only time that would be happening for work is if you were using your iMac (which imho it's poorly suited for) to develop 3D pc or console games which are much more likely to use large amounts of vram.

EDIT: Just realized your user name so I guess if your job includes loading textures into GDDR5 Vram I guess for your case the extra 2gb would be useful. For me, FCPX I doubt is using more than 1gb of vram at a time.

 

[Textureboy]

For what though? From what I understand of gpu compute, the frame buffer is hardly being used. The extra 2gb of vram would only be useful if your loading textures into the vram. Afaik the only time that would be happening for work is if you were using your iMac (which imho it's poorly suited for) to develop 3D pc or console games which are much more likely to use large amounts of vram.

EDIT: Just realized your user name so I guess if your job includes loading textures into GDDR5 Vram I guess for your case the extra 2gb would be useful. For me, FCPX I doubt is using more than 1gb of vram at a time.

Haha TextureBoy is just my online alias.

From my assumption I thought the more VRAM you have the smoother the iMac would be in general. Especially with a 5K display I thought it could push the system a bit.

Coming from the first generation rMBP if I could have waited I would have opted for the second to third generation system for a better graphics card. Eventhough the rMBP is still doing my fine now; I do find the occasional stutter because the retina display is a bit heavy on the system.

I'm not a heavy gamer or a 3D designer so it seems that going for the 395X may have been a bit excessive for me :/

 

[ohsnaphappy]

I'll have to look up Adobe's wording on this, but photoshop and the most recent version of Lightroom offload onto the GPU. So in the case the 2 extra gb will help. I'll see if I can find the page on their website

 

[magbarn]

I'll have to look up Adobe's wording on this, but photoshop and the most recent version of Lightroom offload onto the GPU. So in the case the 2 extra gb will help. I'll see if I can find the page on their website

They may offload it onto the GPU, but it's usually swapped in/out of VRAM quickly so I doubt it's going to use more than 2gb of the VRAM anytime soon. Remember, how many OS X computers actually have more than 2gb of VRAM. Even the highest spec MBP only has 2 GB

EDIT: Here's a screen cap below that has the GPU requirements.

 

[itfiend]

They may offload it onto the GPU, but it's usually swapped in/out of VRAM quickly so I doubt it's going to use more than 2gb of the VRAM anytime soon. Remember, how many OS X computers actually have more than 2gb of VRAM. Even the highest spec MBP only has 2 GB

EDIT: Here's a screen cap below that has the GPU requirements.

But I'm sure there's a thread on the Adobe forums that says that if you want to run external monitors you should have the same amount of memory for the external display - so if you were running a 4k and a 5k display you'd want 4gb.

 

[jerwin]

How Much Video RAM Should My Video Card Have for Adobe Premiere?

Definitely not official, and of all the CC products Premiere probably consumes resources most voraciously.

Here is a chart with a basic guideline for the amount of video ram you have on your video card.

SD Footage – 1 GB is fine
HD Footage – 1 GB is min. – while 2 GB is better
2K Footage – 3 GB is min. – while 4 GB is better
4K Footage – 4 GB is min. – while more than 4GB is better
5K Footage – 6 GB or more is better

Remember, this is just a guideline. Having more ram on the video card than what is listed above is a good thing.

....

I have had several people contact me about Adobe Premiere shutting of the GPU mid-render and switching into software mode and the rendering slowing down dramatically. After talking with them and seeing the complexity of their timeline, it was easy to see why they were running out of video ram on the video card.
​

OpenCL essentially turns your video card into a parallel computing device. Instead of using the computer's main memory, it uses VRAM to store the results of its computations. However, I don't imagine that it's memory management capabilities are anywhere near as sophisticated as your macs-- when it runs out of memory, it runs out of memory. Mercury's solution to that is to stop using the GPU midway through.

I suppose barefeats and the like can be contacted to give a better idea of how Photoshop might behave under similar circumstances, but for heavy opencl work, Vram matters.
(And judging from how Luxmark grabs ahold of my GPU for it's benchmarking, perhaps the dual GPU setup of the mac Pro is a better solution for heavy, heavy use. One card for computation; one card for keeping the GUI responsive. Perhaps a few bugs need to be worked out.)

 

[magbarn]

How Much Video RAM Should My Video Card Have for Adobe Premiere?

Definitely not official, and of all the CC products Premiere probably consumes resources most voraciously.

Here is a chart with a basic guideline for the amount of video ram you have on your video card.

SD Footage – 1 GB is fine
HD Footage – 1 GB is min. – while 2 GB is better
2K Footage – 3 GB is min. – while 4 GB is better
4K Footage – 4 GB is min. – while more than 4GB is better
5K Footage – 6 GB or more is better

Remember, this is just a guideline. Having more ram on the video card than what is listed above is a good thing.

....

I have had several people contact me about Adobe Premiere shutting of the GPU mid-render and switching into software mode and the rendering slowing down dramatically. After talking with them and seeing the complexity of their timeline, it was easy to see why they were running out of video ram on the video card.
​

OpenCL essentially turns your video card into a parallel computing device. Instead of using the computer's main memory, it uses VRAM to store the results of its computations. However, I don't imagine that it's memory management capabilities are anywhere near as sophisticated as your macs-- when it runs out of memory, it runs out of memory. Mercury's solution to that is to stop using the GPU midway through.

I suppose barefeats and the like can be contacted to give a better idea of how Photoshop might behave under similar circumstances, but for heavy opencl work, Vram matters.
(And judging from how Luxmark grabs ahold of my GPU for it's benchmarking, perhaps the dual GPU setup of the mac Pro is a better solution for heavy, heavy use. One card for computation; one card for keeping the GUI responsive. Perhaps a few bugs need to be worked out.)

Ack, good thing I haven't ordered a 5k iMac yet. Since I edit 4K videos, I'll be wanting more than 4gb VRAM. Too bad, to get more than 4gb and stay in OS X requires me to put out $4000 or so on a nMP which is ludicrous as the price doesn't even include a screen. Then again FCPX may have different GPU memory requirements...