The i9 10-core was made for you. Why?

[arctair]

Ok — I've read every thread and watched every video regarding this issue. And I think I have a good grasp on it. And without getting into related issues, like heat dissipation probs rendering those two extra cores problematic regardless, and the idea that in a few years Apple CPU's will make everyone laugh at this discussion. What I really want to know is what are the the tasks, and/or the or the specific software packages, that one would have use on a very regular, high-project turnaround-basis to make the purchase of the 10-core version — and spending that extra $400 — to be absolutely worth it (or damn close).

Let's limit it to three. It seems like audio editing software across the board seems to make the cut. As does processing a lot of RAW files in Lightroom. Heavy-duty video editing (6-8K) seems top make the cut, but more so in rendering the final output, as opposed to the lack of beach balls during the actual editing process itself — and only for either FCP or Premiere; I can't remember which, as one is optimized to use parallel cores/threads, while the other isn't.

And if one plans on keeping their new iMac longer than many I see here — just as I am typing this on a Late-2012 Mini — is it not possible that a critical piece of software that only utilizes a single core now might be rewritten to use all ten in a year? Or will everyone be busy rewriting for the Apple ARM chips?

For the record, my primary reason for purchase is to edit 4-6K drone footage that my current Mini would laugh at. And once I start doing the work, I don't want to wait; I don;t want to see a clip freeze as I move it withing the timeline; I don't want to see a damn beach ball ever again. Now: When the editing is complete, I'm fine with getting some coffee.

This is is not the most coherent question I've ever posted — I apologize in advance if it's redundant and for beating any pre-deceased horses. But I think you get the point: A list, limited to three workflows/applications — now or in the near future — that would make you get the i9 and never look back.

 

[Donnation]

Well the only thing I will tell you is, 10-Cores or not, you will still see the beach ball until Catalina goes away. It’s the worst software Apple has released in a long time. Hopefully Big Sur fixes its issues.

 

[arctair]

I get beach balls just moving to-dos around in Things. I figured with such a quantum leap in power — i7 or i9 — I would finally be free. You just killed my dream lol.

Well the only thing I will tell you is, 10-Cores or not, you will still see the beach ball until Catalina goes away. It’s the worst software Apple has released in a long time. Hopefully Big Sur fixes its issues.

 

[SWolfe]

I think all this question is going to get you is a lot of differing opinions and heated arguments and its all getting kind of tired. If at this point you are not sure you need or can justify the i9 I would stick with the i7 it’s a really great chip. I got the i9 because I run VM all day that requires that I carve up cores and other resources to split among different VM so the more the better. I got the i9 and I love it I have had no issues with thermals or throttling and my benchmarks have consistangly beat any Mac I have ever owned at 1385 single core and 9950 in Multi-core. But every one of these my chip is better than yours Arguments have ended in people passing childish arguments off as facts. i Have seen all kinds of benchmarks that have supported both sides of the argument so they are not very helpful unfortunately. The i9 is a specialized chip only probably needed for certain use cases, that doesn’t make it a rip off or a stupid choice. but it is probably not needed for most people and if you do need it for your work load you probably already know.

 

[ADGrant]

Many software development workflows can benefit from multiple cores. Today I opened a Swift project in JetBrain's Appcode IDE, it maxed out all 10 cores indexing the project. OTOH Xcode opened the project much faster but it also takes advantage of all the cores for building the app.

Thermals are not an issue for me. The fans in my MacBook Pro would fire up every time I opened a project. This iMac is quiet.

 

[Donnation]

I get beach balls just moving to-dos around in Things. I figured with such a quantum leap in power — i7 or i9 — I would finally be free. You just killed my dream lol.

Haha, your dream is still alive. Its not hardware related, but just some nagging bugs with Catalina. It was a messy transition getting rid of iTunes, and Apple a year later still hasn't worked out all of the bugs with this version of the OS. I never had a single issue with beachballs in Mojave, but in Catalina I get them for whatever reason doing simple tasks and it drives me nuts. I hope that Big Sur irons out these bugs and runs the optimized version of MacOS that I've always enjoyed.

 

[ADGrant]

Haha, your dream is still alive. Its not hardware related, but just some nagging bugs with Catalina. It was a messy transition getting rid of iTunes, and Apple a year later still hasn't worked out all of the bugs with this version of the OS. I never had a single issue with beachballs in Mojave, but in Catalina I get them for whatever reason doing simple tasks and it drives me nuts. I hope that Big Sur irons out these bugs and runs the optimized version of MacOS that I've always enjoyed.

Beach balls are often an issue with the application that is beach balling. You don't see the problem with iOS apps because iOS terminates applications which block the UI thread.

 

[Donnation]

Beach balls are often an issue with the application that is beach balling. You don't see the problem with iOS apps because iOS terminates applications which block the UI thread.

Yes, I’m aware. And it’s Apple’s applications where I typically see them, which is a direct result of Catalina sucking.

 

[ADGrant]

Yes, I’m aware. And it’s Apple’s applications where I typically see them, which is a direct result of Catalina sucking.

Which apps in particular are you seeing the beach balls?

 

[Donnation]

Which apps in particular are you seeing the beach balls?

The Apple specific apps I see it in are Finder when moving files around, the TV App when loading movies, in Keynote inserting images, and sometimes on the desktop just saving things to it. I also see it in Lightroom and Final Cut, but those aren’t Apple specific so I don’t blame the OS for those.

Again I never had these issues in Mojave but they sure are present in Catalina. I’ve only had my new 2020 iMac a couple of days and have seen it in the above situations several times, and I set it up as new so nothing bad from my old machine was carried over.

Is it a major problem? No, it only lasts for a few seconds. Is it something that should be happening? Absolutely not.

 

[ADGrant]

The Apple specific apps I see it in are Finder when moving files around, the TV App when loading movies, in Keynote inserting images, and sometimes on the desktop just saving things to it. I also see it in Lightroom and Final Cut, but those aren’t Apple specific so I don’t blame the OS for those.

Again I never had these issues in Mojave but they sure are present in Catalina. I’ve only had my new 2020 iMac a couple of days and have seen it in the above situations several times, and I set it up as new so nothing bad from my old machine was carried over.

Is it a major problem? No, it only lasts for a few seconds. Is it something that should be happening? Absolutely not.

I blame the OS for Finder and Apple for the TV app (and it's a fairly new app), Final Cut is also an Apple app.

This is my first experience with Catalina (I did not upgrade my old machine) but I haven't seen these problems yet. I don't use Adobe or Final Cut so I guess my major concern would be Finder.

The Catalina problem that I am having is NAS disconnects. Very annoying.

 

[Donnation]

I blame the OS for Finder and Apple for the TV app (and it's a fairly new app), Final Cut is also an Apple app.

This is my first experience with Catalina (I did not upgrade my old machine) but I haven't seen these problems yet. I don't use Adobe or Final Cut so I guess my major concern would be Finder.

The Catalina problem that I am having is NAS disconnects. Very annoying.

Yeah apologies, I always forget that Apple does Final Cut because I always associate iMove with Apple. To be fair on that one I do edit some heavy drone footage so I understand the occasional beach ball there.

As for Finder I don’t know why it happens.
I’m just not a fan of Catalina and look forward to its death.

 

[ADGrant]

Yeah apologies, I always forget that Apple does Final Cut because I always associate iMove with Apple. To be fair on that one I do edit some heavy drone footage so I understand the occasional beach ball there.

As for Finder I don’t know why it happens.
I’m just not a fan of Catalina and look forward to its death.

Unfortunately, it won't really die. Big Sur is really Catalina with a new coat of paint and an ARM version. Actually, I am sure there is was ARM version of Catalina running inside Apple. Killing 32bit support was part of the transition to ARM I think.

I don't think it is every acceptable for an app to beachball but I blame the app developers not the OS.

 

[filmak]

I think all this question is going to get you is a lot of differing opinions and heated arguments and its all getting kind of tired. If at this point you are not sure you need or can justify the i9 I would stick with the i7 it’s a really great chip. I got the i9 because I run VM all day that requires that I carve up cores and other resources to split among different VM so the more the better. I got the i9 and I love it I have had no issues with thermals or throttling and my benchmarks have consistangly beat any Mac I have ever owned at 1385 single core and 9950 in Multi-core. But every one of these my chip is better than yours Arguments have ended in people passing childish arguments off as facts. i Have seen all kinds of benchmarks that have supported both sides of the argument so they are not very helpful unfortunately. The i9 is a specialized chip only probably needed for certain use cases, that doesn’t make it a rip off or a stupid choice. but it is probably not needed for most people and if you do need it for your work load you probably already know.

As I am running a VM all day too, on an iMac 2017 4 cores, I wonder if you have noticed a great improvement with the 10 core CPU over your previous Mac? (by the way which Mac have you replaced with your new 10 core?)

 

[SWolfe]

As I am running a VM all day too, on an iMac 2017 4 cores, I wonder if you have noticed a great improvement with the 10 core CPU over your previous Mac? (by the way which Mac have you replaced with your new 10 core?)

i was running a BTO late 2012 imac i7 Quad core with 32gb RAM it did fine with one VM running as long as is wasn’t tryin to do to much in OS X. With the i9 and 64gb Ram. Now I run two VM and am able to do whatever I want in OS X with not even a hint slowdown. I also had a 2019 iMac with the 6 core non hyper threading i5 but I sent it back because I saw no huge improvement over the 2012 iMac Which was a bummer.

 

[arctair]

Yeah apologies, I always forget that Apple does Final Cut because I always associate iMove with Apple. To be fair on that one I do edit some heavy drone footage so I understand the occasional beach ball there.

As for Finder I don’t know why it happens.
I’m just not a fan of Catalina and look forward to its death.

It's a great place to visit. Though the actual island is the only place I want to see a beach ball.

Just since you brought up editing drone footage: Did you get the i9/10-core (EDIT: Answered above), and if so, do you see those extra two cores being utilized while editing? My original long-winded question was to basically get clarity that the CPU will improve editing performance, while the graphics card will improve final output/rendering speeds.

 

[BuCkDoG]

Like I mentioned before, the 8 core i7 is 20% FASTER than last year's 8 Core i9. The power of this year's i7 is literally incredible and most likely powerful enough for the vast majority of users not only within these forums but most users, in general, no matter what your throwing at the iMac. Now in regards to the 10 Core i9, yes, of course, it's going to benchmark higher and in some small cases, it's going to be beneficial for certain workflows. The bigger issue is whether not only the money spent is worth it, but also whether the performance gained is worth it. If money is no object, just buy it and enjoy your purchase. If money is an object, I personally would recommend the i7 and put your "savings" into a GPU upgrade or SSD upgrade or just pocket the $400. Lastly, if your planning on keeping this iMac for many many years 5+, I would probably just upgrade the CPU regardless since you can always add more storage later on if it's an issue and the $400 cost over that long of a lifespan will sort of pay for itself since your getting the added benefit if you need the extra power as well as potential better resale, later on, to sort of justify your added $400 upfront cost. Just my 2 cents. But overall, I would still recommend people to the i7 since the performance increase is nowhere near enough for the money.

 

[thermalthrottle]

Speaking from an video editing background, the difference between seeing a lot of spinning beach balls or not won't really be determined by whether you have 8 vs 10 core, but more to do with how fast your hard drive is, the power of the graphics card, and if you have enough ram. The cpu not being sufficient would mainly result in stuttering footage rather then beach balls as ram tends to be the biggest limiting factor when it comes to high res video editing.

As an example, I was recently editing some 8k red raw footage that needed to be transcoded to pro res to run efficiently without stuttering. Native files I could play back one video clip at a time. Transcoded to pro res I could stack 6 on top of each other and not see a frame drop, and could potentially go higher but the project didn't need that many. I was doing this on a 16 inch i9 8 core with 32gb ram. I was surprised that for a lot of basic editing such as cutting, compositing, even noise reduction, 32gb of ram was sufficient for 8k. However, the moment I applied a visual effect, the ram maxed out and the system was swapping out 20gb with the SSD. I was getting the spinning beach ball every time I moved the cursor and the experience felt like editing 1080i back in 2008 on a MacBook pro with 2gb of ram.

For 4k I'd say you can get away with 16gb but better with 32gb, 6k you should look at more and 8k definitely need 64gb minimum. As for your experience with beach balls, I suspect a large part of that may be due to your 2012 mini having a spinning HDD rather then an SSD or have you upgraded to an SSD already?

For 4k your mini with sufficient ram and an ssd should get you by had it not be for the graphics being a limiting factor. You could plug in an egpu via the Thunderbolt connection but I believe that vintage mini only had thunderbolt 1 which would limit an egpu even more then Thuderbolt 2 or 3 but would still offer light years more performance compared to the onboard graphics. Otherwise you should still be ok editing 4k, it would just be really slow. For reference, my own personal system is a 2013 MacBook Pro with a quad core i7 and 16gb ram and I've just exported a 4k project that took about 2 times longer then playback.

 

[filmak]

i was running a BTO late 2012 imac i7 Quad core with 32gb RAM it did fine with one VM running as long as is wasn’t tryin to do to much in OS X. With the i9 and 64gb Ram. Now I run two VM and am able to do whatever I want in OS X with not even a hint slowdown. I also had a 2019 iMac with the 6 core non hyper threading i5 but I sent it back because I saw no huge improvement over the 2012 iMac Which was a bummer.

Thanks a lot.

 

[mlykke]

Speaking from an video editing background, the difference between seeing a lot of spinning beach balls or not won't really be determined by whether you have 8 vs 10 core, but more to do with how fast your hard drive is, the power of the graphics card, and if you have enough ram. The cpu not being sufficient would mainly result in stuttering footage rather then beach balls as ram tends to be the biggest limiting factor when it comes to high res video editing.

THIS, so much this! People greatly overestimate the importance of the CPU. And they also forgot just how insane the performance of the 8 core i7 is in the 2020 iMac.

i was running a BTO late 2012 imac i7 Quad core with 32gb RAM it did fine with one VM running as long as is wasn’t tryin to do to much in OS X. With the i9 and 64gb Ram. Now I run two VM and am able to do whatever I want in OS X with not even a hint slowdown. I also had a 2019 iMac with the 6 core non hyper threading i5 but I sent it back because I saw no huge improvement over the 2012 iMac Which was a bummer.

I have a 2013 iMac with the i7 and 32 GB ram - I can easily run multiple VM's simultaneously on that machine. The i7 with enough ram(I'm getting at least 64GB) will easily be able to run 4+ VM's at a time.

 

[jinnyman]

I think the high-end 27" iMac is perfectly balanced.
I'm actually still debating whether I should get an iMac now or wait and get nVidia 3090for my PC.

I'm more leaned on the first though

 

[highlypaid]

I think the high-end 27" iMac is perfectly balanced.
I'm actually still debating whether I should get an iMac now or wait and get nVidia 3090for my PC.

I'm more leaned on the first though

The RTX 3090 looks like it is going to be incredible.

 

[thermalthrottle]

The RTX 3090 looks like it is going to be incredible.

I've been using an i7 iMac 2020 with a 2070 super eGPU and occasionally the system goes to hibernate even though I've set it to stay awake. When it hibernates while plugged into the eGPU the screen doesn't wake up properly and you can't do anything except to restart the system therefore losing many hours of work.

I had the same problem with an i9 16 inch MacBook pro. Apple say they can't help you when it comes to bootcamp issues other then to help you install windows so I'm on my own on this.