Unreleased iMac With 10-Core Comet Lake-S Chip and Radeon Pro 5300 GPU Shows Up in Geekbench

[TiggrToo]

One downside would be that within a few years most new software may only be released on Arm, and new OS updates may omit desirable features from Intel machines and may not have feature parity. So depending on how long you intend to keep the machine, and your specific software needs/roadmap for that software, may or may not make sense to buy now.

I prefer to live in the now. The future will take care of itself.

I'm all for not making a bad purchase, but right now all I hear is unsubstantiated FUD

Equally the opposite may be true. It may be years before vendors truly target native ARM. Or it may be somewhere inbetween.

 

[NickName99]

My guess is Intel based iMac retain current design and the Apple Silicon ones will have the new design to differentiate the models. That seems a likely Apple thing to do. I seriously doubt the Intel and Apple Silicon models will look the same.

When Apple transitioned to Intel, the initial hardware releases retained the same design as the PowerPC models. I’m expecting them to stick to that strategy.

 

[cocoua]

This is my feeling as well! A 27" AS iMac is not coming anytime soon. Sure maybe laptops and a 24" iMac. Q2 maybe but I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.

well we are still in the same situation before 22th June, nobody knows what to do about new purchases

how long would develpers support dual binaries? how many effort and money would they need to invest for that?

in the past we know they trent to migrate "quick" but not look after any more, Apple itself, I dont care they were releasing security updates, who cares, they fix many things of MacOS in next big release, so this is a annoying situation for buyers.

spending 4k USD in an iMac right now is not worth for everyone, mainly because is a end road machine, in 5 years nobody would want or could work with it

 

[TiggrToo]

The downside depends on how good the ARM machines are. It’s not so much that Intel machines will stop working (of course they’ll be supported), but it could be dwarfed in performance and usability by ARM machine equivalents. You can also be sure for the coming years, Intel based machines will be a second class citizen in terms of updates, features and bug fixes - and they’ll definitely make sure you notice it too as to push people towards ARM. Adoption is key.

No, you cannot be sure of that at all.

 

[xgman]

My guess is Intel based iMac retain current design and the Apple Silicon ones will have the new design to differentiate the models. That seems a likely Apple thing to do. I seriously doubt the Intel and Apple Silicon models will look the same.

Which for me, basically kills any interest in the 27 if so. Nice spec bump, but without a fresh design, ehh, limited appeal.

 

[AppleMad98004]

Good point.

Yes, I watched the Keynote again last night and Tim said it will allow Apple Silicon Macs to move to the next generation and future of the platform.

I am guessing that means Apple Silicon iMacs will look different including the MacBooks. Apple will want people to notice the difference, not just change the insides.

 

[mam8dg]

Curious how this compares to my 10-core iMac Pro. I would guess it blows it out of the water, but the iMac Pro is an aging design at this point. I purchased in April 2019 when I really needed a new machine and it has been great. Still, it always sucks when your machine is superseded in performance by a base model.

 

[FrankySavvy]

Sonny Dickson claimed the new redesigned iMac with iPad Pro design language would launch at WWDC with T2 Chip, AMD Navi GPU and no more fusion drive. This is obviously an Intel Mac. The T2 chip and Navi GPU wouldn’t be used with Apple Silicon. I believe this is what this benchmark indicates and that it is imminently launching.

 

[ChrisBos]

Apple launched a bunch of new PowerBooks and Power Macs months after their Intel announcement in 2005.

Those buyers still remember and feel the pain today.

That's fair. But were they pretty significant jumps from the previous machine like this seems to be, or spec bumps? If they did something like they did with the base/mid MBP I might be a bit more agreeable, but this seems pretty significant.

I also think there's a big difference between a move to Intel and away from it. I don't think Apple lost as much from quickly dropping PPC support as they could from quickly dropping Intel support in terms of user base. The user base has grown significantly in the "Intel era", as has business adoption--the latter was a HUGE focus in retail stores for years.

I'd argue that EOL PPC users who got burned probably sucked it up and bought Intel machines, but if Intel users are left hanging out to dry without a seamless ARM integration, many, especially businesses, may abandon the platform for Windows.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

One of the worst things you could do right now: buy a new Mac

I have Logic Pro X music to create. I doubt anyone with Pro apps will listen to such pointless advice. Not having the option for Afterburner on the iMac makes it a must to have more compute on the GPGPU. This machine should have the Radeon 5600M installed on it, as the default and a BTO option for an RDNA 2.0 based ASIC for Apple that goes up to 16GB or better with HBM2e memory. They are literally paying AMD to build a custom GPGPU for whatever they want.

 

[kyleh22]

About damn time. My tangerine G3 iMac starts showing its age.

View attachment 929716

These things have aged so well....

 

[Morgenland]

How so? It'll be supported for years to come. it'll run all the current apps. It'll run Win x64.

What's the downside?

The decision to purchase this iMac is probably related to as the seamless availability of software as well as to the individual purchasing cycle. Who renews hardware every 3 years will decide differently than someone who renews every 7 years.

A 24inch A-Mac before Christmas, for example, might bring good sales. I'm sure it would!
My wallet already knows.

 

[QCassidy352]

One of the worst things you could do right now: buy a new Mac

If my Mac died today, I wouldn't hesitate to buy a new intel Mac. They're fast and mature, and they'll be supported for years. That said, I wouldn't advise discretionary updates to new intel Macs at this point.

 

[warriors2017]

I remember buying an iMac G5 a week before Intel iMac came out. Never again

 

[nikhsub1]

One of the worst things you could do right now: buy a new Mac

What an ignorant post. What about those that need x86 support NOW? Are you so sure that these higher powered machines will be moved to ARM so quickly? I could see the iMac and Mac Pro not getting ARM for a couple of years.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

Sonny Dickson claimed the new redesigned iMac with iPad Pro design language would launch at WWDC with T2 Chip, AMD Navi GPU and no more fusion drive. This is obviously an Intel Mac. The T2 chip and Navi GPU wouldn’t be used with Apple Silicon. I believe this is what this benchmark indicates and that it is imminently launching.

Yes the T2 and Navi GPUs would be used with Apple Silicon or do you think Apple Silicon will remotely compete with flag ship GPGPUs by Nvidia or AMD? The T2 functionality will be built into the Apple Silicon. There won't be an iMac Silicon for two years. Apple would be foolish [and they rarely are] to release Apple Silicon performing worse than present x86 hardware. To release hardware slower than today's mid-tier CPU performance would be disastrous.

And yes, Intel is mid-tier.

 

[cocoua]

Then you are in for a huge disappointment.
We have compiled FFmpeg for ARM and did run on the latest iPadPro. Encoding a 2h 4K movie to HEVC did take +2hours. On an Intel i7 (not the fastest) it took less than 20minutes.
The fastest ARM CPU is still way slower compared to a mediocre Intel.
Basically this means Apple silicon will be good for basic things as long it does not need heave pure CPU power. Ofcourse the Metal APIs will use the GPU too, still in general use it will be a lot slower.

this is a very important info…

but iPhone 11 apps exports 4k h265 quite fast, indeed, faster than my 2015 15" macbook pro, but of course, it depends on the app, and I think my MBP doenst have hardware acceleration…

but iPhone do it pretty fast! so a mac should do it even better…

 

[JPack]

That's fair. But were they pretty significant jumps from the previous machine like this seems to be, or spec bumps? If they did something like they did with the base/mid MBP I might be a bit more agreeable, but this seems pretty significant.

I also think there's a big difference between a move to Intel and away from it. I don't think Apple lost as much from quickly dropping PPC support as they could from quickly dropping Intel support in terms of user base. The user base has grown significantly in the "Intel era", as has business adoption--the latter was a HUGE focus in retail stores for years.

I'd argue that EOL PPC users who got burned probably sucked it up and bought Intel machines, but if Intel users are left hanging out to dry without a seamless ARM integration, many, especially businesses, may abandon the platform for Windows.

The Power Macs in late 2005 were significant upgrades.

Apple introduced dual-core and dual-processor systems. They introduced PCI Express to the Power Mac.

Apple's value proposition with Apple Silicon will be pretty simple. If you want want the fastest processors with the best performance per Watt, you have to buy a Mac. Unlike the Intel-era, Apple doesn't need to worry about customers cross-shopping between Mac and PC and comparing performance. There will be no comparison in 2021.

 

[mmomega]

One of the worst things you could do ever is to take purchasing advise from anyone that doesn't actively purchase the things you are wanting to buy.

 

[johnsc3]

Benchmarks for an unreleased iMac equipped with a 10th-generation Core i9 Intel Comet Lake-S chip and an AMD Radeon Pro 5300 graphics card have surfaced, giving us an idea of what we can expect from a refreshed 2020 iMac.

The Geekbench benchmarks, which appear to be legit, were found on Twitter and shared this morning by Tom's Hardware. The iMac in the benchmarks would be a successor to the 27-inch iMac.

The machine features Intel's 3.6GHz Core i9-10910 chip with 10 CPU cores, 20 threads, a 20MB L3 cache, and 4.7GHz Turbo Boost, a successor to the Core i9 chip found in the current high-end 27-inch iMac Pro. As Tom's Hardware points out, the chip appears to be a higher clocked 95W Core i9-10900 that's unique to the iMac.

The unreleased iMac is also equipped with an as of yet unannounced AMD Radeon Pro 5300 graphics card, which seems to be a desktop version of the Radeon Pro 5300M released last year with Navi 14 silicon.

There's no word on when Apple might release an updated iMac, but there were rumors suggesting a new machine could come at WWDC. Rumors have suggested an updated 2020 iMac might feature the first redesign we've seen in years with "iPad Pro design language" and thin bezels similar to the bezels on the Pro Display XDR.

The updated machine is expected to feature a T2 chip for security and controller functions along with an AMD Navi GPU and an all-flash storage setup. It's not clear what size it will be, but there have been multiple rumors suggesting Apple is working on a 23 or 24-inch iMac with an all new form factor.

Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo recently said the 24-inch iMac would be one of the first Macs to get an Apple Silicon chip in late 2020 or 2021, but said that Apple plans to refresh the existing Intel iMac in the third quarter of 2020, which appears to be the machine we're seeing in the benchmarks.

Whether the new machine features a new look remains to be seen, as the redesign could be something Apple is holding back for when the company is ready to debut its Apple Silicon chips. Apple said the first Mac with an Apple-designed chip would come in late 2020, but did not provide details on which Mac that would be.

It's possible that this Intel refresh will see Apple reusing the same 27-inch iMac design that hasn't been updated since 2012.

Article Link: Unreleased iMac With 10-Core Comet Lake-S Chip and Radeon Pro 5300 GPU Shows Up in Geekbench

If Apple is putting out a machine like this now, I feel like it has to bode well for Intel support even after the ARM transition is complete.

Or maybe they're just putting out a beast machine that their ARM iMac will demolish, just to prove a point 🤣

Yeah, I agree. Apple already knew those dev kits would be benchmarked as soon as devs got them.

 

[nihil0]

How does this compare to an iMac Pro?

Compared to 10C/20T Xeon it looks like 30% gain in 65W model and 34% gain in 125W "K" model. Probably it will be around 30% for 95W model as well.

UserBenchmark: Intel Core i9-10900 vs Xeon W-2150B

cpu.userbenchmark.com

Mind you that this is mostly gaming benchmarks and does not count the Apple optimization for Final Cut Pro X, etc.

 

[SuperCachetes]

The downside depends on how good the ARM machines are. It’s not so much that Intel machines will stop working (of course they’ll be supported), but it could be dwarfed in performance and usability by ARM machine equivalents.

How good the ARM machines are affects only the ARM machines; it doesn’t make a screaming 10-core i9 any slower. The SUV model I drive was completely redone in 2019, but amazingly I still love my 2014, and it performs the same as ever.

Then you are in for a huge disappointment.
We have compiled FFmpeg for ARM and did run on the latest iPadPro. Encoding a 2h 4K movie to HEVC did take +2hours. On an Intel i7 (not the fastest) it took less than 20minutes.
The fastest ARM CPU is still way slower compared to a mediocre Intel.
Basically this means Apple silicon will be good for basic things as long it does not need heave pure CPU power. Ofcourse the Metal APIs will use the GPU too, still in general use it will be a lot slower.

You think encoding video on an iPad SoC has ANYTHING to do with the laptops and desktops Apple is planning to use the ARM processors in? That’s like me telling you “Don’t bother with Comet Lake; I tried to run ‘x’ software on my Core 2 Duo and it sucked.”

 

[DummyFool]

Radeon Pro 5300 is awful , they put it just so they can charge a big upgrade price for a more decent card.

 

[russell_314]

Yeah, I agree. Apple already knew those dev kits would be benchmarked as soon as devs got them.

I don't think the iMac with an Intel processor is a dev kit. They gave out Mac mini dev kits but those just have an A12z processor. This isn't going in production models

 

[R3k]

How so? It'll be supported for years to come. it'll run all the current apps. It'll run Win x64.

What's the downside?

Perhaps it'll get slower as each sequential MacOS is further optimized for ARM. Perhaps software support will end before the 7 year mark.