Which 27 inch for Lightroom 4?

[jontarbuck]

Wondering if anyone has any thoughts as to which 27 inch iMac I should get to replace my current mid 2010 21.5 inch Core i3 iMac. The budget around £2,000. am currently considering:

- The base 2.9GHz model, with a 512GB SSD drive (would buy extra RAM after purchase)

or:

- The 3.2GHz model, with Fusion drive (again, would buy extra RAM purchase)

I'm a bit concerned by the nVidia 660m graphics card in the lower spec model, and buy how good my experience with the Fusion drive will be compared to the pure SSD option.

Thoughts?

 

[malachiman]

If you don't need it today, why not wait, the iMac is due a refresh to Haswell anytime now.

 

[jontarbuck]

What benefits will Haswell have for iMacs? I was under the impression it was mostly focused on battery life for laptops?

 

[rkaufmann87]

What benefits will Haswell have for iMacs? I was under the impression it was mostly focused on battery life for laptops?

You are correct, therefore no real benefit.

 

[tekmoe]

I recently replaced my mid 2010 MBP with a 27" iMac. The MBP had a 256GB SSD whereas the iMac has the 1TB Fusion drive. To be honest I really can't tell a difference in speed when it comes to boot up time and opening applications - the Fusion drive works really well and I have no regrets opting for it! I use Lightroom quite often and I think where you will really benefit is by having as much RAM as you can get. And I reckon the 660 should be fine with Lightroom. If you are wanting to do video editing though I'd go for the 680.

 

[Serban]

What benefits will Haswell have for iMacs? I was under the impression it was mostly focused on battery life for laptops?

in the cpu no really benefits, only upgrade to the wifi ac chip, a better gpu, faster ssd/fusion drive, price drop

 

[jontarbuck]

I'd consider waiting for Haswell if it meant faster discrete graphics - I know the integrated Intel graphics are faster now on the MacBook Air...a price drop would be very welcome though, and worth waiting for!

 

[Commy1]

I would wait, perhaps they'll throw in some other upgrade that won't be possible or available in the current models.
They say that September 10th is the date to look for, at least the very least the date the new iPhones will be released and if Apple cares even a little bit about it's stock they'll actually have something awesome to bring to the table as well.

 

[zerozoneice]

What benefits will Haswell have for iMacs? I was under the impression it was mostly focused on battery life for laptops?

Haswell will run ~30C hotter than Ivy Bridge

Compared to Ivy Bridge:
Approximately 8% better vector processing performance.

up to 6% faster single-threaded performance.

6% faster multi-threaded performance.

Haswell draws around 8% more power under load than Ivy Bridge

A 6% increase in sequential CPU performance (eight execution ports per core versus six).

Up to 20% performance increase over the integrated HD4000 GPU (Haswell HD4600 vs Ivy Bridge's built-in Intel HD4000).

Total performance improvement on average is about 3%

Haswell tends to run about 30C hotter than a comparable Ivy Bridge

Only certain BGA versions will receive GT3 (Intel HD 5000, Intel Iris 5100), or GT3e (Intel Iris Pro 5200) integrated graphics

 

[Payton]

You should also update to Lightroom 5 if you're interested in better performance. I have a 3.2/Fusion/2gb VRAM iMac with 24 gigs of ram... and Lightroom 5 is noticeably quicker than 4.