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iMac Pro Will the Next Regular iMac beat the Current iMac Pro Base Model?
- Thread starter seasurfer
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Doubt the regular one will, but a high speced build of the hex core will probably get very close, certainly in single core and similar multi. With similar specs it will probably be £500-1000 cheaper but by then I can see more offers on the iMac Pro so it would be a tough choice.
For more the i chips are much more suitable and are quicker in quite a few areas.
Depends also on how the new iMac is cooled if it doesnt get the newer cooling design then it will throttle faster so the iMac pro will perform better over a longer render for example.
It also depends if apple will actually revamp it, the CPUs are ready but there isnt a AMD card to fit the bill yet. We currently have the 580 or vega and both are currently implemented.
This is a machine a lot of people are eager to see, but will apple implement it? The cycle would say yes but do they want to cannibalize sales 6 months after inception? Not sure.
They technically could just upgrade the chipset keep the same graphics cards but thats doubtful.
The iMac is ready for a design change but I dont think the hardware as a package is to a point they can make a splash, I would say when we see the newer AMD graphics chips we will see a new iMac.
Would be awesome for apple to integrate Nvidia again but its doubtful. A 1080 chip would be very exciting for everyone.
For more the i chips are much more suitable and are quicker in quite a few areas.
Depends also on how the new iMac is cooled if it doesnt get the newer cooling design then it will throttle faster so the iMac pro will perform better over a longer render for example.
It also depends if apple will actually revamp it, the CPUs are ready but there isnt a AMD card to fit the bill yet. We currently have the 580 or vega and both are currently implemented.
This is a machine a lot of people are eager to see, but will apple implement it? The cycle would say yes but do they want to cannibalize sales 6 months after inception? Not sure.
They technically could just upgrade the chipset keep the same graphics cards but thats doubtful.
The iMac is ready for a design change but I dont think the hardware as a package is to a point they can make a splash, I would say when we see the newer AMD graphics chips we will see a new iMac.
Would be awesome for apple to integrate Nvidia again but its doubtful. A 1080 chip would be very exciting for everyone.
No and yes. What do you use it for? Depending on your usage the 2017 iMac might already be better for you than the iMac Pro. The 2018 would be even better.
Some things on the iMac Pro will never go to the iMac such as ECC RAM, Xeon processors, dual SSD. It will also take a long long time until we see a max RAM of 128GB and 18 cores CPU on the iMac. The GPUs are also better and I don't think we'll see them on the 2018 iMac.
If you don't need any of those things then even the 2017 iMac can outperform the Pro because of a higher base clock rate and less overhead due to ECC.
Some things on the iMac Pro will never go to the iMac such as ECC RAM, Xeon processors, dual SSD. It will also take a long long time until we see a max RAM of 128GB and 18 cores CPU on the iMac. The GPUs are also better and I don't think we'll see them on the 2018 iMac.
If you don't need any of those things then even the 2017 iMac can outperform the Pro because of a higher base clock rate and less overhead due to ECC.
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Best possible scenario IMO is a new iMac design with upgraded thermal system. If a new iMac design were only a few months away, wouldn't there be some rumours by now? It's an interesting time for the iMac, since it's already pressed to the maximum as far as thermal operation goes. If Apple were to put an 8700K CPU in it, then certainly they would have to do something with the thermal design?
AMD is supposed to come out with some slower mobile versions of the Vega in May/June, which could be used for the iMac.
AMD is supposed to come out with some slower mobile versions of the Vega in May/June, which could be used for the iMac.
The 8700K has a similar TDP than the 7700k and so does the non K CPUs so nothing is forcing Apple to upgrade the thermal system.
From the reviews I've seen the 8700K is running hotter than 7700K, the TDP doesn't tell the whole story as far as temperatures go. 8700K would probably throttle quite a bit with the current iMac thermal design.
I'd have to assume that they are going to be putting a new cooling solution in the nex gen imac. If you think about it, the current cooling solution has been around since 2012?
I am mainly using it to play games like World of Warcraft and Diablo III, other usage will be writing papers, browsing internet and playing 4K movies. Will the next regular iMac beat the iMac Pro when it comes to these.
I don't have the iMac 5K 2017, so I can compare it with the iMac Pro. I wonder how close they are when it comes to gaming?
I don't have the iMac 5K 2017, so I can compare it with the iMac Pro. I wonder how close they are when it comes to gaming?
Hey sea surfer, so I was looking into the GPU of the iMac 5k 2017, and it looks like it's way below the Vega 56. Here's a link so you can see the two cards compared yourself:
http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-Pro-Vega-56-vs-Radeon-Pro-580
The base model iMac Pro will be better at gaming than the regular iMac 5k maxed out. The next generation consumer iMac is a harder thing to speculate about, because we don't know what GPU they will be selecting for that model. If Apple switches to an NVIDIA card (not unheard of) that is coming out in the next month or two, then we're likely to see better gaming performance on the regular 2018 iMac over the iMac Pro base model.
Wow, Vega 56 certainly beat the regular iMac 5K 2017.
While there, I also compare it to the 1080Ti too...the 1080Ti beats Vega 56 just like Vega 56 beat Pro 580. Kind of depressing to see that....why is Apple not using 1080Ti....
For one, Apple has a contract with AMD in which they get discounts on their bulk hardware manufacturing in exchange for AMD cards being used as the sole provider of iMac GPUs.
Second, NVIDIA tends to perform better on Windows because of optimizations with DirectX. In dollars per raw compute power, AMD tends to slightly beat NVIDIA historically. This is why crypto miners prefer AMD cards. Apple has bet on this capability working in it's favor by writing drivers that favor AMD cards by default. However AMD has dropped the ball with Vega by only matching the performance of the 2016 NVIDIA generation as opposed to passing it in 2017. As of today, Vulkan is now coming to macOS as well, which may change the equation to again favor AMD on macOS.
Third, all drivers written for the selected cards belong to Apple after the fact. This has been a bit of a sticking issue for NVIDIA historically, whereas AMD is just happy to be selling it's cards in bulk.
Long story short: Business politics.
Edit: Also take into consideration that you are comparing something that is slightly out of it's weight class. Compare the Vega 64 to the 1080ti
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For one, Apple has a contract with AMD in which they get discounts on their bulk hardware manufacturing in exchange for AMD cards being used as the sole provider of iMac GPUs.
Second, NVIDIA tends to perform better on Windows because of optimizations with DirectX. In dollars per raw compute power, AMD tends to slightly beat NVIDIA historically. This is why crypto miners prefer AMD cards. Apple has bet on this capability working in it's favor by writing drivers that favor AMD cards by default. However AMD has dropped the ball with Vega by only matching the performance of the 2016 NVIDIA generation as opposed to passing it in 2017. As of today, Vulkan is now coming to macOS as well, which may change the equation to again favor AMD on macOS.
Third, all drivers written for the selected cards belong to Apple after the fact. This has been a bit of a sticking issue for NVIDIA historically, whereas AMD is just happy to be selling it's cards in bulk.
Long story short: Business politics.
Edit: Also take into consideration that you are comparing something that is slightly out of it's weight class. Compare the Vega 64 to the 1080ti
I compare it. The 1080Ti still beat the Vega 64 in Pixel rendering.
So this is an interesting test I did:
In WOW, at all max anti-aliasing with 200% rendering:
In the iMac Pro, FPS will drop to 10-20
In the Corsair One with 3440x1440P, FPS will drop to 60-70
With 100% rendering only:
The iMac Pro FPS will be around 40, 30 is the worst I seen, mostly during fight or in the starting area of the Dark Portal in Tanaan.
The Corsair One will have an FPS of 100-120, for some reason, only the rendering in WOW can drop the FPS for a 1080TI, no other settings in WOW seem to have an effect on 1080Ti.
In summary, a 200% rendering with a 1080Ti is still better than 100% rendering in a Vega 56. We probably could surmise that, 1080Ti may be better at running a 6K monitor than Vega 56 running a 5K monitor, since 200% of 3440x1440P is 6880x2880.
I think this result is not surprising, I was told that the only 8K monitor on the market right now can only be support by a 1080Ti. (I wish I have an 8K monitor to test)
I see, if Apple upgrade to Vulcan, performance could be better?
I wish I could get the Vega 64, but to order on Apple website, you have to wait for a month. No Apple Stores in my area has the Vega 64.
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In WoW, the performance will not improve. Vulkan is not as efficient as Metal for macOS, which WoW already uses. (D3 is too old to have used Metal) But we will start seeing AMD cards being used as development targets as opposed to NVIDIA due to Vulkan being more cross-platform. This will allow titles like DOOM, PUBG, and other AAA titles to start showing up for macOS with decent performance.
You're also running into one of the biggest problems with the iMP over your corsair build, which is that you are stuck with what Apple gives you. I wish I could slap in the next generation GPU into my iMP when it comes out, because I know I'm going to want it so bad. Being able to pick your own hardware for -exactly- what you need is an advantage of Windows and Linux. I had hoped with the passing of the Steve Jobs era that we'd see macOS opening up - but the opposite has in fact happened. Hopefully the modular Mac Pro will solve this issue, but I'm not getting my hopes up.
B&H has Vega 64 models available for next day delivery. Up until yesterday they had a 700+ dollar discount too. (Now only the entry model is discounted)
Be advised B&H does not permit returns of computers, including the iMac Pro. Apple obviously permits returns from Macs purchased from them or their on-line store, as do other Mac sellers such as Micro Center. Best Buy permits returns for computers (including Macs) with no restocking fee.
How are you playing 4k movies? Is there built-in DRM hardware on the iMac Pro that allows 4k streaming?
You know there are other ways of "securing" 4k movies..
Ha ok I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing some new development. A legit 4k copy could be 40 GB to 70 GB which is a lot.
What I mean is playing and streaming 4K video on Youtube, I always pick the highest resolution. I am also trying to see how to stream Netflix in 4K on the iMac 5K.
I don't have any 4K movies on my hard disk, I don't want to have it too, it is toooo big to store. I am a minimalist guy, I want as little as possible.
This requires (1) An upgraded NetFlix subscription (2) Windows (either Boot Camp or via Parallels or VMWare), and (3) A 2017 or later iMac which has the Kaby Lake CPU with Quick Sync 10-bit 4k HEVC hardware-accelerated decoding:
https://www.imore.com/how-watch-netflix-4k-mac-hint-its-not-through-safari
It should be noted that even the lower end i5-8400 this year would roughly match the performance the current top of the line iMac non-Pro with the i7-7700K. This is a huge boost for performance, at least for multi-threaded applications.
Put it this way, I would have been overjoyed to have been able to buy an i5-8400 or (currently unreleased) i5-8600 (non-K), and really don't give a chit about faster performance than that.*
I am definitely not in the market for a 10-core workstation.
*I would have liked to have the option of an i7-8700 (non-K), but I'm guessing Apple will not offer that chip in a 27" iMac.
I'm still predicting / hoping that Apple will add this support to iTunes on Macs and will support it with Netflix in 2018 with the release of macOS 10.14 this fall. In my scenario, this would be supported only on the 2017 and 2018 model 7th gen and 8th gen Intel Macs, and those with 6th gen Skylake Macs would be left out in the cold (for DRM reasons).
Put it this way, I would have been overjoyed to have been able to buy an i5-8400 or (currently unreleased) i5-8600 (non-K), and really don't give a chit about faster performance than that.*
I am definitely not in the market for a 10-core workstation.
*I would have liked to have the option of an i7-8700 (non-K), but I'm guessing Apple will not offer that chip in a 27" iMac.
This would work with Boot Camp, but I wasn't aware it would also work with VMware or Parallels. Has that been confirmed?
I'm still predicting / hoping that Apple will add this support to iTunes on Macs and will support it with Netflix in 2018 with the release of macOS 10.14 this fall. In my scenario, this would be supported only on the 2017 and 2018 model 7th gen and 8th gen Intel Macs, and those with 6th gen Skylake Macs would be left out in the cold (for DRM reasons).