Xcode Development on iMac Retina

The 290 should be just fine! You might notice a slight performance boost with the 295 in GPU accelerated image editing applications (such as Photoshop), but unless you use it for heavy editing all day long it won't make much of a difference to you.

 

I've got a fully maxed out 5k iMac and my girlfriends is the base model and I don't see $1500 difference in performance to be honest. She plays games on her's and I do development. The 5k display is great for Xcode and the reason I bought mine.

 

I mostly code and sysadmin on mine ( base ), I have been using 3200x1800 setting and find the 290x to be fine at that res ( I had 295x in another unit that had to go back, really not that much difference for what I use it for. ). Talk about real estate you have to try at full 5k at some point, unfortunately my eyes are not that good, but for me 3200x1800 is very effective. The best part of retina displays is after a full day of coding, etc sometimes my eyes get fatigued and it's so awesome just to back down the resolution to more a comfortable setting. Amazing flexibility as a display device.

Warning: Once to start using this device it's REALLY hard to use anything else, so if have to work on another machine else where, You won't be happy

 

I have xcode, limechat, sketch, st3, safari, chrome, terminals, and pdfs open flipping in between both, base model. It is no problem.