The empire (Apple) strikes back

Vultch

Vultch

Well-known member
I see my new iMac has finally arrived, Apple announces a new line up of iMacs, (not iMac Pros). The Pro was a little too expensive for me but this fits very well. Time to retire the old 2010 workhorse. I hope we can configure our own RAM, that way I can afford to eat for a few weeks.

An 8 core i9 processor and a Radon Pro Vega graphics 48 card.


https://www.apple.com/uk/
 
I want one every time I see them...so beautiful.

I upgrade every 3 years and this August will be 3 years, but I'm planning on getting the best-of-the-best MBP whenever the next major update is released, which might be just in time for summer with the product cycle already 250 days in (with an average of 330-ish days).
 
I have researched the MBP's as well but the i9 in the top machines suffer from thermal throttling, it's not just an Apple thing other laptops have the same issues trying to dissipate that amount of heat energy in a portable package, but the i9 processor in the iMac should have none of these issues.
 
I have to admit Apple exceeded my expectations with this update. I thought they would to be too worried about protecting the iMac Pro I didn't see an 8-core model coming.

The top end model looks like it's pretty fast as is and I'll bet it will be a screamer equipped with a Radeon Vega VII eGPU. I love the iMac form factor and I'm lookin forward to seeing some benchmarks for these new models!
 
Looks like Apple did save some goodness for the iMac Pro. It now supports up to 256GB of RAM and has an option for a new Radeon Vega 64X GPU. Those upgrades are a bit out of my price range but I think it bodes well for what Apple will have to offer to make the new Mac Pro stand out. It looks like Apple with have an something for almost every class of user with offerings from the MacBook to the iMac Pro.

The 21.5" 6-core iMac looks promising. It will be interesting see if the iMac chassis allows Apple to push the processor with less thermal throttling.

Otherworld Computing already has memory upgrades for the iMacs listed and their 64GB upgrade predictably costs less than half of Apple's.


https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac-pro/3.2ghz-1tb

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/imac-2019-27-inch
 
I expect this will beat the iMac pro 8 core and 10 core models. Xeons tend to be a generation or two behind and missing quick sync which helps with h264 video formats. Plus the i9 is 3.6ghz vs the 3.2ghz of the xeon. GPU wise the Vega 56 and 64 is still likely faster than the Vega 48 but the gap is shrinking.

Because of the whole quick sync thing I would take this new iMac over a 18 core iMac pro any day.
 
Except without the iMac Pro's superior cooling system, this iMac is likely to have the same issues as nearly every previous stacked out iMac... thermal throttling of both the CPU and GPU under heavy loads.

That's always been the Achilles heel of the top-end iMacs.

Also, the 8-core iMac Pro is only about $700 more than a 2019 iMac with the same specs (i9, 32GB, 1TB SSD).... and the exact same price if you buy refurbished ($4249). They're going to be close in raw speed, but the iMac Pro is going to edge it out in connectivity (two more Tb3 ports on another bus, 10Gb Ethernet).

Also, Quick Sync only helps you with HEVC encode/decode... not going to help at all with anything that's not in the h.264/h.265 family.

I need 10GbE for my workflow... and I only paid $3300 for my open-box brand new iMac Pro base model. It was actually cheaper to just sell my 2015 iMac 5K and buy the iMac Pro than add 10GbE through Thunderbolt 2.
 
Both handle h265 easily?

Will be looking for real world (preferably Premiere) benchmarks... please all, post any tests you come across.
 
jbregar said:
Except without the iMac Pro's superior cooling system, this iMac is likely to have the same issues as nearly every previous stacked out iMac... thermal throttling of both the CPU and GPU under heavy loads.

That's always been the Achilles heel of the top-end iMacs.

Also, the 8-core iMac Pro is only about $700 more than a 2019 iMac with the same specs (i9, 32GB, 1TB SSD).... and the exact same price if you buy refurbished ($4249). They're going to be close in raw speed, but the iMac Pro is going to edge it out in connectivity (two more Tb3 ports on another bus, 10Gb Ethernet).

Also, Quick Sync only helps you with HEVC encode/decode... not going to help at all with anything that's not in the h.264/h.265 family.

I need 10GbE for my workflow... and I only paid $3300 for my open-box brand new iMac Pro base model. It was actually cheaper to just sell my 2015 iMac 5K and buy the iMac Pro than add 10GbE through Thunderbolt 2.
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Yeah, that's a fantastic price that's more $1000 lower than the best I've seen. At that price it would be hard to pass up, especially if AppleCare is still an option.

Unless there are some unpleasant surprises I think the 2019 iMac will sell quite well. It will be more than fast of enough for what I do and if I need 10gb ethernet I'll add it with a TB3 adapter. I like that the new iMac with 64GB of 3rd party RAM costs around $3200 vs $5300 for the iMac Pro with 64GB of RAM. Of course at those prices the iMac has RX580X/512GB SSD config vs a Vega 56/1TB SSD config in the iMac Pro. The smaller SSD isn't a problem for me and I think the RX 580 is probably the best GPU value on the Mac. Most of benchmarks I've seen has the RX580 coming not too far behind the Vega GPUs on the mac, and I would expect the new RX580X to do at least was well. I've included a couple of links below for reference. If you need better GPU performance I could see see configuring the 2019 iMac with dual GPUs, or a single faster GPU when they become available.

Of course if you need 10gb ethernet and you don't want to lose any TB3 ports the iMac Pro is obviously the one to choose. It still amazing that all power fit into such a small chassis. I could see the model with 256GB RAM for well monied data scientist who doesn't want to depend on their IT department for a proper server.


https://barefeats.com/do-gpus-always-speed-up-pro-apps.html

https://blog.neatvideo.com/post/gpu-for-noise-reduction
 
jbregar said:
Except without the iMac Pro's superior cooling system, this iMac is likely to have the same issues as nearly every previous stacked out iMac... thermal throttling of both the CPU and GPU under heavy loads.

That's always been the Achilles heel of the top-end iMacs.

Also, the 8-core iMac Pro is only about $700 more than a 2019 iMac with the same specs (i9, 32GB, 1TB SSD).... and the exact same price if you buy refurbished ($4249). They're going to be close in raw speed, but the iMac Pro is going to edge it out in connectivity (two more Tb3 ports on another bus, 10Gb Ethernet).

Also, Quick Sync only helps you with HEVC encode/decode... not going to help at all with anything that's not in the h.264/h.265 family.

I need 10GbE for my workflow... and I only paid $3300 for my open-box brand new iMac Pro base model. It was actually cheaper to just sell my 2015 iMac 5K and buy the iMac Pro than add 10GbE through Thunderbolt 2.
Click to expand...

Long time iMac user and I rarely ever experience any throttling issue. The fans hardly ever turn on and when they do they are very quiet compared to most other Macs. I switched to the iMac for this exact reason. Seemed to handle heat/noise the best.

Handling h264 formats with quick sync covers a lot of video users. Like 90% of users and most video cameras out there from the iPhone all the way up to the EVA-1. I consider that pretty darn significant for those that would actually use an iMac over a Mac Pro.

Not a lot of people need 10GbE yet and while a bummer I’m willing to bet most users who invest in an iMac vs a Mac Pro really will not care.

Out of the box the iMac Pro may not cost much more but then most users don’t need super fast 1TB internal flash storage and you can go much smaller on the iMac bringing the cost way down. The iMac also has a easily user serviceable ram via a door something the iMac Pro cannot do at all and that brings the cost of ram down a lot as well. So realistically a decked out iMac can be much lower in cost and if one does work with a lot of h264 and h265 formats it is likely a faster system. Honestly it’s the soldered ram on the iMac Pro that really put me off the system.

I can also tell you from real world experience people that bought the 8 core pro and had to replace it three times and eventually Apple even upgraded then to the 10 core and 18 core to help fix the issue and it still never worked well for them. They eventually returned it and bought the top 2017 iMac and had a much more smooth process with FCPX and Motion then they ever did on four different iMac Pro models. They do work with a lot of 8bit and 10bit h264 formats and the quick sync and lack of t2 chip made a big difference. The new iMac bridges that gap even more with the added benefit of the stability of the desktop class components vs the server class.
 
The RAM on the iMac Pro is not soldered. It’s standard DIMMs. It’s just a pain in the ass to get to it.

I’d also be interested in the problems you’re reporting with the 8 core iMac Pro. Mine’s been very solid except for a macOS bug in Mojave related to external monitors.
 
jbregar said:
The RAM on the iMac Pro is not soldered. It’s standard DIMMs. It’s just a pain in the ass to get to it.

I’d also be interested in the problems you’re reporting with the 8 core iMac Pro. Mine’s been very solid except for a macOS bug in Mojave related to external monitors.
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Still vastly cheaper for the iMac for those that don't need 1TB of flash based internal storage. Thats $3,150 + $230 for 32GB of ram from OWC = $3,380 or $1,620 less than the 8 core iMac Pro. Sure the 2TB Fusion drive isn't pure SSD but 128GB of that is a SSD and you gain a lot more internal storage albeit slower. Bumping to the 512GB SSD is only $100 which still puts the iMac $1,500 less and only missing another 512GB of internal storage. Missing the extra TB3 ports and 10GbE as well but again not every user needs that.

The iMac Pro does have its advantages of course and its a great system. I can only speak to the issue people I know have had with the iMac Pro. I'm sure many of those issues were eventually resolved but performance wise they did get better results with their h264 based material on the top 2017 iMac. I'm not talking just render speed but overall playback performance and overall snappiness. This is not really a new concept. Most 4 core Mac Pro computers in the past were beat by their 4 core iMac cousins at that time. Just the nature of how Xeon has always been. One bought the MP because they were more interested in the expandability or if they really needed the performance went all in for the 12 core options. Same is now true of the iMac Pro. One only chooses it over the 8 core iMac if they really need more expandability options.

I will say $1,500 buys a lot of external SSD based storage, a second 5k display, or a Vega 64 eGPU to double the performance in Resolve (can use both the Vega 48 and Vega 64 together).
 
Thomas Smet said:
Long time iMac user and I rarely ever experience any throttling issue. The fans hardly ever turn on and when they do they are very quiet compared to most other Macs. I switched to the iMac for this exact reason. Seemed to handle heat/noise the best.
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The computer doesn't tell you when the chip is being throttled for thermal reasons, it just does it. Depending on how you're loading it, you may not even notice. That said, one of the reasons iMacs are so bad when it comes to thermal throttling is that Apple has placed an emphasis on noise envelope over keeping the chips as cool as they possibly could. They even did that to a point with the iMac Pro... but the iMac Pro's cooling system is much more efficient.

Unless you're specifically looking at the performance graph for the CPU and/or GPU and see it shark tooth, you're probably not going to notice thermal throttling on an iMac. That said, as someone who's owned 2013 and 2015 iMac 5K/i7s and supported a lab full (32) of 2015 i7s and a couple of 2017 iMac i7s, I can tell you they absolutely have an issue with thermal throttling vs. the superior cooling system on the iMac Pro. It may not matter to you, you may not notice it, but it is absolutely there.

More info:
http://www.toddbrennan.com/blog/push-an-imac-5k-retina-hard-and-it-will-lie (this is a 2015)
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2017-imac-i7-throttling.2057383/

only missing another 512GB of internal storage
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If I've learned one thing from buying a ton of Apple machines, you always buy the amount of SSD you think you'll need + some. Replacing SSDs on these things is a pain in the ass. If the machine is used only for editing and has limited other stuff on it, 512GB may be plenty.... but for a machine that's being used as a primary day-to-day machine I regretted going with 512GB the one time I did (on my 2013 iMac 5K). I wouldn't get less than 1TB in my primary machine at this point.

Fusion drives are a mistake. You're buying a Ferrari and running it on s*%tty Sears-brand all-season tires. I'd take an i5 iMac with an SSD over a Fusion-drive equipped i9.

I'm also sorta laughing at this:

added benefit of the stability of the desktop class components vs the server class.
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You have that backwards. Server-class components are generally significantly more stable than desktop-class components. That's part of why the Xeons generally lag their iX brethren in performance a bit. I've pushed my iMac Pro pretty hard and it generally just buckles down and takes it. My previous 2013/2015 iMacs were not anywhere near this smooth under load.

Listen, the 2019 iMac will probably turn out to be a great iMac. It may even beat an iMac Pro for your use case. That's fine. But if you're willing the spend the dough, the iMac Pro has it's advantages... and the price difference is negligible if you do a little shopping around for the iMac Pro. An iMac 5K configured to the same specs as a base iMac Pro is not at all "vastly" cheaper. That's the crux of my point. Sure, if you start taking pieces off of the lower-end machine, it can be $1500 cheaper than a brand new iMac Pro base... but you can buy the iMac Pro as a refurb unit for $4200... so now the difference is only $850 or so cheaper and has twice the storage space and better cooling under load. It also has a 1080P FaceTime camera and comes in uber-sexy Space Gray. :P

Hell, Microcenter was selling the base model iMac Pro for $3999 for quite a while. That's how I got mine ($3999 sale price - 10% open box discount - some deal they were running for an additional 10% off of all open box products) = about $3300.
 
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jbregar said:
More info:
http://www.toddbrennan.com/blog/push-an-imac-5k-retina-hard-and-it-will-lie (this is a 2015)
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2017-imac-i7-throttling.2057383/
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Only your second link referenced the 2017 iMac, but the OP and others on that Macrumors thread concluded his performance problem were "an edge-case" tied to very long clips using a specific proprietary codec. This was not a general finding of performance degrading throttling on the 2017 iMac and couldn't be replicated with other codecs.

"On the 2013, it took 31:27 to render and on the 2017 it took 23:17. So the new one is definitely faster than the 2013."

"There seems to be some anomaly about the Elgato-encoded material that in combination with certain edits makes this happen. It would be good to inform Apple, but they (and any software developer) prefer a portable replication scenario"


jbregar said:
More info:
If I've learned one thing from buyi... amount of SSD you think you'll need + some./
Click to expand...

One of our most frequently used iMacs has a 256GB SDD, and that drive has 175GB free. I am actually surprised it has that much on in it since we don’t tend to put personal files on these workstations and all media files and project are connected via Thunderbolt or USB3.

____________

I believe the new 8 core iMac is a great value, especially for those who need more RAM in their workstations. It’s possible to outfit an 8-core system iMac with 64GB of third party RAM and a 512GB SSD for over $2000 less than the lowest cost 64GB RAM iMac Pro. For me those saving will go towards a QNAP Thunderbolt 3 NAS that would allow editing 4K without the need for 10gb ethernet. The NAS in question comes with two Thunderbolt 3 ports and one 10gb ethernet port. For those who need more can upgraded to a total of three 10gb ethernet ports.

https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/tvs-872xt

Of course those who can wait will be able to get that upgraded 2019 iMac system in a few months for less than it’s current $2,799 price making it an even better bargain and a fairer price comparison.

The 2019 iMac appears to use a variant of Intel’s unlocked Core i9-9900K. Of course it isn’t likely to run as fast as it would in a water cooled case where it could show off it’s full 5Ghz glory, but I expect it be quite a bit faster than the 2017 system.

Otherworld Computing hard a work testing to see if the new iMac will utilize the full 128GB supported by the Core i9-9900K and they say it looks promising. I’ve used several of their certified upgrade kits with great success over the last decade starting with my 2008 Mac Pro and they have all worked flawlessly since the support for expanded RAM comes from the Mac’s chipset.

Assuming this kit works as they expect, an iMac with 128 GB of RAM would cost more than $3000 less than the lowest cost iMac Pro with the same amount of memory. Of course not everyone needs that much RAM for those of us that do the cost savings will be extraordinary.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/processors/core/i9-processors/i9-9900k.html

https://blog.macsales.com/47657-app...cs-owc-to-provide-memory-upgrades-up-to-128gb

I am waiting for real world tests before purchasing and I doubt we will have to wait long to see how well it performs. It will be interesting to see how well the Radeon Pro Vega 48 performs vs the RX 580.

I do think the iMac Pro is an amazing system. If the new Mac Pro weren’t coming out this year I would probably be keen to purchase one. Even so at the price you paid it would hard to pass up. Let us know if see another $3,300 deal!
 
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jbregar said:
The computer doesn't tell you when the chip is being throttled for thermal reasons, it just does it. Depending on how you're loading it, you may not even notice. That said, one of the reasons iMacs are so bad when it comes to thermal throttling is that Apple has placed an emphasis on noise envelope over keeping the chips as cool as they possibly could. They even did that to a point with the iMac Pro... but the iMac Pro's cooling system is much more efficient.

Unless you're specifically looking at the performance graph for the CPU and/or GPU and see it shark tooth, you're probably not going to notice thermal throttling on an iMac. That said, as someone who's owned 2013 and 2015 iMac 5K/i7s and supported a lab full (32) of 2015 i7s and a couple of 2017 iMac i7s, I can tell you they absolutely have an issue with thermal throttling vs. the superior cooling system on the iMac Pro. It may not matter to you, you may not notice it, but it is absolutely there.

More info:
http://www.toddbrennan.com/blog/push-an-imac-5k-retina-hard-and-it-will-lie (this is a 2015)
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2017-imac-i7-throttling.2057383/



If I've learned one thing from buying a ton of Apple machines, you always buy the amount of SSD you think you'll need + some. Replacing SSDs on these things is a pain in the ass. If the machine is used only for editing and has limited other stuff on it, 512GB may be plenty.... but for a machine that's being used as a primary day-to-day machine I regretted going with 512GB the one time I did (on my 2013 iMac 5K). I wouldn't get less than 1TB in my primary machine at this point.

Fusion drives are a mistake. You're buying a Ferrari and running it on s*%tty Sears-brand all-season tires. I'd take an i5 iMac with an SSD over a Fusion-drive equipped i9.

I'm also sorta laughing at this:



You have that backwards. Server-class components are generally significantly more stable than desktop-class components. That's part of why the Xeons generally lag their iX brethren in performance a bit. I've pushed my iMac Pro pretty hard and it generally just buckles down and takes it. My previous 2013/2015 iMacs were not anywhere near this smooth under load.

Listen, the 2019 iMac will probably turn out to be a great iMac. It may even beat an iMac Pro for your use case. That's fine. But if you're willing the spend the dough, the iMac Pro has it's advantages... and the price difference is negligible if you do a little shopping around for the iMac Pro. An iMac 5K configured to the same specs as a base iMac Pro is not at all "vastly" cheaper. That's the crux of my point. Sure, if you start taking pieces off of the lower-end machine, it can be $1500 cheaper than a brand new iMac Pro base... but you can buy the iMac Pro as a refurb unit for $4200... so now the difference is only $850 or so cheaper and has twice the storage space and better cooling under load. It also has a 1080P FaceTime camera and comes in uber-sexy Space Gray. :P

Hell, Microcenter was selling the base model iMac Pro for $3999 for quite a while. That's how I got mine ($3999 sale price - 10% open box discount - some deal they were running for an additional 10% off of all open box products) = about $3300.
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Who said anything about replacing the SSD in the computer? Its a desktop computer and insanely easy to add an external drive. The ports have enough bandwidth that there is no limitation at all to adding external storage for a desktop computer. Its an utter waste of money to insist on a large fast flash storage built into a Mac but hey to each their own I guess. As an editor I would never edit a project off the same drive as the OS. Thats why I find the need of a large internal drive to be rather pointless. Even my iTunes, photos and document content is stored on an external drive. I have even done external MacOS boot drives which work extremely well.

I think its a little immature to say Macs throttle. Throttle is a negative term to indicate some kind of defect or getting less than what one should. A CPU is only designed to maintain its base clock speed. Turbo boost is essentially over clocking the CPU on the fly and bringing it back down once the CPU gets too hot. Turbo boost is exactly intended as the name implies. A boost or an added bonus for a short period of time. It is true that some thermal designs will allow turbo boost to run faster and for longer periods of time but as long as a Mac can maintain its base clock speed then it is doing exactly as Intel and Apple intended for the CPU to do. Most iMac users I know are not impacted by any reduced use of turbo boost at all and its only those obsessed with specs that seem to have an issue. Personally I want a Mac that can run cool and quiet in an all-in-one that is inches from my face and ears. I would always welcome better turbo boost performance but I'm honestly not really bothered by it at all. If the speed dips below the base clock speed then the CPU is under clocking and that is a problem but as far as I know that doesn't happens on the iMac. At least none of the editors I know have found it a concern at all as they edit multiple projects every week. Many of us don't measure a computer just based on its CPU score. We measure it based on its ability to allow us to accomplish tasks. The iMac doesn't hold anybody back in any way shape or form that I have ever known.

I think the iMac Pro is a great machine and I know it serves many people very well. I also know the 2017 iMac served very many people equally well and had an advantage in some areas. The 2019 iMac will bridge that gap even more and very likely will out perform the 8 core iMac Pro with to without a long sustained turbo boost. I don't see a problem with that. Its a newer computer and desktop CPUs are of a newer generation. Xeons will always be one or two generations behind in terms of technology. Yes as a chip they are built for reliability and tend to fail less than desktop CPUs but they also don't push the technological edge. A 4 core desktop CPU already sometimes out performs the 8 core Xeon so its only logical that a 8 core 9th generation desktop CPU would continue to provide access to newer technology that the Xeon just cannot utilize. I like Xeons and I used to build video work stations for editors but I also know Intel desktop CPUs can be extremely good as long as one is ok with limited cores. Thats not exactly true anymore since there is up to a 18 core desktop CPU.

Without a doubt the 8 core iMac Pro is a great machine. I'm not disputing that at all. If one really the extra port bandwidth of TB3 and 10GbE then its the best solution for them. The 2019 iMac will have its own set of advantages however and should not be ruled out. Not every editor needs 10GbE or 4 TB3 ports. There are a ton of editors out there that will never touch a eGPU and are likely fine even plugging in their edit storage to the USB3 ports. Heck I still edit GH4 4k material off a external HDD connected via USB3. If I eventually move to the Pocket 4k and braw the 600MB/S bandwidth of the USB3 controller is more than enough for that without ever touching the TB3 controller. If I get the Vega 48 iMac I doubt an eGPU with its minimal 20% loss due to bandwidth would ever make any eGPU really worth the cost. Only advantage would be Resolve being able to use multiple GPUs and then I could use the Vega 48 and a Vega 64 eGPU together. Then I would be stuck with the 600MB/S of the USB3 controller but thats still a lot of bandwidth for even ProRes422 HQ.

Its a good thing we have these wonderful choices today.
 
Immature? Give me a break.

Thermal throttling is a real thing. It really has nothing to do with Macs. It's built into the low level programming of the Intel (and AMD) chips that Macs use. It becomes an issue when you don't cool the CPU and GPU as well as they probably should be. The reason Macs seem to have problems with it impacting performance is Apple's asinine infatuation with thin-ness on a 27" desktop computer.

It was a massive issue with the 2018 Core i9 MacBook Pros when they first came out (bad enough that Apple issued a software update to fix it). It's been an issue under load with iMacs since they moved to the thin SuperDrive-less form factor they use today. My 2015 and 2013 iMac were nowhere near as stable and smooth under heavy load as my iMac Pro. Full stop. Neither is the 2017 iMac my buddy uses to edit and is otherwise happy with.

Even the iMac Pro thermally throttles. It happens. It's not some thing I made up and it's not at all "immature" to mention that that i9 in the iMac may not necessarily be able to keep it's performance up over a sustained render out where thermal throttling can cause issues.

There's also a big difference between "holding someone back" and "a better experience." My 2015 iMac didn't hold me back from performing the tasks I needed to get done... but the iMac Pro is certainly a better experience.

Performance is largely relative and subjective. It's been my experience with nearly every i7-based iMac I've ever used for any kind of edit that they tend to get a little choppy when loaded down with tasks that tax them. The Pro-level Macs (iMac Pro, Mac Pro) tend to handle loading in a more elegant manner. Part of that is server/workstation-grade hardware that's designed to multitask a little more evenly, a lot of is the fact that server/workstation-grade hardware is generally cooled better (at least in the case of the Mac Pro and iMac Pro).

It blows my mind that Apple didn't bring the superior cooling from the iMac Pro into the 2019 iMacs. That seems like a no-brainer. It's also puzzling that the iMac hasn't gotten the T2 chip yet (considering even the Mac mini has it).

Also, you talk about 10GbE like it's Fibre Channel or some other esoteric interconnect. It's all over the place at this point, completely affordable, and it runs over Cat6/6A copper. My 10GbE switch was like $300 and the card for my NAS was $150 or so. I'll gladly give up a little time in a render out to be able to actually dump a card to my NAS at a speed that resembles a fast local RAID more than a slow network drive. Heck, in a pinch I can edit off of the NAS directly and not really feel it. That means that the bulk of my storage drives are sitting in the basement where I don't have to listen to them whir and click and do their thing. It's completely changed my workflow for the better and means instead of a big RAID box sitting in my office, I have a small box that has four SSDs in it to keep my current project(s) on and the rest is stored on the NAS.

In short, the 2019 iMac will likely be a great performer, but it'll also likely be at least somewhat handicapped by Apple's choice to smash hot desktop gear into a small all-in-one case without great cooling. We'll see for sure when someone like BareFeats gets their hands on one and puts it through its paces. Until then it's all speculation both ways. So, rather than continue to talk in circles, I'm going to let it rest with this post.

Also, I'd give eGPUs at least another macOS revision before I bought in. They're still pretty buggy at an OS level.
 
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jbregar said:
Except without the iMac Pro's superior cooling system, this iMac is likely to have the same issues as nearly every previous stacked out iMac... thermal throttling of both the CPU and GPU under heavy loads.

That's always been the Achilles heel of the top-end iMacs.

Also, the 8-core iMac Pro is only about $700 more than a 2019 iMac with the same specs (i9, 32GB, 1TB SSD).... and the exact same price if you buy refurbished ($4249). They're going to be close in raw speed, but the iMac Pro is going to edge it out in connectivity (two more Tb3 ports on another bus, 10Gb Ethernet).

Also, Quick Sync only helps you with HEVC encode/decode... not going to help at all with anything that's not in the h.264/h.265 family.

I need 10GbE for my workflow... and I only paid $3300 for my open-box brand new iMac Pro base model. It was actually cheaper to just sell my 2015 iMac 5K and buy the iMac Pro than add 10GbE through Thunderbolt 2.
Click to expand...

It's true, the thermals not being changed is disappointing. Presumably when they go to the 6K screens they'll change the internals finally, if they need to keep spinning disk HDDs they should only be on the cheaper 21 inch model.
 
Looks like the team at Otherworld Computing was successful and it's possible to outfit a shiny new 2018 iMac with 128GB of RAM! Best of all you can get 128GB for about what Apple charges for 64GB. As I mentioned before, I've had great results with their memory in the past and expect this to work just fine since the Intel chipset Apple is using supports 128GB.

Assuming the reviews come back reasonably well it looks this will be my next system.

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/imac-2019-27-inch

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us.../i9-9900k.html
 
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