Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “2019 8 Core iMac vs iMac Pro- Same Performance, Half the Price?”.
Hey what’s up folks how’s it going on this watch hope you guys are all delaying well. So recently i’ve been doing a lot of testing with the 27 inch 5k imac for 2019.. This uh pc that we have over here actually has the 9900k intel processor. That’S an 8 core chip with 16 threads. Now, if you remember, last year we tested out the baseline configuration of the imac pro, which also came with a 8 core intel cpu.
The only difference over here is this cost, but almost half the price 2500. For this specific imac configuration versus that uh imac starts at around five thousand dollars and beyond. What we’re going to do is a comparison between the uh standard, imac that we have over here and the imac pro to give you guys an understanding on what you’re getting with the imac series and if it’s even worth it, if you can get the same performance, If not better, for half the price, so if you’re interested, let’s get right into it now at face value, the 2019 5k 27 inch imac is exactly the same in terms of looks as the previous generation 5k imax pretty much since the first generation launch in 2014.. Besides the sleek space gray finish that you get on the imac pro from the front, it looks identical to the standard imac, as you can see over here now at the back. The pro version definitely has a lot more connectivity options, including two more usbc thunderbolt 3 connections, which is definitely going to be handy. You can certainly add a usb type-c hub to your standard imac, but that’s obviously not included. You also have the big 10 gigabit ethernet connection on the pro versus a gigabit connection on the standard imac and the sd card reader on the pro is also uhs 2 certified, so it’ll support, faster transfer speeds for larger capacity, sd cards and at the front we Also have a 1080p facetime camera versus 720p on the standard 5k imac. Now, interestingly, we don’t have the t2 security chip on the new 2019 imac. It is, however, in the pro version and that’s going to help aid speed up image processing, as well as some of the security parameters in terms of the face id system, and if you do a little bit of video editing and getting into encoding h.265 codecs. It’S also going to speed up that process by a little bit as well.
The funny thing is it’s available on all the new macbooks, as well as the mac mini, but unfortunately, for some reason, apple didn’t put the t2 chip in the new imacs. Now one real killer feature about the standard. Imax is that you can upgrade the ram yourself and the adore to access the four sodim slots is located at the back. It’S really simple to get a hold of, and you can easily add 16 gigabytes for less than a hundred dollars. We have the eight gigabyte version over here, specifically to save uh some money and it comes occupied with two four gigabyte sticks. Add 16 gigabytes.
We have 24 gigabytes for under a hundred dollars and that’s way cheaper than anything. That apple is going to give you that pretty much charges you an arm and a leg to simply upgrade your ram here. You can do it yourself, and this is not an option. That’S readily available on the imac pro you pretty much have to tear down the entire system to get access to the so dim slots. Now, due to the fact that you can outfit the imac pro with a 18 core cpu, a vega 64 graphics card up to 256 gigabytes of ddr4 memory, it is definitely going to need some major cooling hardware and that’s why we have a dual fan: slash dual Heatsink configuration on the imac pros versus a single fan configuration on the standard 5k imacs, based on our experience with the eight core version of the 5k imac.
We didn’t encounter any major overheating concerns or anything like that, but who knows what’s going to happen in the future now the configuration that we have for our 2019 5k imac is right over here we have the upgraded core. I 9 8 core version, specifically using the 9900k processor that can boost up to 5 gigahertz. We have eight gigabytes of ddr4 memory, that’s again easily upgradable. Now we also have the standard radeon pro 575 x, gpu. Now, there’s two main reasons why we didn’t opt to go with the vega 48 for another 450 or so one is because we’re going to be mostly doing uh photos and audio processing on this machine a little bit of video editing and even though the vega 48 From a video editing, standpoint will probably produce a shorter render output times.
The difference for a premiere pro specifically, which i use is going to be marginally a better, definitely not worth the 450 dollar upgrade, and these days with thunderbolt 3 egpu solutions that are out there. I can easily grab a used amd graphics card and completely destroy the performance of a vega, 48 and even rival what the imac pro can do from a graphics perspective. We also have the standard fusion drive option didn’t opt for the ssd, even though the ssd, as you can see, is going to give you a significant boost in terms of read and write, sequential performance. The read and write performance is still fairly good on the fusion drive, especially for general computing needs and plus for my long-term storage as a scratch disk for video editing, i’m going to be using an external ssd drive via the thunderbolt interface, and that should give me Plenty faster speeds than the standard fusion drive, similar to what you’re going to get on the built-in ssd that apple charges you an arm and a leg for so again a little bit more flexibility and you’re saving a big chunk of change when getting the fusion drive. Now, in terms of the displays themselves on both of these two machines, they’re pretty much identical in terms of most parameters – resolution, brightness, contrast, ratio, overall, color accuracy and there’s really not a difference there now in terms of audio the imac pro does have better built-in speakers, But most people are serious into audio, are going to be using external studio, speaker monitors anyways to get the best sound possible and are probably never going to touch the uh internal built-in speakers on these machines.
Now, moving on, let’s talk about the benchmark results that we got out of both of these two now the imac pro from the baseline configuration comes with the intel xeon w 2140 b chip. That’S an 8 core chip with 16 threads. It could turbo up to 4.2 gigahertz, and that is a certainly it’s an achilles heel compared to the 1900 k that can boost up to 5 gigahertz and it has similar parameters and that’s why, if you take a look at our cinebench r15 benchmark, we’re getting slightly Faster results due to that faster turbo speed on the 2019 imac versus the pro and same thing, kind of goes with the geekbench benchmark results in terms of the single core processing speed. You can see that we’re getting around just over 6000 points on the 2019 imac versus 5100 points on the pro and the multi-core performance is pretty much very similar.
Around 31 000 points on both platforms now just for fun. I also wanted to test out the gpu performance. We have the vega 56 as standard on the baseline imac pro versus.
We have the radeon pro 575x and using the unigines of valley benchmarking tool. We set the resolution to 1080p ultra detail settings at 8x anti-aliasing. We got around 40.1 frames per second on the 575x versus the vega 56 got around 58.7 average frames per second now as a gaming machine, certainly with the 575x.
It’S definitely not optimal, but it is possible whether that’s on os 10 or using windows 10 via boot. Camp and playing your different steam games, and things like that. I played a little bit of rise of the tomb raider at 1080p high detail settings, and i was averaging around anywhere between high 50 to low 60 fps, which is a decent level for a lower end. Gaming pc again, if you wanted better graphical performance, i can easily grab an egp solution, throw in a vega 64 and completely destroy anything that the imac pro baseline configuration can do now. Let’S see, i just want to talk about the processing performance for content creation, specifically starting with a final cut: 10 4k, a video project that had a length about six minutes and 30 seconds. The export time for h.264 encoding was around 2 minutes and 11 seconds on the imac pro versus 2 minutes and 36 seconds on the standard, 2019 imac now on premiere pro rendering a similar 4k uh, 6 minutes and 41 second project took around uh three minutes and 31 seconds on the imac pro versus three minutes and 18 seconds on the 2019 imax, which was actually faster now, since the premiere pro prioritizes a single threaded performance and since we have a faster turbo speed on each of those cores of five gigahertz opposed to 4.2 Gigahertz on the imac pro, we are getting slightly faster, render output times as a result of that – and this is great news to me – because i specifically use premiere pro for 99 of my editing and even though final cut is gon na have better overall software and Hardware integration, since it’s an apple specific product and it’s highly optimized you’re, going to get more efficient usage out of the gpu compared to premiere pro as well as a result, you’re always going to get faster, render output times and a smoother editing experience as well. Now.
Lastly, i also want to test out the performance that you’re going to get at a logic specifically bouncing out a audio file that has dozens of different tracks instrumentations, as well as effects. That’S about four and a half minutes and uh to bounce that track into a wave file, took around 48 seconds on the imac pro versus around 51 seconds on the standard 5k imac. So not a huge difference between the two and audio production is not going to be as cpu and certainly not really gpu intensive at all and therefore the standard 5k imax is probably going to be an excellent choice for pretty much most of the people working in Audio production or music production nonetheless, now, based on our experience, thus far in terms of a pc from apple. I really think that this is probably one of the best options available right now, with the 8 core processor you’re, getting pretty much the same performance as you’re going to get with the baseline configuration imac pro.
You can obviously upgrade the ssd if you do want that. Ram is easily upgradable, unlike the imac pro, and you can add a vega 48 graphics card. If you do want better internal gpu performance, i’m gon na go down the route of hooking up an egpu. For this machine and we’re going to obviously upgrade the ram a little bit further, as well as add an external ssd drive via the thunderbolt 3 interface.
So this is going to be a very fast uh pc from apple and uh. We should be several several thousand dollars under the baseline configuration of the imac pro. So really. This is the best deal that you’re going to get from an all-in-one pc if you still want to go with mac for software related reasons for interface related reasons.
This is certainly the best pc from a value perspective, thus far, definitely love to hear your thoughts now. What we’re going to do is an ultimate setup for the 5k imac for 2019. So definitely stay tuned for that video check out the description down below for more details and give us thumbs up. If you haven’t done so already make sure you have notifications turned on and we’ll see you real soon take care, and thanks for watching .