“So should you buy the iMac Pro with the Pro Vega 56 GPU?” Rob Art Morgan writes for Bare Feats. “Or pay $600 for the optional Pro Vega 64 GPU?”
Morgan benchmarks the following two configs:
• Pro Vega 64 – AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64 (16 GB) GPU inside the 2017 iMac Pro 3.2GHz 8-Core Xeon W-2140B CPU, 32GB of 2666MHz DDR4 ECC SDRAM
• Pro Vega 56 – AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 ( 8 GB) GPU inside the 2017 iMac Pro 3.2GHz 8-Core Xeon W-2140B CPU, 32GB of 2666MHz DDR4 ECC SDRAM
“Based on these tests, when you pay 10% more (or $600) for the optional Pro Vega 64 GPU, you will see up to 32% better performance,” Morgan writes. “And there is a bonus: you get twice the VRAM (8G vs 16G). We measured the VRAM use by FCPX and Compressor. Both gobbled up all 16GB of the Pro Vega 64’s VRAM when executing our test cases.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Always future-proof your purchase since, unfortunately, there’s simply no way to know if/when Apple will lose interest in Macintosh again.
That’s right, Apple. We, MacDailyNews of all people, don’t trust you any longer. You squandered that goodwill with years of silence, laziness, and mismanagement regarding desktop Macs. Earn it back.
MDN take is dead on.
Very nice to see MDN finally adopt the reasonable position.
Many of us (who are also long time customers and shareholders, by the way) have been clucking for years now over the clear trajectory Apple’s products and processes appear to be following.
I do not need this machine. But after seeing Leo Laporte unbox one on MacBreak weekly (and run some speed tests) I gotta admit I want one!
Sad but true. It sometimes seems like the Keystone Cops are running the Mac Dept. only we’re not laughing. Oh and BTW Apple you DON’T always know what’s best so stop believing your own legend. Try asking around, it might prove illuminating.
These machines (iMac Pro) are just for very specific people. Like it or not. But the weakest part are the GPUs, as even a top GPU would be weaker every new year. External GPU enclosures may solve the performance part but the simplicity and elegance the iMac provides would suffer. With an external GPU, maybe external drives and add ons you will have a Semi-Modular Mac Pro on your desktop.
I agree with what you are saying.
the TB3 in the iMac at least allows eGPU solution even if imperfect, the Cylinder with TB2 didn’t allow this (too slow).
waiting for the Mac Pro myself.
Some people are waiting for Godot but we’re waiting (interminably) for that new Mac Pro. I predict announced and shown at WWDC, shipping by end of December 2018.
And when the Mac Pro does ship it will be “in limited quantities.”