Bryan Jacoby wrote:
Thank you, Steve and Paul. I think in the end I will get the "top"
standard configuration with the M395, 2 TB fusion drive (and upgrade
the RAM myself of course, probably to 24 GB). Thunderbolt external
Double check that you can upgrade the RAM. Probably still doable on
iMacs, not still doable on macbooks.
drives/enclosures/docks aren't cheap, and I am slightly unhappy with
the idea of an external boot drive on an "all-in-one." The upgrade
path will be the option to, in a couple of years, replace the fusion
drive with a big internal SSD (when those are less expensive and the
machine is old enough that I'm not afraid of breaking it).
Also check on how doable it is to replace the hard drives.
One advantage of the newer iMacs is that they can be used as displays
when they obsolete out. Godfrey convinced me that I'd be better off
going with a mac mini and an external display a year or so ago, although
it turns out that my mini won't work with two high definition displays,
kind of annoying because I like to have both a horizontal and a vertical
display, when working.
On Wed, Nov 25, 2015 at 6:08 PM, Paul Stenquist<[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Bryan,
I have the IMac27 Retina 5K with the Radeon R9 M395 graphics chip, 2 gigs of
VRAM, the i7 4 ghz processor and 32 gigs of RAM. I don’t have anything to
compare it to, but it’s very efficient. I do a lot of PhotoShop work on 1 gig+
scans of 6x7 negs, and the machine never hesitates. i can do gaussian blurs and
rotations in near real time. And a long burn-in session will result in only 10
seconds or so of down time. I opted for the 3 terabyte fusion drive, which
comes with a 128 gig SSD. I find that it tracks my work flow very well and
brings up current projects and current folders almost instantly. A 1.5 gig
image file saves in a couple of seconds.
Paul
On Nov 25, 2015, at 5:27 PM, steve harley<[email protected]> wrote:
brief answer: my hunch is the graphics chip difference won't matter much
because the VRAM matters more — and both have 2GB; i would personally greatly
prefer an external SSD to a Fusion Drive; however choose carefully — most
Thunderbolt solutions will use a SATA drive, whereas PCIe is a lot faster with
the right SSD
On 2015-11-25 11:38 , Bryan Jacoby wrote:
I am thinking of buying a new 27" iMac, one of the standard
configurations (so I can get a discount this weekend). I'm looking at
the base and middle option. The differences are:
AMD M380 vs. M390 graphics
1 TB 7200 RPM HD vs. 1 TB fusion drive
$200
Photo editing (lightroom) is probably the heaviest lifting the machine
will do. I know that Lr can use the GPU but I haven't been able to
find much information about the difference between the M380 and M390.
Now that the SSD component of the fusion drive is only 24 GB I'm not
sure how much of an advantage that is over the straight HD. If I get
the straight HD I will almost certainly use an external Thunderbolt
SSD for most things, and use the internal drive for photo + music
libraries. If I get the fusion drive, maybe that will be fast enough
on its own, I'm not sure. If it's not and I still end up with the
external SSD boot drive, I'm wondering if the fusion drive will
actually be worse for photo and music libraries since it is presumably
a 5400 RPM drive.
(I guess, for the price of the middle M390 + 1 TB fusion drive model +
external Thunderbolt SSD, I could get the top standard configuration
with M395 + 2 TB fusion drive + slightly faster processor. The 2 TB
fusion drive has 128 GB of flash. I'm just not sure how that would
perform compared to an SSD boot drive).
Thanks for any advice.
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