New 5K iMac GPU configurations at least double best performance of MacBook Pro

Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited June 2017
As with the initial Radeon Pro release with the 2016 MacBook Pro, Apple hasn't provided that much detail on the same family of GPUs used in the new iMacs -- but AMD has shed some light on the new processors, showing a radical improvement over the predecessors.




According to AMD, The Radeon Pro graphics found in the MacBook Pro and iMac feature the latest "Polaris" architecture with 4th generation Graphics Core Next. As with the GPUs in the series in the MacBook Pro, the new iMac GPUs feature AMD's asynchronous compute technology, updated shader engines, enhanced memory compression and new geometry capabilities.

The speeds in the new Pro 570, 575, and 580 beat out the MacBook Pro's set. The Pro 570 nearly doubles performance of the Pro 460 and 560 in the highest configuration of the MacBook Pro possible. The Pro 580 is 2.9 times faster in single precision than the Pro 560.




In comparison, the Iris Graphics 540 found on the 13-inch late 2016 MacBook Pro has a peak performance of 806 gigaflops, with the 550 in the higher end configuration coming in at 845 gigaflops. The 2013 Mac Pro desktop GPU D300 FirePro is capable of 2 teraflops per GPU, and the computer holds two. The D500 FirePro can provide 2.2 teraflops per GPU.

The Nvidia 1080ti with a native PCI-E connection for around $700 delivers around 11.3 tflop, with the $500 1080 coming in at 9 tflop. The $1200 Titan Xp hits around 12 tflop.

The 4K iMac has a 3.0 GHz quad-core i5 processor with a Radeon Pro 555 GPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 1TB 5400 RPM hard drive for $1299. With a 3.4 GHz i5 processor, a 1TB fusion drive, and the Radeon Pro 560 GPU chipset, the cost climbs to $1499.

As far as configurations for the 5K iMac, the quad 3.4 GHz i5 model, with 8GB of RAM, a 1TB Fusion Drive, and the Radeon Pro 570 GPU chipset retails for $1799. A 5K iMac with a 3.8 GHz quad-core i5 processor, a 2TB fusion drive, and the Radeon Pro 580 GPU sells for $2299.
xzu
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 27
    22july201322july2013 Posts: 3,564member
    So far this century CPU speed gains haven't been too impressive, but GPU gains have been good, especially considering the increased screen sizes recently, and support for multiple monitors by the same video card. Cable data speed increases have also kept up the pace.
    xzuwatto_cobra
  • Reply 2 of 27
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member
    Awesome iMac updates. They're listening!
    doozydozenxzuMetriacanthosauruswatto_cobra
  • Reply 3 of 27
    smarkysmarky Posts: 75member
    No build to order GPU upgrades on the highest iMac though! I got the highest option when I spec'ed my machine up and I am running the last gen with the 395x, hmm now I no longer have the newest model, but still not too shabby since I up spec'ed and have been rocking this for 18 months. 
    baconstangxzuwatto_cobra
  • Reply 4 of 27
    xzuxzu Posts: 139member
    The fastest Mac video card is 5.5 Tflop.The $500 - Nvidia 1080 is 9 Tflop in a 5 year old Hackintosh? Is there any reason anyone questions the need for a modular Mac or why the AIO does not work for a lot of people? I would caution anyone paying that much for so little. 
  • Reply 5 of 27
    Now imagine if the Macbook Pros had something like a mobile GTX 1070 in them -- almost 6 tflops instead of almost 2.
    xzu
  • Reply 6 of 27
    xzu said:
    The fastest Mac video card is 5.5 Tflop.The $500 - Nvidia 1080 is 9 Tflop in a 5 year old Hackintosh? Is there any reason anyone questions the need for a modular Mac or why the AIO does not work for a lot of people? I would caution anyone paying that much for so little. 
    No, the fastest mac video card is AMD vega coming in the iMac pro.
    Around 11tflops.
    longpathSpamSandwichcalichiaxzuwatto_cobra
  • Reply 7 of 27
    macxpressmacxpress Posts: 5,801member
    xzu said:
    The fastest Mac video card is 5.5 Tflop.The $500 - Nvidia 1080 is 9 Tflop in a 5 year old Hackintosh? Is there any reason anyone questions the need for a modular Mac or why the AIO does not work for a lot of people? I would caution anyone paying that much for so little. 
    Couple things...

    1. This is a consumer Mac, even the 27" model. So the majority don't really care how many giga or teraflops it does nor do most even know what that means.

    2. As stated more than a few times, a large majority of customers Mac or PC these days are not interested in building their own computer or even swapping out parts. The Macs of today will last a very long time (5+yrs). There are Macs out there today that were purchased in 2009 that still work perfectly fine today. A lot of those 2009 Macs are still supported by Apple even so they can still get the latest and greatest version of macOS.

    3. It seems silly to me to spend $500 on an old PC (Hackintosh) to get longer use out of it when you can take that $500 and put it toward a newer Mac. Its not all about the graphics. The flash storage alone will make a new Mac so much faster.
    edited June 2017 calitechprod1gychiaxzueightzeroMetriacanthosaurusmagman1979dewmewatto_cobraStrangeDays
  • Reply 8 of 27
    nhtnht Posts: 4,522member
    xzu said:
    The fastest Mac video card is 5.5 Tflop.The $500 - Nvidia 1080 is 9 Tflop in a 5 year old Hackintosh? Is there any reason anyone questions the need for a modular Mac or why the AIO does not work for a lot of people? I would caution anyone paying that much for so little. 
    Don't care anymore.  I can get around 8 Tflops on a 13" MBP now (as a developer) with a $300 enclosure + 1080.
    xzumagman1979uniscapewatto_cobrahmm
  • Reply 9 of 27
    calicali Posts: 3,494member
    I've always wanted a Pro iMac. This WWDC was so fu**ing impressive man. Dreams come true. 
    xzumagman1979watto_cobra
  • Reply 10 of 27
    techprod1gytechprod1gy Posts: 838member
    macxpress said:
    xzu said:
    The fastest Mac video card is 5.5 Tflop.The $500 - Nvidia 1080 is 9 Tflop in a 5 year old Hackintosh? Is there any reason anyone questions the need for a modular Mac or why the AIO does not work for a lot of people? I would caution anyone paying that much for so little. 
    Couple things...

    1. This is a consumer Mac, even the 27" model. So the majority don't really care how many giga or teraflops it does nor do most even know what that means.

    2. As stated more than a few times, a large majority of customers Mac or PC these days are not interested in building their own computer or even swapping out parts. The Macs of today will last a very long time (5+yrs). There are Macs out there today that were purchased in 2009 that still work perfectly fine today. A lot of those 2009 Macs are still supported by Apple even so they can still get the latest and greatest version of macOS.

    3. It seems silly to me to spend $500 on an old PC (Hackintosh) to get longer use out of it when you can take that $500 and put it toward a newer Mac. Its not all about the graphics. The flash storage alone will make a new Mac so much faster.
    Very well stated. Couldn't agree more.
    xzumagman1979watto_cobra
  • Reply 11 of 27
    wigbywigby Posts: 692member
    xzu said:
    The fastest Mac video card is 5.5 Tflop.The $500 - Nvidia 1080 is 9 Tflop in a 5 year old Hackintosh? Is there any reason anyone questions the need for a modular Mac or why the AIO does not work for a lot of people? I would caution anyone paying that much for so little. 
    People that count Teraflops should also be counting minutes and seconds, not dollars. Anyone messing around with a Hackintosh is trading the time they save for the time they waste using unsupported and unstable hardware to save a few bucks. What do you tell clients when you unexpectedly crash and have downtime? "Let me check the Hackintosh forums to see if anyone has posted a new driver or fix." Good luck with that.
    xzuchiamagman1979polymniadysamoriawatto_cobraStrangeDays
  • Reply 12 of 27
    xzuxzu Posts: 139member
    All great points! I did not mean to confuse the argument with the use of Hacintosh. First its not legal, second I would not use one for anything that is important or work related. It was just an observation that a PC(Hacintosh) that is 5 years old is faster than my 2013 trashcan Mac Pro which Apple still sells, for a lot of $$. Additionally I find MacOSX far faster and more stable than Windows on the exact same PC hardware.

    I was trying to make the point that we have only reached 60% of the graphics power of a year old consumer card. I understand there is another iMac coming in December and new Mac Pro next Spring. The iMac is beautiful machine, MacOS is far better for almost everything I do, but when you run in a multi-platform environment you see how underpowered Macs are at the moment. In my opinion, The iMac has too nice of screen for the graphics hardware they are putting behind it. The egpu will help, but it is not an elegant solution for a desktop, it is very nice for a portable. 

    I think Apples pre-announcing future hardware is the most exciting thing of the entire event, it means they may understand the need of SOME people, and really goes to prove my point. As far of iMac being a consumer machine, its really the only desktop machine they make. The Trashcan Pros, which honestly I love and wish they kept updating, are for a very very very small amount of people. I wish they had updated the Mac Mini. 

    Finally, it just bugs me that Apples marketing always starts out with "New graphics 200% faster than last years model" when it is so dreadful. As most people here have said, graphics speed doesn't mean that much to the most users.
    edited June 2017
  • Reply 13 of 27
    eightzeroeightzero Posts: 3,056member
    macxpress said:
    xzu said:
    The fastest Mac video card is 5.5 Tflop.The $500 - Nvidia 1080 is 9 Tflop in a 5 year old Hackintosh? Is there any reason anyone questions the need for a modular Mac or why the AIO does not work for a lot of people? I would caution anyone paying that much for so little. 
    Couple things...

    1. This is a consumer Mac, even the 27" model. So the majority don't really care how many giga or teraflops it does nor do most even know what that means.

    2. As stated more than a few times, a large majority of customers Mac or PC these days are not interested in building their own computer or even swapping out parts. The Macs of today will last a very long time (5+yrs). There are Macs out there today that were purchased in 2009 that still work perfectly fine today. A lot of those 2009 Macs are still supported by Apple even so they can still get the latest and greatest version of macOS.

    3. It seems silly to me to spend $500 on an old PC (Hackintosh) to get longer use out of it when you can take that $500 and put it toward a newer Mac. Its not all about the graphics. The flash storage alone will make a new Mac so much faster.
    Concur.

    I am a multi-mac household, and I don't think I'm unusual. While the latest and greatest is often attractive, my needs are modest. The oldest iMac in the house is now frozen in time on ElCapitan. It works just fine, but will soon see limits or simply die. A family member (outside my house) uses a 2005 G5 iMac. It works for the very limited things expected. I have a macmini that still works fine, but that I have no real use for (OSX 10.4 anyone?) 

    I weigh using my 2013 MacBook Air as a desktop in a dock with a nice display. Sure, I'd like, would use, and find value in a $1200 iMac. But $1200 is real money to most people. Maybe this could be called "modular in place over time" strategy.
  • Reply 14 of 27
    sflocalsflocal Posts: 6,092member
    xzu said:
    Is there any reason anyone questions the need for a modular Mac or why the AIO does not work for a lot of people? I would caution anyone paying that much for so little. 
    Nonsense.  iMac is one of the best-selling desktop machines around.  Stop making stuff up and passing it off as fact.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 15 of 27
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    xzu said:
    All great points! I did not mean to confuse the argument with the use of Hacintosh. First its not legal, second I would not use one for anything that is important or work related. It was just an observation that a PC(Hacintosh) that is 5 years old is faster than my 2013 trashcan Mac Pro which Apple still sells, for a lot of $$. Additionally I find MacOSX far faster and more stable than Windows on the exact same PC hardware.

    I was trying to make the point that we have only reached 60% of the graphics power of a year old consumer card. I understand there is another iMac coming in December and new Mac Pro next Spring. The iMac is beautiful machine, MacOS is far better for almost everything I do, but when you run in a multi-platform environment you see how underpowered Macs are at the moment. In my opinion, The iMac has too nice of screen for the graphics hardware they are putting behind it. The egpu will help, but it is not an elegant solution for a desktop, it is very nice for a portable. 

    I think Apples pre-announcing future hardware is the most exciting thing of the entire event, it means they may understand the need of SOME people, and really goes to prove my point. As far of iMac being a consumer machine, its really the only desktop machine they make. The Trashcan Pros, which honestly I love and wish they kept updating, are for a very very very small amount of people. I wish they had updated the Mac Mini. 

    Finally, it just bugs me that Apples marketing always starts out with "New graphics 200% faster than last years model" when it is so dreadful. As most people here have said, graphics speed doesn't mean that much to the most users.
    Thee are all good points but there is more to choosing a GPU solution for Apple than just TFlops.    For example the quality and performance of the video decode/encode until are very important now days.   Power usage, especially in the iMac is a factor, in fact we are seeing that power is a limiting parameter in the current iMac GPU implementations.   

    As for consumers I suspect that many DO care and DO understand how a GPU impact performance.    Apple has been feeling the heat so to speak with rather pathetic desktop releases so I see they WWDC as an admission from them that they have to be more responsive to consumer needs.   Hopefully this isa trend that they will keep up in the future.

    As for the Mini and MacPro, yep a disappointment that they haven't updated either.   I actually see potential here for Apple to offer 3 different "desktop" solutions.   First the Mini could be replaced by a single board solutions 1/2" thick and maybe 4" square.   Then they need a midrange solution which is hopefully the rumored machine that they are supposedly working on.    This machine would be big enough to take a single GPU card and support RAM expansion, frankly a cut down Mac Pro would be perfect.   Then we need to see the delivery of a Mac Pro replacement that is a true "Pro" machine.   Wishful thinking I know.
    xzufirelock
  • Reply 16 of 27
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member

    sflocal said:
    xzu said:
    Is there any reason anyone questions the need for a modular Mac or why the AIO does not work for a lot of people? I would caution anyone paying that much for so little. 
    Nonsense.  iMac is one of the best-selling desktop machines around.  Stop making stuff up and passing it off as fact.
    He didn't make anything up.   The All in ones just don't do it for a lot of users.
    xzu
  • Reply 17 of 27
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    xzu said:
    The fastest Mac video card is 5.5 Tflop.The $500 - Nvidia 1080 is 9 Tflop in a 5 year old Hackintosh? Is there any reason anyone questions the need for a modular Mac or why the AIO does not work for a lot of people? I would caution anyone paying that much for so little. 
    No, the fastest mac video card is AMD vega coming in the iMac pro.
    Around 11tflops.
    and hopefully the new, new Mac Pro will have two GPUs of whatever is the latest at that time.
    xzu
  • Reply 18 of 27
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member

    wizard69 said:

    sflocal said:
    xzu said:
    Is there any reason anyone questions the need for a modular Mac or why the AIO does not work for a lot of people? I would caution anyone paying that much for so little. 
    Nonsense.  iMac is one of the best-selling desktop machines around.  Stop making stuff up and passing it off as fact.
    He didn't make anything up.   The All in ones just don't do it for a lot of users.
    I have always been in that small camp having had every 'openable'  Mac there is I think, I updated drives, RAM, graphics cards and even CPUs on some occasions.  Oddly have resisted touching my 2013 Mac Pro even though many of its parts can now be updated.  Firstly it is as fast as hell still (and now with APFS internally on on it's external RAIDs) and secondly I'm saving for the middle of the range new, new Mac Pro in 2018 instead.  But ....  The built in 5K monitors Apple almost give away may convince me next year though when I appraise the cost benefits of a high end iMac Pro versus a new Mac Pro plus monitor. The latter would have to be pretty darn amazing t win that I suspect.  Maybe Apple have a Quantum Mac Pro under wraps?  ;)
    edited June 2017 xzu
  • Reply 19 of 27
    k2kwk2kw Posts: 2,075member
    Why no Touchbar keyboard for the iMacs and MacBook.  When they released the MBP last year it was supposed to be their answer  to Windows 10's full touchscreens.
    This should have been easy to release.
    If they don't have a touch version of macOS ready they should really be pushing this. 
    xzu
  • Reply 20 of 27
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,335member
    The only thing I'm not wild about with these awesome machines are the Fusion drives. While the Fusion drives work well enough I'd rather see Apple leverage its consumption economy of scale and supplier influence to push solid-state-only internal storage across all of its products. For internal storage it's time to put all the spinners and their variants, like Fusion, out to pasture, or at least encase them in little pastures, lakes, and mini-clouds in the form of Thunderbolt and/or 1 gig+ Ethernet connected external storage units for those who truly have gargantuan local and on-premisis storage needs - with redundancy of course. It'll happen eventually, but I'd like to see Apple forcing the issue now in its higher volume desktop lines.
    xzu
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