Anyone know if the RAM is still user accessible/upgradable? I haven't read anything that comments on that.
I thought they covered that in the video.
Yes, I've spoken to an Apple rep (and ordered one).
In fact, I think that's why they have RAM at 8 GB by default - it's a tacit admission by Apple that everyone outside of the enterprise will be using cheaper 3rd party RAM.
Enterprise users may elect to simply go with Apple RAM so if something goes wrong, since they won't have to swap the RAM back before service.
I ordered a iMac 5K, core-i9, Radeon Pro 5700 XT 16 GB, 10 gb ethernet, and 4 TB SSD.
My last primary was an iMac 5K purchased in desperation in late 2018 when my 2014 was going into the shop, and the core-i9 model was tardy. The year old 2017 I was forced to buy was top-of-the-line at the time, but it really wasn't much faster than the 2014. The model I really wanted was released a few months later with a core-i9 8 core and better graphics. (Thanks Intel.)
The 2017 has a core-i7 4 core 8 thread with a 3 TB fusion drive - they only offered a 2 TB SSD which wasn't big enough (as I had a 3 TB fusion in the 2014) and was ludicrously expensive.
The 2020 iMac with a core-i9 has 10 cores 20 threads which should tear through my 7-10 hour transcodes much more quickly, and this will be the last and most powerful consumer level Intel Mac produced. The Radeon Pro 5700 XT 16 GB should have 40 compute units which should be tons faster than my current Radeon Pro 580 8GB, and the new machine is capable of boot camp, so I will have the ability to boot into Windows and play most AAA games as fast as any Mac ever has.
The Mac has had a relatively small number of AAA games, and of that number many were culled by Catalina going 64 bit only. Boot camp will open up a whole host of titles and will allow 32 bit Windows games as well.
This Mac should tide me over for the transition, and all Mac software which runs under Catalina should continue to work fine while early Apple silicon adopters find and iron out all the painful bumps in the road for me 🙂.
By the time I'm ready to move on to an Apple silicon iMac maybe AAA game developers may find interest in the performance of that machine, or there may be x86 hypervisors that can run Windows games at native speed. Failing that, I can get a Apple silicon Mac and a cheap Windows gaming machine. I'm retired now, so if AAA titles do start to appear on the Mac, I can just move on and forget Windows ever existed 😊.
It's amazing how much top-of-the-line has changed in three years.
Thanks to the special deal AI had with Expercom, I just ordered the 5k iMac. 10-core i9, 5700XT, 128GB, 10gb ethernet & 8TB SSD. It will be my final Intel iMac for many years to come so I decided to go big on this one. It is replacing my trusty 2015 Quad i7 iMac. It's not being retired as my girlfriend desired an iMac to replace her MBP/Thunderbolt monitor setup. I'll open it up, clean out the insides of dust and re-apply thermal paste to the CPU/GPU heatsinks.
I use my iMac hard as a work machine. I run several different virtual machines, it has to run Windows, my software development tools, and I do professional photography on the side - which is the reason why I maxed out the SSD. I'm intending on buying the Canon R5 to replace my Canon 5DM3 (waiting for more real-world reviews) and this machine will compliment that due to the much higher megapixel photos.
I usually buy a new iMac every 5-6 years so in my logic, by the time I'm ready for a new iMac, Apple will have fully-polished systems running their Apple Silicon.
The main performance boost with the new intel CPU is on multicore operations. Other than that it's a slight upgrade. Which just goes to show that Apple is doing the right thing by going for their own silicon. AMD is a much better deal compared to Intel, but it will take AMD a few more years to push out a revolutionary CPU. The whole industry has been slow the past years due to Intel's lack of innovation. I've made a new hackintosh this year and while it is much, much cheaper, it is only a tiny bit faster.
Very curious to see how far Apple can push their silicon and of course if they are actually willing to do that.
Comments
Yes, I've spoken to an Apple rep (and ordered one).
In fact, I think that's why they have RAM at 8 GB by default - it's a tacit admission by Apple that everyone outside of the enterprise will be using cheaper 3rd party RAM.
Enterprise users may elect to simply go with Apple RAM so if something goes wrong, since they won't have to swap the RAM back before service.
It's amazing how much top-of-the-line has changed in three years.