Imac (me ) vs imac ( maybe me)
Hi
I have this Imac
Its great for 2d but lacking for 3d. I actually don't mind the processor power since I only do 3d stills and having to wait 1 or 2 hours just means a break for my eyes but the Vcard is weak once you get over a million polygons..... again faster is better!
How does the current i5's stand up to what I have ..Core i7" I7-870 (Lynnfield) 2.93
I think any Vcard in the new macs would squash what I have so I will assume that question is answered
I am not sure what my imac would be valued at on the open market so which one I would replace it with would depend on what I get for mine. I would stay with a 27"
so my least expensive option would be this.
http://store.apple.com/ca/buy-mac/imac?product=ME088LL/A&step=config
thanks
scott
Comments
The i5 and i7 can be compared here:
http://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks
The new iMac is 11,111 for multi-core 64-bit, your old one is 8994 so around 24% faster. This means if you waited for 1 hour on the old one, you'd wait 1/1.24 = 48 minutes on the new one, saving 12 minutes. There was a time when CPUs improved roughly 50% every year but not in recent years. A fair comparison would be the top-end i7, which scores 14,705 so 63% improvement for the same price in 3 years. This averages out to be 15-20% improvement yearly.
To really cut render time significantly, you'd need a Mac Pro or a cloud computing service. OpenCL can cut times dramatically if they can figure out a way to use it.
The GPU comparison is the 1GB NVidia 775M vs 1GB Radeon 5750. Apparently what Apple called the 5750 was specced like the 5850M so it's:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-5850.23069.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-775M.102532.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-770M.88995.0.html
They have CAD viewport tests. The 770M is the only one with the tests but is about double in some viewport tests. There are a few of the tests that come out the same though so it depends on the software. It'll run cooler though.
There's a cheaper refurb of that one too:
http://store.apple.com/ca/product/FE088LL/A/refurbished-27-inch-imac-32ghz-quad-core-intel-core-i5
You can buy RAM separate. You just can't get an SSD option if you wanted it and they glued the screen on but if you wanted the 1TB anyway, it's a good deal.
For selling old models, you can use a 25% depreciate as a guide so a 2010 model that cost $2199 would be worth around $927. It's a bit easier if you check eBay though and just use iMac 2010 and show completed listings. Then you know what people have paid for one in the last few months. The lowest one seems to be $1223 and highest $1595. That's quite a good resale value if you only lose $604 in 3 years. You can start your sale above $1600 and let people send offers. You might even be able to pay for a refurb 2013 model with a full warranty entirely from the sale.
Great advice Marvin...thank you for that!
For me the bottle neck is GPU..I think...I am OK with render times but screen redraw during the design process can be irritating. I use C4D BTW.
It doesn't seem to be a huge speed benefit from the i5 to the i7( late 2013) as you pointed out compared to what I have now...I think:)
A macPro...would be amazing but not in the cards $$ wise
If I could sell me Imac now for 1300 and then have to put in another $1000 to get a new one in the $2300 range I essentially get a much better video card a small CPU benefit for 1K...am I reading that right?
scott
At the top-end, you get a 63% faster CPU so a 1 hour render would now take 37 minutes. The GPU on the top-end model is about 25-50% faster than the 770M for games but the Cinebench OpenGL scores don't differ much:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-770M.88995.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-780M.88993.0.html
The 775M is faster than the 700M so you might not get much benefit from the more expensive 780M GPU. For a $1000 upgrade after 3 years, you'd get 63% faster CPU, 150% faster GPU. But, if you aren't so bothered about the CPU, the 775M model should offer similar benefits to the 780M and the refurb is only $270 more than the $1300 you may get for the old one.
Another option is a refurb of the 2012 model:
http://store.apple.com/ca/product/G0MS5LL/A/refurbished-imac-34ghz-quad-core-intel-core-i7
That comes with an i7, 680MX and a Fusion drive. That'll give you similar performance to the $2599 iMac for $2069. That would be a $770 upgrade though and if the performance problem is that the software just doesn't cope well with higher poly counts, it would be a waste of money.
If you have the money, you could always buy one of the newer ones, test your workflow out and if it's not improved enough, return it. If it is, migrate everything over and sell the old one.
Once the new Mac pros are out, you could pick up a used one (old model) off of ebay .
To really cut render time significantly, you'd need a Mac Pro or a cloud computing service. OpenCL can cut times dramatically if they can figure out a way to use it.
I haven't seen much of a push toward that aside from preview renders. There is so much to load in terms of texture and point data in some scenes, and it typically has to be stored on the hardware framebuffer rather than through any kind of pointer set.
Once the new Mac pros are out, you could pick up a used one (old model) off of ebay .
If we're looking at raw gpu performance, that would only make sense if he intends to update the gpu. The 680 mac edition seems like a good option. Otherwise a 780m would be faster than the 5770 or 5870.
thanks everyone for the advice. A friend that teaches and design 3d on the PC side suggested the darkside:) For 1K I can get a very good machine as a start which would give me a i7-4770( 3.4), 12 gig ram and NVIDIA GeForce GTX650 2GB. I could then link both machines with team render(C4D)...not completely sold yet but another option
scott
Hi Scott,
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