Up until now, all of our consideration of the new iMac has focused on its display — a stunning 5K panel (5120×2880) that Apple is bundling into an entire system and selling for just $2,500. That’s an incredible deal relative to the $2,500 5K panel Dell has already announced, but it’s just one aspect of the system. Considered in total, the iMac with 5K Retina display could be a plausible challenger to the cylindrical Mac Pro , which starts at $3,000. Let’s look at how the situation breaks down.
The iMac’s general advantages
First of all, there’s that screen. Early hands-on coverage has come back positively, and while there’s a definite chance of teething problems down the line, for now the feedback is positive. Certain applications — notably 4K video editing and high-resolution photo editing — gobble screen space as quickly as monitor manufacturers offer it, so the Retina 5K iMac could be a big winner in that regard.
Second, there’s the overall price tag. Upgrade the iMac to a Core i7-4790K (4GHz base, 4.4GHz Turbo), 16GB of DDR3-1600, a 512GB SSD, and the as-yet unknown R9 M295X, the total bill is just $3500. The Mac Pro, in contrast, is $4300 for a six-core 3.5GHz Xeon CPU, 16GB of DDR3-1866, a 512GB PCIe SSD, and a brace of AMD D500 GPUs. As blogger and programmer Marco Arment points out, these two configs are closely matched in Geekbench, with the iMac beating out the Xeon in single-core and losing on modestly in multi-core programming.
27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display - display only
Exactly how the two chips compare is going to come down to which applications you use. In heavily-threaded apps, the Ivy Bridge-based E5-160v2 inside the Mac Pro (3.5GHz base, 3.9GHz boost) will still beat the iMac’s Core i7-4790K — but the higher clock and more efficient Haswell CPU inside the iMac will make the race closer than it otherwise would’ve been. In apps with eight threads or less, the Core i7-4790K may tie or even beat the Xeon processor. I’m not sure Geekbench really captures these differences well, given that it’s a general-use benchmark and not aimed specifically at the workstation MARKET, but there’s also a great deal of variation between professional apps. Adobe Photoshop, for example, prefers high IPC and clock speed to more threads, whereas a program like 3ds Max will make better use of additional cores.
The Mac Pro’s specific strengths
The Mac Pro still has several advantages over the iMac, but they tend to play to a specialized segment. Its PCIe-based storage should generally outperform whatever SSD the iMac uses. It has dual GPUs for OpenCL performance, rendering and modeling work (where multi-GPUs are supported), and for Crossfire gaming in Windows. It also offers far more Thunderbolt connectivity than any other system Apple sells.
Mac Pro, inside, RAM, etc.
If you’re heavily INVESTED in the Thunderbolt ecosystem, with multiple peripheral monitors or drive bays, the iMac simply may not be an option. Similarly, if you bought a 12-core variant because you know you need that much CPU horsepower, the Core i7-4790K isn’t going to be of interest, even if the display its paired with is awful pretty.
Read: Reviewing HP’s Z620: Redefining the workstation
The line between high-end desktops and traditional workstations has been blurry for years as motherboard integration and baseline capabilities in consumer hardware has risen, and the new Retina iMac erases even more of it. There’s definitely still a case to be made for the higher-end Apple workstation, but that case now relies entirely on specific software packages or needs. Apple itself has hastened this trend by building a Mac Pro chassis that relies almost entirely on a single interface — Thunderbolt — as opposed to offering more traditional drive cages and replaceable hardware. While this does lock in customers who bought Mac Pros and the associated Thunderbolt peripherals, it also makes it harder to justify the Mac Pro over an iMac.
Intel Xeon E7 15-core die
Should you buy the Retina iMac or the Mac Pro?
Would I run out and buy a new iMac over a Mac Pro today? No — for several reasons. First, I recommend waiting to see how the new screen shakes out as far as quality is concerned — problems with first-run products are not uncommon and Apple is no exception. Second, I’d wait for confirmation on specs for the R9 M295X. AMD has been mum on this when we’ve asked, but the details are important, since the R9 M290X is a 1280-core GPU and the AMD FirePro D500 has 1526 cores and a 384-bit bus (up from 256-bit on the mobile core).
At best, the R9 M295X is going to roughly match a single AMD FirePro D700, and the Mac Pro comes with two of them. Buyers concerned about GPU horsepower should therefore wait and see.
Third, there’s also a good chance that Apple will update the Mac Pro line at some point in the not-too-distant future. Intel’s new Xeon E5v3 CPUs are already available, with Haswell-based cores and higher clock speeds. Depending on which chips Apple picks for its hardware, a six-core Xeon could become the low-end model while 8-16 core models fill out the higher end. This would play to the system’s specialties while establishing the iMac as a “good enough” option for most professionals.
The iMac’s general advantages
First of all, there’s that screen. Early hands-on coverage has come back positively, and while there’s a definite chance of teething problems down the line, for now the feedback is positive. Certain applications — notably 4K video editing and high-resolution photo editing — gobble screen space as quickly as monitor manufacturers offer it, so the Retina 5K iMac could be a big winner in that regard.
Second, there’s the overall price tag. Upgrade the iMac to a Core i7-4790K (4GHz base, 4.4GHz Turbo), 16GB of DDR3-1600, a 512GB SSD, and the as-yet unknown R9 M295X, the total bill is just $3500. The Mac Pro, in contrast, is $4300 for a six-core 3.5GHz Xeon CPU, 16GB of DDR3-1866, a 512GB PCIe SSD, and a brace of AMD D500 GPUs. As blogger and programmer Marco Arment points out, these two configs are closely matched in Geekbench, with the iMac beating out the Xeon in single-core and losing on modestly in multi-core programming.
27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display - display only
Exactly how the two chips compare is going to come down to which applications you use. In heavily-threaded apps, the Ivy Bridge-based E5-160v2 inside the Mac Pro (3.5GHz base, 3.9GHz boost) will still beat the iMac’s Core i7-4790K — but the higher clock and more efficient Haswell CPU inside the iMac will make the race closer than it otherwise would’ve been. In apps with eight threads or less, the Core i7-4790K may tie or even beat the Xeon processor. I’m not sure Geekbench really captures these differences well, given that it’s a general-use benchmark and not aimed specifically at the workstation MARKET, but there’s also a great deal of variation between professional apps. Adobe Photoshop, for example, prefers high IPC and clock speed to more threads, whereas a program like 3ds Max will make better use of additional cores.
The Mac Pro’s specific strengths
The Mac Pro still has several advantages over the iMac, but they tend to play to a specialized segment. Its PCIe-based storage should generally outperform whatever SSD the iMac uses. It has dual GPUs for OpenCL performance, rendering and modeling work (where multi-GPUs are supported), and for Crossfire gaming in Windows. It also offers far more Thunderbolt connectivity than any other system Apple sells.
Mac Pro, inside, RAM, etc.
If you’re heavily INVESTED in the Thunderbolt ecosystem, with multiple peripheral monitors or drive bays, the iMac simply may not be an option. Similarly, if you bought a 12-core variant because you know you need that much CPU horsepower, the Core i7-4790K isn’t going to be of interest, even if the display its paired with is awful pretty.
Read: Reviewing HP’s Z620: Redefining the workstation
The line between high-end desktops and traditional workstations has been blurry for years as motherboard integration and baseline capabilities in consumer hardware has risen, and the new Retina iMac erases even more of it. There’s definitely still a case to be made for the higher-end Apple workstation, but that case now relies entirely on specific software packages or needs. Apple itself has hastened this trend by building a Mac Pro chassis that relies almost entirely on a single interface — Thunderbolt — as opposed to offering more traditional drive cages and replaceable hardware. While this does lock in customers who bought Mac Pros and the associated Thunderbolt peripherals, it also makes it harder to justify the Mac Pro over an iMac.
Intel Xeon E7 15-core die
Should you buy the Retina iMac or the Mac Pro?
Would I run out and buy a new iMac over a Mac Pro today? No — for several reasons. First, I recommend waiting to see how the new screen shakes out as far as quality is concerned — problems with first-run products are not uncommon and Apple is no exception. Second, I’d wait for confirmation on specs for the R9 M295X. AMD has been mum on this when we’ve asked, but the details are important, since the R9 M290X is a 1280-core GPU and the AMD FirePro D500 has 1526 cores and a 384-bit bus (up from 256-bit on the mobile core).
At best, the R9 M295X is going to roughly match a single AMD FirePro D700, and the Mac Pro comes with two of them. Buyers concerned about GPU horsepower should therefore wait and see.
Third, there’s also a good chance that Apple will update the Mac Pro line at some point in the not-too-distant future. Intel’s new Xeon E5v3 CPUs are already available, with Haswell-based cores and higher clock speeds. Depending on which chips Apple picks for its hardware, a six-core Xeon could become the low-end model while 8-16 core models fill out the higher end. This would play to the system’s specialties while establishing the iMac as a “good enough” option for most professionals.
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