Apple iMac 5K Trounces 3.3 GHz 8-Core Mac Pro on my Most Important Job in Photoshop
Get the new iMac 5K at B&H Photo and see the Lloyd’s computer gear wishlist. Save money on 32GB or 64GB OWC memory (about $400 savings vs Apple!). MPG recommends this iMac 5K: 27" Retina 5K Display, 4.0 GHz Intel Core i7 (Skylake), 1TB Flash, 8GB memory, AMD Radeon R9 M395X GPU (4GB GDDR5) + 32GB or 64GB OWC memory.
See the ongoing review of the late 2015 Apple iMac 5K at Lloyd’s MacPerformanceGuide.com.
This test is as real world as it gets: it is my most performed job in Photoshop, one that idles further activity while it runs. The task is long-running, so it is the #1 bottleneck to my photographic workflow (preparing multi-resolution image series in a layered Photoshop document, typically aperture series or ISO series or similar).
To have $8K invested in an 8-core 3.3 GHz Mac Pro, and yet have an about $4200 machine trounce it (iMac 5K 4.0GHz 8GB/1TB/M395X with 64GB memory)... well, ouch!
iMac 5K (Late 2015) vs Mac Pro: Real World Photoshop Performance