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Is This iMac Powerful Enough?

NN635349410187372550UL
Hi y'all,

I'm about to order a new iMac and was wondering if anyone could comment on likely performance with C1 10.

This is what I'm looking at:

27" w/ 5K Retina Display
3.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz
8GB 1867MHz DDR3 SDRAM - two 4GB (will upgrade to 32GB at some point)
512GB Flash Storage
AMD Radeon R9 M380 with 2GB video memory

Any thoughts? I'm working with 24 megapixel files and will likely upgrade to a 42 megapixel camera at some point.
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Comments

12 comments

Date Votes
  • Christian Gruner
    In short, nop.

    The graphics card is way underpowered for the 5k monitor.
    You need 16 gb ram or more.
    Get the i7 series instead.
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  • NN635349410187372550UL
    Thank you for your help Christian.

    I'm going to upgrade to 16 or 32 GB of RAM regardless of what I get.

    But is the graphics card a bigger bottleneck than the CPU?

    My budget isn't unlimited and I'm trying to make a sensible choice.

    FWIW, I wouldn't consider myself a real power user.

    I just want to make sure going through my library is smooth and fast, and that my editing tools are responsive to the touch.

    I'm not working on gigantic Photoshop files and I'm not doing huge quantities of batch processing.
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  • Christian Gruner
    [quote="NN635349410187372550UL" wrote:
    Thank you for your help Christian.

    I'm going to upgrade to 16 or 32 GB of RAM regardless of what I get.

    But is the graphics card a bigger bottleneck than the CPU?

    My budget isn't unlimited and I'm trying to make a sensible choice.

    FWIW, I wouldn't consider myself a real power user.

    I just want to make sure going through my library is smooth and fast, and that my editing tools are responsive to the touch.

    I'm not working on gigantic Photoshop files and I'm not doing huge quantities of batch processing.

    Then I would go for the GPU instead of the faster CPU. That 5k monitor i basically 4 mbp retina displays in 1. The Viewer in Capture utilizes this, so it has 4 times the amount of pixels to move around, but only ~1.5x the power. Recipe for slow framerates in the Viewer.
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  • Veeral Patel
    it also comes down to the level of editing you plan to do. For example, if you are like me and need to do heavy editing in photoshop via C1 then you will utilise TIFF files. If you are going to use alot of layers and your TIFF is large i.e over 1.5GB, C1 will be rather slow. So don't get disheartened that your new iMac is not powerful enough because it's a C1 issue.

    The other aspect is the Graphics card. It has a vey small amount of stream processors vital for GPU based processing. That's the issue with iMac, beautiful design and lacking in power. As Christian said the 5K screen needs GPU power plus the apps you use as well. So there is going to be a massive bottleneck and slowness.

    If your heart is set on an iMac then wait till the next release of the iMac.
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  • Daniel Wisniewski
    [quote="NN635349410187372550UL" wrote:
    Hi y'all,

    I'm about to order a new iMac and was wondering if anyone could comment on likely performance with C1 10.

    This is what I'm looking at:

    27" w/ 5K Retina Display
    3.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz
    8GB 1867MHz DDR3 SDRAM - two 4GB (will upgrade to 32GB at some point)


    You may want to rethink the 32GB RAM. From what I read these days, 16GB is a sweet spot. It seems that most programs will use 4GB. But everything I read 32GB is wasted ( and yes, I have 32GB on my 2011iMac ).

    My best advice to you is to search the internet for 'How Much RAM do I need' or similar worded search. Also, try searching for 'best mac for photographers 2016' or 'best mac for photo editing'. Take the consensus and I'm sure you should be happy.

    Take a i7 processor ( as mentioned ).

    cheers!
    hoham
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  • Bob Weber
    Hi:
    I have a 2015 5K iMac with the 500 GB SSD, a 3.3 GHZ processor, and AMD Radeon R9 2048 card. I also installed 32 GB of memory. The camera I use the most is a Canon 5DSR with 50 megapixels. This set up works fine for me. I suspect the added graphics card and processor will speed things up, but the only time I notice a real problem with speed is when I batch process a large number of images. Of course all my catalogs are held on an external hard dive. I use a GSystems thunderbolt drive that spins at 7200 rpm.
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  • Permanently deleted user
    [quote="Bob W." wrote:
    Of course all my catalogs are held on an external hard dive. I use a GSystems thunderbolt drive that spins at 7200 rpm.


    You mean your catalogs are on an external hard drive ? Or your RAW image files ?
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  • Bob Weber
    Both. I import the images into catalogs on the external drive.
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  • Permanently deleted user
    OK. I asked the question because, usually, the catalog is kept on the main (internal) drive of the computer, while the pictures and the backup catalogs are on external drives. The main catalog (which is on the SSD of my MacBook Pro) contains the adjustments for all pictures AND the previews, while the backups of the catalog (which are on my external HDD) contain only the adjustments and are thus far lighter.
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  • Bob Weber
    I have over 40000 images in my catalogs. They will not fit on SSD.
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  • Permanently deleted user
    [quote="Bob W." wrote:
    I have over 40000 images in my catalogs. They will not fit on SSD.


    I understand that you work with a managed catalog, while I was thinking about a referenced catalog. My 17,000 images don't fit either into the 512 GB SSD of my MacBook Pro, and this is the reason why I keep them on an external HDD. But keeping the catalog (referenced) on the SSD improves the response of Capture One, as far as I know.
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  • J M T
    [quote="tenmangu81" wrote:
    [quote="Bob W." wrote:
    I have over 40000 images in my catalogs. They will not fit on SSD.


    I understand that you work with a managed catalog, while I was thinking about a referenced catalog. My 17,000 images don't fit either into the 512 GB SSD of my MacBook Pro, and this is the reason why I keep them on an external HDD. But keeping the catalog (referenced) on the SSD improves the response of Capture One, as far as I know.


    This is also the way i find capture one to work best with a huge library of raw files, because then Capture One only need to grab the raw file when the image is zoomed in 100% 💡 and that happens almost instantly even on a slow drive because it is only one file to grab. All the adjustment data, previews, user collections and so on, can be on the fast (small) SSD.
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