I wish there was a sticky for this as 'iMac vs nMP' is common daily question and very much the same basic specs and needs.
Perhaps most importantly for graphic design work, the new iMac 2020 has new AMD Radeon Pro 5000 graphics cards, and these offer a huge leap in performance compared to the Vega GPUs of last year's models. In recent years, the elegant, all-in-one (AIO) designs of Apple's iMac and iMac Pro have proved popular with many creative users and - as is so often the case - have inspired many similar designs.
As in past, 6 (or maybe 8) cores, base memory so you can save and upgrade from 3rd party.
Monitors vary too much in cost range, and you can do better outside Apple, but are one time cost.
A Mac Pro only needs to be replaced half as often, can be upgraded (cpu, RAM, flash SSD storage, even GPU). Hard to other than Apple stopping support in 5-6 years or software by then catching up or putting more demands on computers.
An iMac is not going to run as cool and quiet and because of its shape has to be allowed to run hotter it seems. You can stress and pound on those Xeon systems all day max it out and it is quiet beast.
See what a graphic and tech professional has in recommendations:
Also, www.barefeats.com has done some app testing and FCP-X is one place where the dual GPU pays off.
the 'nMP' is actually called 'Late 2013' but I agree, other than a few 10s of t housands sold would better easier to be called an Early 2014 (there could be a Late 2014 as well).
Google chrome final version download. Reliable = Mac Pro - mine is going to be 8 yrs old and is better today than it ever was only if I found the need to run Mountain Lion or above or App Store's newest version of say iPhoto is that an issue (security updates though would be nice to see).
New Imac Design
Jan 10, 2014 3:35 PM
