iMac 5Ks and Mac Pros:
5120x2880 Shootout
Posted October 30th, 2015 by rob-ART morgan, mad scientist
The 'late 2015' 27" iMac 5K (like the 2014 model) supports resolution up to 5120x2880. So we ran some OpenGL Games and Benchmarks at that setting to see how three top iMacs compare to the Mac Pro cylinder and Mac Pro tower - both connected to the Dell UltraSharp 27 Ultra HD 5K Monitor (UP2715K).
GRAPH LEGEND
cMP 6c 980 Ti oc = 'mid 2010' Mac Pro 3.33GHz 6-Core Xeon; GeForce GTX 980 Ti Overclocked GPU (6G GDDR5); 24G RAM; 512G SM951 M.2 Flash on x4 PCIe card
nMP 8c D700 = 'late 2013' Mac Pro 3.0GHz 8-Core Xeon; FirePro D700*2 (6G GDDR5 each); 32G RAM; 512G Apple (XP941) Flash
iMac5K M395X = 'late 2015' iMac Retina 5K 4.0GHz Quad-Core i7; Radeon R9 M395X GPU (4G GDDR5); 16G RAM; 1TB flash storage
iMac5K M395 = 'late 2015' iMac Retina 5K 3.3GHz Quad-Core i5; Radeon R9 M395 GPU (2G GDDR5); 8G RAM; 2TB Fusion Drive
iMac5K M295X = 'late 2014' iMac Retina 5K 4.0GHz Quad-Core i7; Radeon R9 M295X GPU (4G GDDR5); 16G RAM; 1TB flash storage
(RED graph bar means FASTEST)
(RED graph bar means FASTEST)
INSIGHTS
In response to popular demand, this page features not only three of the fastest iMac 5Ks against two mid-level Mac Pros with the best GPU available on each.
The 'late 2013' Mac Pro cylinder has dual FirePro D700 GPUs with 6G VRAM each, but the apps featured on this page only used one of those GPUs. And (surprise, surprise) the top 2015 iMac 5K with the R9 M395X GPU with 4G VRAM equals or beats it in all but one featured test.
The GeForce GTX 980 Ti in the 'late 2010' Mac Pro tower is in a class all its own. If you want to keep your Mac Pro tower but speed up the graphics and support 5K displays like the Dell UltraSharp 27 Ultra HD 5K Monitor (UP2715K), it's definitely the way to go. It has the added advantage of supporting both OpenCL and CUDA.
(Big mahalo to PowerMax for providing some of the test units.)
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