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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

5k Retina iMac

DJ Meyer said:
Not a terrible value but 32GB memory limit? What year is this?
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The iMac - and all other AIOs with a few exceptions - is a notebook motherboard inside a monitor chassis. It's not "desktop" hardware by any definition, so it's limited to the design characteristics of regular mobile hardware stuffed in the footprint of the display screen. The next-gen DDR3 memory being developed right now will double the capacity to 64 GB but that likely won't be available until 2016 at the earliest.
 
L. Langer said:
The iMac - and all other AIOs with a few exceptions - is a notebook motherboard inside a monitor chassis. It's not "desktop" hardware by any definition, so it's limited to the design characteristics of regular mobile hardware stuffed in the footprint of the display screen. The next-gen DDR3 memory being developed right now will double the capacity to 64 GB but that likely won't be available until 2016 at the earliest.
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Yes. This is all known. Just lamenting the deliberate design choices made that preclude me from being able to consider it.
 
Saw my friends retina iMac yesterday and was shocked by the screen quality - just ordered a maxed one.
 
Played with one (base config) at the Apple Store last night. The screen is stunning. And resolution aside, the color and other viewing characteristics are excellent.

I'll buy one when the Broadwell based units ship next year.

And yeah, we won't see > 32GB RAM in this level of system any time soon. As Eric points out, this is Intel's doing.
 
David Kuhn said:
Stunning compared to quality 4k monitors?
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It's pretty insane yes - ...but that's my personal opinion. You should go to apple store and bring a thumb drive with some R3Ds converted to TIFFs or whatever and see what you think. It's really something.
 
It is stunning as far as displays go.

FCPX looked great on it specially when you try and watch a 4K playback :)
 
Robert Gustafsson said:
Would adding a Red Rocket (in a thunderbolt enclosure) benefit 4K and 5K playback speeds and exports on a 5K Retina iMac?
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I guess the performance of debayering / editing R3D files would certainly benefit from a RED ROCKET-X in an external Thunderbolt 2 enclosure. However, the performance of the RED ROCKET is then limited by the overall bandwidth of the Thunderbolt port. I can only relate to my own findings regarding the previous version of the RED ROCKET in conjunction with the previous iMac, but playback was definitely smoother in Adobe Premiere Pro CC, as well as FCPX.
 
On a new Mac Pro, I had to place the studio ROCKET in a separate ECHO and its own port group to avoid issues with the rest of the chain.
 
Just checked it out at the Lexington Apple Store... very nice screen. I've spent the whole week staring at the Asus and I could have switched to the iMac without a problem. The iMac doesn't blow away the PQ321Q, but the fact that you get more resolution AND a decent quality computer for just a bit more than the PQ321Q costs all by itself... that's pretty impressive.
 
Did Barefeats mention how much ram was in their i7 test model? I assume it's maxed out but wasn't sure. I think their testing has proved most of our assumptions here - the fully loaded iMac Retina is about equal to the 4 Core nMP. Which depending on your need for 64GB Ram and 6 TB Ports (3 Discrete PCIe 4X 2.0 Lanes) may make the iMac an attractive option.
 
The Barefeats test seem to indicate that their is only a minor bump in the R3D crunching ability of the 5K iMac over the previous generation but would still love to see actual transcode speeds of full debayer 6K footage. Anyone?
 
Call me stupid but I actually think the base model will be powerful enough for my needs (4K ProRess)

B&H put up a deal today for the base config at $3349 so I pulled the trigger and it has already shipped. I am going to max it with Ram and see how is performs. Do you guys think I was crazy to jump on this deal and not go with the i7? http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/promotion/10824/pdn-photoplus-2014-special-savings.html

Barefest did a compare between the i5 and i7 and the i5 actually beat the i7 in one test... go figure: http://www.barefeats.com/imac5k5.html
 
Tom Gleeson said:
The Barefeats test seem to indicate that their is only a minor bump in the R3D crunching ability of the 5K iMac over the previous generation but would still love to see actual transcode speeds of full debayer 6K footage. Anyone?
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full debayer without rocket is damn painful for me on any machine, hell even half premium sucks lol... idk man rocket x spoiled me
 
Eric Bowen said:
Even if OSX supported it not with the equivalent bandwidth of a PCi-E 2.0 4X slot that TB2 offers right now.
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Are you saying external GPU cards or Open CL us not supported under OSX?

Personally, if software is designed right the bandwidth is not such an issue, you would feed the compressed file and control signals to the cards memory and do all work there, only feeding back the end image. Of course programmers might gave not caught onto this.
 
Is there any plans for a multicore open cl based Parallella renderfarm card/box anyway?
 
Adam Levins said:
Call me stupid but I actually think the base model will be powerful enough for my needs (4K ProRess)

l
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It depends on your needs and priorities.

The last generation i5 CPU, paired with a midrange mobile GPU from 2012, with just 2 Gig of RAM isn't gonna help.

The R9 M290X is a rebranded HD 8970M, which is a rebranded HD 7970M, which is functionally equivalent to a desktop Radeon HD 7870.
That means, the bandwidth is so limited, it can run your 5k display only at 30HZ - for 60HZ you have to lower the resolution.

Wayne Morellini said:
Are you saying external GPU cards or Open CL us not supported under OSX?

.
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External GPUs are not supported for anything under OSX, and yeah, TB would be also a bottleneck on top of it.
 
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