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iMac Pro Compared to 5K iMac and MacBook Pro

Thursday January 18, 2018 2:42 pm PST by Juli Clover

MacRumors videographer Dan recently got his hands on the new 8-core iMac Pro, and he decided to compare it to his other machines, a 2015 5K iMac and a 2016 MacBook Pro to see how it measures up when it comes to his everyday video editing workload.

In the video below, Dan takes a look at how well the iMac Pro performs on tasks like editing video, exporting video, and reading and writing data. If you're wondering whether the entry-level iMac Pro is worth the $5,000 price tag when you've already got hardware on hand like an iMac or a MacBook Pro, this video is worth checking out because it might help you make a decision.

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How Fast is the $5,000 iMac Pro?MacRumors

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Dan compared the entry-level 8-core iMac Pro with a 3.2GHz Intel Xeon W processor to a late 2015 iMac with a 3.2GHz 6th-generation Intel processor, 24GB RAM, 1TB Fusion Drive, and AMD Radeon M390 graphics card and a late 2016 MacBook Pro with a 2.7GHz 6th-generation Intel processor, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, and AMD Radeon Pro 455 graphics card.

Unsurprisingly, the iMac Pro was much faster when it came to benchmarks and performance tasks, and compared to the iMac and the MacBook Pro, the overall experience is smoother due to the sheer power of the processor and the GPU. It's ultra quick when editing video, even with multiple system intensive apps open, and it's quiet as a mouse with no loud fans.

The 5K iMac did win out slightly on video exporting time over the iMac Pro, but the iMac Pro wasn't far behind and it came out on top in all other tests.

Pricing on the iMac Pro starts at $4,999 for the entry-level 8-core model with 32GB 2666 MHz ECC RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a Radeon Pro Vega 56 graphics card, but goes up to $13,199 depending on the upgrades you choose. Even at $4,999 it's a couple thousand dollars more expensive than an iMac or a MacBook Pro, but it has the potential to be fully worth the asking price if you do system intensive creative work like video editing.

For more details on the iMac Pro, make sure to check out our iMac Pro roundup.

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Top Rated Comments

114 months ago

It’s weird that a 2 year old iMac handled the video export better... encoding is almost all CPU based on this Xeon should be far stronger.
[doublepost=1516315801][/doublepost]

...but goes up to $13,199 ..

"So honey, we have a chance to buy a new small car for our daily tasks in the city, or we can buy an overpriced garbage that has apple logo on it and it'll be outdated in about a year?"

No one in the market for an iMac Pro would ever be having this conversation though. These are workstation machines, not consumer machines. People that need workstations will easily make up the cost with a few projects.

Score: 42 Votes (Like | Disagree)

114 months ago

Nobody should ever be jealous at anybody who pays 13.000$ for a computer that isn't light years ahead of competition and brings nothing new to the table.

An HP Z4 with an 18-core W-Series Xeon, 128GB of ECC RAM, a 1TB M.2 drive (largest available) and Quadro P2000 GPU (best available) is $12000. So for $1000 more, you get a 5K display, 3TB more SSD capacity and a better GPU.

Score: 29 Votes (Like | Disagree)

114 months ago

...but goes up to $13,199 ..

"So honey, we have a chance to buy a new small car for our daily tasks in the city, or we can buy an overpriced garbage that has apple logo on it and it'll be outdated in about a year?"

Any new car for 13k is truly garbage, and a car is outdated each year as well.

I can read the jealousy in this post.

Score: 25 Votes (Like | Disagree)

114 months ago

The gentleman in the video incorrectly stated that the disk speeds were measured in megabits per second rather than megabytes per second. Just to clarify, Disk speeds are almost always measured megabytes per second, including in this video. There is a huge difference.

100 MB/s (megabytes per second)
100 Mbps (megabits per second, which is 12.5 MB/s)
There are 8 bits in a byte.
Usually only networking speeds are measured in bits.

Sorry - just a pet peeve.

Score: 22 Votes (Like | Disagree)

114 months ago

...but goes up to $13,199 ..

"So honey, we have a chance to buy a new small car for our daily tasks in the city, or we can buy an overpriced garbage that has apple logo on it and it'll be outdated in about a year?"

Given that the iMac Pro is clearly a tool for doing paid professional work, let's talk about how many billable hours (say) a video editor could rack up in a day with this machine, vs how many hours... you could drive for Lyft in that hypothetical cheap car?

Great comparison though, please keep posting.

Score: 20 Votes (Like | Disagree)

114 months ago

...but goes up to $13,199 ..

"So honey, we have a chance to buy a new small car for our daily tasks in the city, or we can buy an overpriced garbage that has apple logo on it and it'll be outdated in about a year?"

Score: 20 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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