For anyone ready to walk into an Apple store with five grand in their pocket, here’s how to get the most iMac for your money.
Do you need a workstation CPU? That’s the main question you need to answer before shelling out $5,000 (£4,899, AU$7,299) for the entry-level configuration of the Apple iMac Pro rather than a top-level configuration of the new iMac. There are other considerations, but the CPU is ultimately what the decision comes down to. Because the iMac is now powerful enough for what most people who are gazing longingly at that bottom Pro model need to do.
That’s because a workstation CPU determines how professional applications work with your system, and in some cases, what features they’ll “unlock” for you, as well as offering more sophisticated security. (It used to mean more processor cores, but there are now consumer CPUs with up to 18 cores from Intel and AMD CPUs with up to 32 cores thanks to the core wars.)
Since the CPU in an all-in-one isn’t upgradable, that’s what you’re stuck with for the life of the system — you can always add an external GPU to upgrade the graphics processing with either system, for example.
Read more at CNET.com