So, I asked a question about an eGPU that didn’t get a ton of attention. With Apple’s announcement yesterday, the question becomes even more relevant, and now I’m wondering about my options. My wife and I want to buy a desktop to be our home family computer, and now I’m debating among three options. We currently have our own laptops, and I have a 2018 13” rMBP with Quad core but no discrete GPU, so I don’t necessarily have to rush into a decision anytime soon.
Although my Mac Mini has the Iris Pro graphics it’s still not great for editing and playback of 4K material, particularly within Final Cut Pro. But there’s a very simple trick you can use in Final Cut Pro X - change your priority from Quality to Performance.
The 2017 iMac Pros: User upgradeable RAM, 5k Display, discrete GPU Cons: older CPU, no hexacore CPU, slower RAM (slightly) and SSD 2. The 2018 Mac Mini + eGPU Pros: New hexacore CPU, faster RAM (slightly) and SSD, upgradeable RAM (possibly more difficult than iMac) Cons: no internal discrete GPU, adding eGPU costs more than iMac, 5k display would cost another $1300 3. Wait for an updated iMac Could be better solution, but we honestly don’t know for sure when it would be released or what it would, feature. In particular, would it follow suit with the iMac Pro and have RAM that requires a technician to upgrade? But my hope is that we’d see an update by spring. I wanted to get some advice, particularly on what would be best for running Lightroom and Photoshop, since those are the primary tools that warrant the more powerful computer.
In particular, does the eGPU provide sufficient support to LR? I kinda assume more cores is, generally more important than the GPU. But is it worth waiting? That’s good to know. And it has crossed my mind in a specific way. For instance, buying only 32GB of RAM for a Mac Mini for now, and waiting for the cost to go down before upgrading to 64GB was something I have considered as well. I really would love to speed up LR.
Best professional photo slideshow software for mac. Particularly when going through and picking through photos and when stitching large panoramas. Based on what you and dmeephd have said, it sounds like the limiting factor on LR speed is not as much the hardware though. I do know (as I mentioned below) that LR slows down when I have two external displays plugged into it. So the eGPU, I would hope, should help that by removing that burden off the integrated or discrete GPU in the machine.
With the Mac OS, there's only a few eGPU options available (compared to Windoze; but really, Windoze? Never!) and Lightroom is not designed to take advantage of them, though some VR programs and games are, and supposedly so too is Photoshop (but I have not been able to confirm that).
The key is get as much RAM as you can afford for both the CPU and the GPU. Select clock rate over number of cores as Lightroom was never designed to use symmetric multi-processing on multiple cores. RAM and clock rate is the Name of the Game. Look to respected third-party RAM suppliers like OWC for larger memory modules, then buy the smallest with your Mac from Apple, and then buy the larger ones and sell the original Apple RAM back to OWC. (I bought a MacPro with 3.5GHz clock, six cores, and two 8GB GPUs with 16GB of RAM. I sold the RAM to OWC when I bought 128GB of RAM from them.
The RAM turned the MacPro into a rocket—except with LR 7.5 and LR8.). That’s disappointing to hear that LR8 was still slow even on your Mac Pro configuration. The eGPU front is where I lack clarity. I’ve noticed that Lightroom slows down even further when I have both my 2560x1440 Thunderbolt 2 Cinema Display’s plugged into my laptop. Fannie mae and freddie mac maximum loan limits for mortgages acquired in calendar year 2018 free. My hope with the eGPU is that if it was running my displays, that would save the integrated graphics card for crunching photos in LR and Photoshop.
But to be clear, are you saying that likely would not be the case? I do know that it would be better to have a discrete GPU for that purpose, so the question really comes down to this: what is more valuable, the faster clock speed and CPU of the new Mac Mini, or the discrete graphics card and larger graphics RAM of the iMac. Or would it be better to wait and get both when the new iMac comes out. I’m surprised to hear you say that cores do not matter.