{"id":14273,"date":"2016-04-26T13:29:45","date_gmt":"2016-04-26T17:29:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=14273"},"modified":"2016-04-26T13:31:47","modified_gmt":"2016-04-26T17:31:47","slug":"lightroom-4k-imac-vs-4k-pc-performance-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/26\/lightroom-4k-imac-vs-4k-pc-performance-test\/","title":{"rendered":"Lightroom $4K iMac vs. $4K PC Performance Test"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pye Jirsa<\/a> (via Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

So, I wanted to do another Mac vs PC test to see if we could purchase pre-built Apple computers that can compete in terms of performance and price with our custom PCs which have been built by our own internal IT guru Joseph Wu.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

While we really appreciate Apple’s approach to their hardware quality and design, we can’t justify the price to performance difference at this time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The custom water-cooled PC was between 26% and 114% faster than the top-of-the-line iMac. The most obvious objection to these results is that the iMac has a Retina display and so was pushing around a lot more pixels:<\/p>\n

We were using a 2.5K Eizo vs the 5K Mac, however, to compensate we lowered the Smart Preview resolutions to 2048px on both machines, so all tests\/previews were running at the same sizes on both sides.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n

To me it just shows how many hoops you have to jump through to make iMac look bad.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Marco Arment<\/a>:<\/p>\n

There’s a lot of bullshitting in the parts choices, but the conclusion stands.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Cabel Sasser<\/a>:<\/p>\n

To me it’s a broader “Mac performance has lagged behind PC performance more than I can remember”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

kylec<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Of course<\/em> a purpose-built PC will outperform an iMac, dollar for dollar. That’s not exactly news. The iMac also has a severe price-to-performance disadvantage here by including an expensive 5K panel, while the PC is tested with a much cheaper 2560x1440 monitor.<\/p>\n

However, the disappointing thing to me here is that you can’t reach performance parity with the iMac by throwing more money at it. The iMac tested here is a completely maxed out machine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

HillaryBriss<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Skylake processor in the iMac is something the end user cannot overclock (without doing something extreme). And none of the Mac Pro cores are as fast. And Apple doesn’t water cool their machines. They simply don’t offer robust overclocking options to us. So, for a single-core, the 4.0 GHz Skylake in the iMac is the fastest thing Apple offers.<\/p>\n

If there is an underlying, valid core criticism in this article, it’s the same one everybody already knows about: Apple doesn’t offer their end users a truly competitive array of system configurations. Instead, they force their users into carefully defined and limited product tiers, each one costing significantly more than the last.<\/p><\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pye Jirsa (via Hacker News): So, I wanted to do another Mac vs PC test to see if we could purchase pre-built Apple computers that can compete in terms of performance and price with our custom PCs which have been built by our own internal IT guru Joseph Wu. […] While we really appreciate Apple’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[928,30,32,219],"class_list":["post-14273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-lightroom","tag-mac","tag-macapp","tag-windows"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14273"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14281,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14273\/revisions\/14281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}