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2020 iMac 5K: diglloyd Adobe Photoshop Benchmarks
Related: 2019 iMac 5K, 2019 Mac Pro, 2020 iMac 5K, 4K and 5K display, CPU cores, iMac, iMac 5K, Mac Pro, Macs, memory, Photoshop, video
re: recommended Macs for photographers and videographers
re: 2020 iMac 5K: Recommended Models and Accessories.
MPG tested the 2020 iMac 5K 3.6 GHz Intel Core i9 10-core / 128GB / 2TB / Radeon 5700. Smart move: buy with 8GB memory, then add 64GB or 128GB OWC memory to save a ton on memory cost (same memory as 2019 iMac 5K).
Please buy your gear at B&H Photo and OWC/MacSales.com using any link from this site.
Unsure which Mac to get or how to configure it? Consult with Lloyd.
About
These four benchmarks test the speed of Photoshop with different size workloads.
The amount of memory has a major influence on the diglloydLarge and diglloydHuge tests, but all the tested systems here had ample memory for those cases, and so the results are directly comparable and relevant.
If below are out of date: view current Mac wishlist and all current OWC wishlists.
diglloydSpeed1
The diglloyd Speed1 benchmark uses a mix of the most commonly used Photoshop operations with a file size that allows everything to stay in memory. Hence it accurately represents what one might expect in everyday use of Adobe Photoshop CC. Specialty operations such as Liquify and other GPU-intensive tasks are just that—specialty, and are not included in this suite.
The 2020 iMac 5K and 2019 iMac 5K beat the 2019 Mac Pro and 2019 iMac 5K by a modest amount.
diglloydMedium
The diglloyd Medium benchmark uses a mix of the core Photoshop operations with a moderately larger file size that exceeds what most users are likely to use, taking about 15GB of memory usage in Photoshop. This puts it right on the edge of what a Mac with 16GB of memory can manage.
The 2020 iMac 5K beats the 2019 Mac Pro handily, and 2019 iMac 5K by a trivial amount.
With poor CPU-core utilization, the performance difference is at least in part due to clock speed (5.0 GHz maximum on the iMacs vs maximum 4.4 GHz on the Mac Pro, though the use of 2-4 CPU cores drops those figures).
diglloydLarge
The diglloyd Large Photoshop benchmark uses a mix of the core Photoshop operations with a large file size that exceeds what most users are likely to use, using about 30GB of memory in Photoshop.
The 2020 iMac 5K beats the 2019 Mac Pro handily, and 2019 iMac 5K by a trivial amount.
With poor CPU-core utilization, the performance difference is at least in part due to clock speed (5.0 GHz maximum on the iMacs vs maximum 4.4 GHz on the Mac Pro, though the use of 2-4 CPU cores drops those figures).
diglloydHuge
The diglloyd Huge benchmark uses a mix of the core Photoshop operations with a file size that requires about 56GB of memory usage in Photoshop, far beyond what most users are likely to encounter.
The 2020 iMac 5K beats the 2019 Mac Pro handily, and runs slightly slower than the 2019 iMac 5K by a trivial amount. This could be due to slightly slower memory bandwidth.
With poor CPU-core utilization, the performance difference is at least in part due to clock speed (5.0 GHz maximum on the iMacs vs maximum 4.4 GHz on the Mac Pro, though the use of 2-4 CPU cores drops those figures).
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