Apple has released the highly anticipated iMac Pro, after it was trailled at the firm’s developer conference in June. The unit has a 5120 x 2880, which Apple calls “5K”, display with 500 cd/m² of brightness and support of the P3 colour gamut. Dual 5K external displays, or four DCI4K or UltraHD displays are supported in addition to the internal display (for a total of up to 44 million pixels).
The new iMac Pro looks like the old one, but is all new inside
Graphics are provided with a Vega 56 graphics processor with 8GB or a Vega 64 with 16GB of HBM2 memory providing up to 22 Teraflops.
There are a range of Intel Xeon W configurations, with 8 Core (3.2GHz), 10 Core (3.0GHz), 14 Core (2.5GHz) or 18 Core (2.3GHz) and from 32GB up to 128 GB of 2666MHz DDR4 ECC memory. Memory can be upgraded by Apple or authorised centres as the unit is completely sealed. Storage is from 1TB to 4TB using only SSD.
As forecast, the PC supports Thunderbolt 3 (four ports) and DisplayPort over USB Type-C and a range of adaptors to support Thunderbolt 2, HDMI, DVI and even VGA are available. There are four USB 3 ports. The Thunderbolt 3 ports support DisplayPort 1.2, Thunderbolt (up to 40Gb/s) and USB 3.1, Gen 2. Ethernet is supported up to 10Gb and WiFi with 802.11ac support. Bluetooth is integrated.
There is an integrated FullHD camera, stereo speakers and four microphones and there is a 3.5mm headphone jack. The new custom T2 chip integrates several controllers from the previous generation of Mac, including the system management controller, image signal processor, audio controller and SSD controller. That allows better camera support and improved security.
Apple said that 8K video can be edited, and up to eight streams of 4K video, or or edit 4.5K Red RAW video and 8K ProRes 4444 at full resolution in real time without rendering. The iMac Pro can also export HEVC video 3 times faster. The company also highlighted the capacity to support VR content creation (see Apple Announces Final Cut Pro X with Support for 360º Video).
Performance is 3.4X faster than the 4 core iMac in Maya and 5.1X faster in OsiriX. Wolfram Mathematica is 2.8X faster running the CPU benchmark and Photoshop CC is 2.3X faster (using ‘well-threaded’ filters).
The design includes dual fans and extra venting, so Apple claims an 80% increase in thermal capacity, allowing a power budget of 500 watts without changing the form factor of the previous model.
Pricing starts at $4,999 in the US and £4,889 in the UK. Boosting the options in the UK reached a price of £12,428. It will be available in some Apple stores from next week but is available online immediately.
We found a video that gives some user feedback, below.
Analyst Comment
Apple also confirmed that there would be another modular Mac Pro and a new Apple-branded display, but not until some unspecified time in 2018. In April 2017, Apple said that it would take “more than a year”.
Apple has previously said that it is looking at supporting external graphics via Thunderbolt 3, although we have heard mixed reports on the efficiency of this architecture. (BR)
