iMac Pro Xeon vs. iMac i7
 

Has anyone run tests to see how much faster a Xeon machine is vs. a standard iMac i7 at certain tasks? In particular, I'm interesting to see if any RX6 advanced features would process audio faster and by how much. Better to buy an iMac or iMac Pro?

Re: iMac Pro Xeon vs. iMac i7
 

I can't comment directly on this topic, but you could do some tests to see how well RX6 is utilizing multiple cores by watching Activity Monitor. I'm pretty sure it runs most processes on one core. Cross-reference whatever you discover with the single-core performance scores on Geekbench. You would have to extrapolate from other Xeon tests because there is zero data available on the iMac Pro, but possibly some data on similar Xeon chips running on other systems...

FWIW, RX6 is fast on the current crop of Mac Pros. But that said, the current iMacs are famous for having higher single-core scores. In all likelihood, the 6-core iMac Pro will be outfitted with a chip that has higher single and multi-core scores.

Re: iMac Pro Xeon vs. iMac i7
 

iMac Pro will start at 8 cores, then 10 and 18. The clock speed of the 18 core looks like it'll be significantly slower than the 8 core.

Re: iMac Pro Xeon vs. iMac i7
 

Would it be fair then to say that Pro Tools and RX and such don't really benefit from the larger multi-core systems as much as higher single core speeds?

I was thinking of jumping ship to something like the newer i7 or Ryzen processors, but if Pro Tools doesn't really use the multi-core processors as efficiently as , say, a 3d rendering software, maybe i need to rethink what I was going to purchase.

Thanks,
Randall

Re: iMac Pro Xeon vs. iMac i7
 

My understanding is that 6 cores at the highest FPU calculation speed is the best real time performance.

Re: iMac Pro Xeon vs. iMac i7
 

Not at all. In fact, totally the opposite. DAWs spread the tracks out among cores and are often some of the best utilizers of multiple cores (parallel processing). I thought the OP was referring to offline RX performance, which is single-core. Online, multiple-plug-in performance is multi-core. I think it was Bobby Lombardi who talked about the fact that an individual track in Pro Tools has to exist on one core, so if you have just a few tracks with a zillion plug-ins on each track, high clock speed per core will help you (you'll get a CPU overage if one track maxes out one core, regardless of numbers of cores not used). But if you have a zillion tracks with just a few plug-ins on each track, Pro Tools will balance the track load across all available cores.

Re: iMac Pro Xeon vs. iMac i7
 

Bobby Lombardi is who told me that six cores are optimal!