iMac Spec for best Rhino performance

Hi - I’m moving from a 2016 Macbook Pro to a new iMac for my work. I use a lot of Photoshop and Rhino. My Macbook Pro (late 2016, non touch bar model) struggles with the large Rhino files I use, I get very jerky screen movements (and none at all in ghosted). The laptop has integrated Intel Iris Graphics (540 1536 MB) so its not suprising.

For the iMac purchase wondered which model to get (cost is a concen as buying myself!). I’m assuming for display performace it is graphics card dicted so wondered if the base model Radeon Pro 570 with 4GB of VRAM was enough or shoudl I move to the top Radeon Pro 580 with 8GB of VRAM model? How important is the CPU in rhino for non rendeirng tasks?

I can supply a rhino file for testing if anyone has these machines :slight_smile:

any of those suggested will do the job i would believe, specifically after using an onboard shared ram solution. if you want to be sure and can afford the 8gb then why not tossing this one in. i have an 8 year old nvidia with 512 mb, so working on big files is also quite a bummer and needs some logistic workflow to manage.

cpu generally works off (unfortunately still single threaded) all your commands and also renders, except if you use a fancy plugin which addresses the gpu additionally. otherwise the gpu is responsible for swiveling and moving round in your viewport. larger files with tons of geometry will of course require a strong graphic card.

IMO, your biggest perceived bang for your cash comes from a SSD and excess RAM (not necessarily VRAM, with exception of extreme circumstance)

I’d prioritize funds as follows:

  1. SSD
  2. 32GB RAM preferred sweet spot (64 future proof) 16GB bare min,
  3. 4GB VRAM 570 likley fine, 8GB 580 if fits budget
  4. whatever cpu fits budget, but I’d go for the i7 lowest clock

Consider buying the Mac with min RAM and install your own…about half the cost.

macsales.com

Hi there - yes I will have a 512ssd and 32gig ram in this :slight_smile: its the graphics that is the puzzle for me :slight_smile:

I would not worry about the 4GB.

Get the 8 if within budget and really you don’t want to worry about anything. You are likely to have it for 4-5+ years. You will not regret it once you forget the extra $$…:wink:

I’m sitting at one of these now for about one more hour:
AMD Radeon R9 M395 2048 MB - iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)

Never had an issue with 2. I’ll load your file on it if you want input on a 2GB AMD???

Thanks :slight_smile: here’s a link to a good file to test, interested to hear how it goes :slight_smile:

meshes which are exploded and just grouped will most likely be the killer number one i didnt even search further all the people in the scene consist of such exploded single polygons. if thats how the rest is being held together then you can super forget working that :smiley:

AMD Radeon R9 M395 2048 MB - iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)

WIP (5E169w)

Wireframe - smooth

Shaded - jerky but usable IMO

Rendered - between Wire and Shaded…slight jerk

Ghosted - too jerky to be usable

No time to assess whether there is anything you could be doing differently to make this better. (possible) Some of the other experts here might have opinions…

Get the 8GB, and you’ll never feel like you’ve shorted yourself. That said, I don’t know if it WILL be better, though logic dictates improvement…???

Good luck!

Thanks for your feedback!

I’ve not tuned the file to be usable, this was just sent to me today so haven’t got round to working with it yet … and yeah, the people :slight_smile: they’re turned off in mine.

As for the screen feedback sounds like your graphics card is better than the one I’m using but not massively. really interesting to see, thanks.

Just noticed the i5 CPU isn’t multithreaded so think I will spend the extra on getting the i7 as overall think that will be of better use in what I do (rhino is maybe 20% of my total workflow but when I need it it’s critical)

Here are the specs of this test i7 iMac

Hardware information

Computer hardware
Hardware model: iMac17,1
Processor: Intel Core i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz
Memory: 16 GB
Architecture: Intel 64 bit

Video hardware
Graphics: AMD Radeon R9 M395 2048 MB
Memory: 2048 MB
Screen size: 2560 x 1440
Displays: iMac (217dpi 2x)

Best iMac spec would be… to simply build your own Windows 10 PC ; )

@Lagom
If you wanted to run Mac Rhino, that would be terrible advice indeed.

Now go stand in the corner…

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Hi Lagom - I did and have a dual Xeon NVidea Win 10 PC I use for rendering, unfortunalty I find windows so crude and embarrassing I can’t use it for anything really creative hehe!

in Ghosted, it actually beach balls when trying to orbit the model… (probably not even a whole second but still, it’s a little beyond what i’d describe as ‘laggy’)… otherwise, still pretty workable in shaded.

that’s with the following (non-retina) 27" iMac (late2013):

Computer hardware
Hardware model: iMac14,2
Processor: Intel Core i7-4771 CPU @ 3.50GHz
Memory: 24 GB
Architecture: Intel 64 bit

Video hardware
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4096 MB
Memory: 4096 MB
Screen size: 2560 x 1440, 1920 x 1200

Appearance settings
Antialiasing: 8x


lol :slight_smile:

Without block and mesh instances, I can work fluidly on the model. Leaving the mesh scene and block instances the model on my iMac is useless.
iMac 27" Late 2012
3,2 GHz Intel Core i5
32 GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2048 MB

Here’s a video I uploaded right now. (Notice the file and behavioral weight differences)
The NURBS model weighs about 1.4gb, the mesh model (which also uses the mesh reduction command) weighs about 270 mb.

Even better: Hire a surface modeller, don’t spend money on depreciating hardware and go fishing instead ; )

there was a citroen slogan in german language many years ago “der weg ist das ziel” meaning that the journey itself is ones destination, which could very well fit to those who fiddle around on class a surfaces practically forever. whats your price again? :wink:

€80 per hour (+25% MOMS, no MOMS applies for services rendered to other EU countries).

in that case why even considering messing around with windows, when you can afford yourself something proper :smiley: and thinking about it again, for the same price as you buy a pc and have to fiddle you go buy yourself a nice mac and save some time for fishing :wink: