I am going to be buying a new iMac 27" but I don't know whether I should go with 4GB or 8GB of VRAM. I am a video editor (I use Final Cut Pro & Motion) and my current iMac can't handle 3D. I want it to be able to handle 3D and 4K smoothly, but I don't want unnecessary power.
Can anyone tell me which one would be best?
Thanks!
iMac Line (2012 and Later)
You are confusing VRAM with RAM. All new iMacs come with a minimum of 8GB of RAM, if you buy a 21.5" iMac buy as much RAM as you can afford as these machine are NOT user upgradeable and very expensive to upgrade after the fact as a complete disassembly is necessary. If you buy a 27"buy it with 8GB of RAM and then purchase another 16 or 32GB of RAM from either Crucial.com or Macsales.com, the reason for recommending these 2 vendors is iMacs are very sensitive to quality RAM and both vendors provide very high quality products at reasonable prices.
It would also be wise to order the iMac with a SSD for storage rather than a HD or Fusion drive.
The difference is not just VRAM, the two options have different
graphics chips which may or may not have a bigger impact on
your requirements than the amount of VRAM.
I suggest you Google the web and and try and find performance benchmarks
on the two different chips: Radeon Pro 575 and Radeon Pro 580.
No, I am not talking about RAM. I am talking about VRAM.
I don't know if I should get 4GB or 8GB of VRAM.
OK thanks!
You are referring to video RAM, in that case get the max you can for editing video also get an i7 CPU. You also may want to consider a iMac Pro if you intend to use the computer to earn a living.
4GB or 8GB of VRAM?
