help in choosing a 2015 imac

I went through the same thing as you are going through. Eventually, I selected option 3. May I say...... I'm just a regular old guy, no photo editing, music editing, none of that technical stuff, just everyday computer stuff. I must say, I always choose the the top tier stuff. So after careful thought and a lot of web research, option 3 was a no brainer. I doubled the ram to 16gb. It's a great machine, I received it 6 days ago and I've got no regrets. That being said, my former computer was a 2013 top of the line Dell configured with a SSD, so far I can't tell the difference, speed wise. Choose option 3, better GPU, Processer and the 2 tb fusion drive has a larger SSD. When spending that much money, don't cut corners you'll regret it in the long run. Good luck!

What sort of video work ( frequency and what level/expertise of video work) and what app are you using for video editing?

Light, medium of heavy Photoshop work?

What is AE?

Due to Apple's exclusive use of AMD GPU's, in many Mac models, AMD has really worked with Apple and made their GPUs extremely optimised for use with Final Cut Pro X only and not really an option for any other NLE system or software.

Also, you never reallly addressed my video editing question.

Light, medium or heavy use, heavy resource intense video work?

Need to address this as the wrong spec'd iMac is just going to make your video work a slow, difficult and tedious/frustrating process.

Depending on your use, you MAY need to "bite the bullet" and go with a much higher spec'd out iMac.

Anything less will simply not cut it!

Also, Apple has payment plans on new Macs, as well.

Also, check Apple's online Refurbished store for deals on higher spec'd iMacs.

Apple treats their refurbished products as new and have all of the same AppleCare warranty plans.

http://www.apple.com/shop/browse/home/specialdeals/mac

Inventory and pricing change daily.

The problem bottleneck or issue is no matter what, Adobe does not support AMD graphics cards for After Effects or any of their video apps like Premiere.

On the Mac side, it's all NVidia cards which all the new slimline model iMacs do not use.

So, I cannot comment on how well the AMD graphics cards will perform with Adobe After Effects.

At the very least, there will be NO GRAPHICS ACCELERATION on the AMD graphics usong After Effects.

As far as the Apple website in your country goes, if you click on the blue Buy button at the top of iMac lineup page then choose select a model on model listing page, in the Apple Store, you do not get a new page that showcases other available options like shown here in the U.S. Store?

The AMD graphics would, probably be fine for Adobe creative suite apps, just not for their video suite of apps.

You would have to stick with Final Cut Pro X for best video editing performance.

Apple and Adobe are competitors.

So, naturally, Apple will do eveything they can to optimise Macs for use with their own suite of apps and, basically, keep the competition crippled on Apple computing hardware.

This seems to be the case with video software.

For general video work, while GPU is a factor , it really comes down to a very fast CPU(fast i7 quad core w/8 channel multithreading), scads of RAM (at least 16 GBs of RAM and more) and fast read/write multiple large capacity storage drives (Thunderbolt or USB 3) striped in series in a fast RAID array.

The combination of an SSD (solid state flash drive) and 7200 RPM hard drive will be nearly identical to a full blown, straight up SSD.

The fusion drives in the 27 inch iMac models are faster than a just a normal 7200 RPM hard drive.

The SSD part of the fusion drive makes booting, launching and internal running of applications faster.

Read/writes to the 7200 RPM hard drive part of the fusion drive will be the same as a normal 7200 RPM hard drive.

I beleive all the new 27 inch screen model iMacs use the the same 7200 RPM hard drive component, even with the fusion (SSD part of the drive) just like the smaller 21 inch screen models all use 5400 RPM hard drive, even in the Fusion drives for those models.

I restate, the 27 inch screen model fusion drives all use desktop standard 7200 RPM hard drives as part of fusion drive.

The 27 inch screen iMacs are all better grade components than the 21 incj screen models and still allow user upgradeable RAM.

What info do you have to the contrary?

Where or who gave you this info?

No 27 inch model iMacs have fusion drives with a slower 5400 hard drive component.

I would never, EVER purchase a large screen 27 inch iMac at their much higher cost if all the hard drive components in the fusion drive were the slower 5400 RPM drives.

In the 27 inch screen models, the 1TB fusion drive pairs a 256 GB SSD with a 7200 RPM drive.

The 2 and 3 TB fusion drives pair a 128 GB fusion drive with a 2 and 3 TB 7200 RPM drive.

See this MacWorld review on the new 2015 iMacs.

The 27inch screen models retain 7200 RPM drives even in the Fusion Drives.

And none on the 27 inch screen models has a 24 GB SSD flash drive.

It's either a 256 GB SSD or a 128 GB SSD.

http://www.macworld.com/article/2025363/review-27-inch-imac-mixes-advancements-c ompromises.html

The differences as I pointed out is that apps launch and run quicker as long as they do not constantly have to access the hard drive portion of the fusion drive.

That's the difference. Also, with quicker booting, faster app launches and running apps from the SSD part of the fusion drive means less wear and tear on the mechanical spinning platters of the normal hard drive portion of the fusion drive.

It's a win/win.