will the iMac 5K Retina’s AMD Radeon graphics card be a problem for Premiere Pro CC and AE???

[Joe Moody]

Good morning everyone! I have a question for everyone who purchased the iMac 5k. I’m looking at getting one.

So I don’t video edit right now. But what I want to do is start taking family pictures and videos. I would like to edit them and make movies of my time with my kids. As far as effects and stuff I’d like to do is typical black and white photos with one object in color. Things like that. Effects on video o have no idea cause I don’t have any experience editing. Lol.

I’ve read too many articles and now need advice from someone who has one.

I plan on taking pictures and videos from Nikon d7100, Canon 70d and gopro 4.

Will the iMac 5k handle what I want? I’m not opposed to building a PC but I don’t have any experience working in BIOS and setting up software. Sure I can learn it and I guess I would future proof a little more with a PC since I could upgrade parts as needed.

Anyway I hope I gave enough information for a recommendation. Thanks for the help in advance!

Joe

[Jim Warthman]

Prof,
Your experience seems different than others who have reported here. Can you give specifics? Exactly how was your iMac 5K configured? I’d be interested in hearing an example of this slow performance. What size was the Photoshop file? How long did it take to change from one color space to another?

I notice this is your first post here (mine too), so I hope this isn’t simple FUD.

Jim

[Kim Smith]

Hey Jim,

This really isn’t FUD, I’m baffled. I’ve reached out to Adobe, no response yet. I’ll make a video of the issues at some point and post them somewhere.

When searching, I actually see lots of noise on the web about the issues I run into, so I’m not sure why you say this isn’t a common issue?

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1626784

That is just on of many unresolved threads about illustrator and the 5k iMac. You can find them for indesign, after effects, and acrobat. Photoshop seems to work great.

Just beware you may want to ensure you use the 14 day return period to thoroughly test it out.

[Kim Smith]

Hey Jim,

This really isn’t FUD, I’m baffled. The machine is an iMac 5k with 4ghz processor, 32gb of ram, 512gb ssd, and R9 M295x graphics card.

I’ve reached out to Adobe, no response yet. I’ll make a video of the issues at some point and post them somewhere. When searching, I actually see lots of noise on the web about the issues I run into, so I’m not sure why you say this isn’t a common issue?

For example: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1626784

That is just on of many unresolved threads about illustrator and the 5k iMac. You can find them for indesign, after effects, and acrobat. Photoshop seems to work great. Adobe even acknowledges that is broken in those threads and has been promising a fix for many months, but it never seems to come.

The point really is that you should be careful with this first gen 5k machine and test it out in your workflow for the 14 day return period in case you lose productivity.

[Jim Warthman]

Hi Prof User / Kim Smith,
You certainly did max out your iMac 5K! The problems you describe sound like Adobe issues, and we can hope a software fix is forthcoming.

But you have me confused re. Photoshop performance. In your first post, you said :

It is slow with large photoshop files when it has to crunch (changing colorspaces, filters, etc)

But in your last post, you said:

Photoshop seems to work great.

Which is it? And like I asked before, if you’re truly having issues with Photoshop, I’d be interested to know what the PS file size is, and how long it takes to change from one color space to another.

BTW, I didn’t claim that issues are absent on this or other forums. Simply that yours seemed to be the exception rather than the rule on THIS forum.

Happy New Year!

Jim

[Shandor Garrison]

Hi All,

I wanted to chime in on this thread since I have a new imac 5k, and wanted to ask other 5k owners a question.
I have the i7 4gHz version, 32 GB RAM with the AMD Radeon R9 M295X card.

Running Premiere CC fine, FYI, better than my 2012 macbook pro.

My issue is FCP 7. I know I know it’s an old software, but I have a client who has an project that I still need to cut.

The program ran fine until I tried to render, and found myself looking at render times that were 20+ minutes, for task that took about 1-2 min on my 2012 macbook pro. Just incredibly slow. I tested several different sequences, and same slow render. I’m baffled, this machine should be faster. Is it an issue with the card, the software? Any other ideas to test? Has anyone else tried edit/export in FCP7 on this machine?

Appreciate any ideas and help.

Shandor

[Jerome Morrow]

I had purchased a maxed out iMac 5K, the upgraded gpu, upgraded processor, 1tb flash and 8 gigs of ram (upgraded to 24 gigs myself). The intended use for this computer was adobe indesign illustrator and some photoshop. I have to say this machine is terrible with Indesign and Illustrator. I first thought I had a dud of a machine, I contacted Apple support within 2 days, went through some problem solving as there was a graphic glitch on the screen in mission control. They decided I should return it for a replacement. I got the replacement, same problem so I contact Apple Support again, went through 3 service advisors, 2 of which were terrible, not getting back to me, letting me know what was going on. I eventually emailed Tim Cook and got a phone call the next day saying Tim Cook had seen the email and passed it on to someone else, within 2 days I had a new iMac 5K again (had been fighting to get a replacement for almost 3 weeks, 2 weeks of which the old was returned and nothing stated about refund or replacement).

So I just got the new one last Friday, installed my apps (Adobe CC latest updates) and transferred files over. I was hoping for something different, but after the first two I did not have high hopes. Machine runs terrible with Indesign and Illustrator, everything else OS X wise is snappy and runs well. This leads me to believe that Indesign and Illustrator are just not utilizing the gpu well, and thus giving such terrible service. I will be returning this machine for a refund. The machine I am comparing it against is the machine I was supposed to be upgrading from, a mid 2012 15″ Retina MacBook Pro 2.6 i7, 16 gigs of ram and NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024 mb. The iMac which has specs that should be much much faster in both processor and gpu ran about the same, and some cases actually worse then my rMBP. Unfortunately there are not a lot of options with Apple. If I get a new MacBook Pro I am limited to 16 gigs of ram, if I go Mac Pro, price is about the same, a little bit higher with no monitor. I will be holding off till the next round of updates and see what comes of that.

[David Slag]

Hi
Long time fan first time caller. I’ve got lots of information from this site and would like to participate, starting with this post.

I also own a 5k iMac, all factory: 4Ghz i7, 32GB, M295x, 1TB ssd. Subscribed to Adobe Creative Cloud full package.

I’m still a novice in editing suite, doing some work for our newly established video production ‘hobby’ team have reference only to similar spec PC (with Nividia and esata drives tho).

For starters I would like to say that working with this display is pure pleasure, all programs text and interface is very well scaled.
I have 1080p HDMI monitor hooked into iMac via Thunderbolt-HDMI and I must say the difference is huge. It’s like to compare the screen of first generation smartphone with modern ones, you just wouldn’t go back.

I’ve been editing and colour grading 1080p footage from Nikon d810 recorded on Atoms Ninja2 in ProRes 422 HQ in PP cc, Speedgrade, AE. The performance is excellent for playback as well as for rendering.

When applying on a clip: colour correction, lightening effect, blur, noise, LUT all at the same time in PP the 100% program monitor preview still plays very well, and that without rendering (with red bar over it). These are all accelerated effects, so mercury is doing its job well.

The processor intensive modifications affect the playback more (my assumption). For example: I applied reverse speed on one clip and the playback became extremely choppy, accompanied by cooling fan ready to take off, had to render.
It’s worth to mention that it handles Prores much better than AVCHD, but thats obvious.

IMPORTANT Regarding CUDA and AE, when I open AE I’m welcomed with a message:
Ray-tracing on the GPU requires an approved NVIDIA graphics card and CUDA 5.0 or later. For now, ray-tracing will use the CPU. After installing CUDA 5.0 or later restart your computer

I suppose this applies to heavy graphics orientated AE projects. Warp stabiliser in AE work great (Fan on high speed tho)

I don’t have an external Thunderbolt RAID just yet. I move the media I work on into my internal 1TB SSD and than move them back to ext backups, tiresome but only temporary.
Once I was editing media from external, HDD via USB 3 and I noticed drop in performance.

It might be worth to mention that I played through Batman Arkham City in 4k resolution on maxed out graphics flawlessly 🙂

If anyone would like me to perform any specific tests, I’m willing to do so, if I’m able.

Cannot decide between display colour profile, can anyone give an advice?

Regards
Dav
Brick by Stone Productions

[Tal Mor]

Hi, a few months have passed since this long thread about the iMac27 5k Retina.
I am wondering if anyone has any new feedback to share from experiencing this computer ?

Do you know if anything improved with Adobe’s recent version updates?
Does anyone know what Adobe plans to do with the version they announced at NAB? (the upcoming version) Will it fully support AMD ?
(Do Adobe work better with AMD cards today? and what will happen in the upcoming version?)

I am interested in buying the Maxed iMac27 5k Retina, but would like to know if it’s a good investment.
I will be using Premiere Pro cc 2014 to edit 4k footage on a 1080 timeline.
I will also use After Effects with 2-4k and plugins such as Particular, Element3D, Plexus, Magic Bullet Looks.

I actually was just about to buy the non-retina iMac27, since it had the option to upgrade to
3.5GHz Quad-core i7 + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB GDDR5
However, it looks like Apple has stopped offering this option (the i7 now ships ONLY with the 5k retina!!)

So, to sum up, what are your thoughts and experience with this configuration:

iMac Retina 5k with:
4.0GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7
32GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM – 4x8GB
1TB Flash Storage
AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4GB GDDR5

Also, do you think it’s better to go for the MacPro ?
3.5GHz 6-core with 12MB of L3 cache
32GB (4x8GB) of 1866MHz DDR3 ECC
1TB PCIe-based flash storage
Dual AMD FirePro D500 GPUs with 3GB of GDDR5 VRAM each

Thanks,
Tal

btw, I’m using Mac for years and I’m used to it. So, please don’t recommend a PC (I know, it might be a better choice) thanks 🙂

[Tal Mor]

Hi, a few months have passed since this long thread about the iMac27 5k Retina.
I am wondering if anyone has any new feedback to share from experiencing this computer ?

Do you know if anything improved with Adobe’s recent version updates?
Does anyone know what Adobe plans to do with the version they announced at NAB? (the upcoming version) Will it fully support AMD ?
(Do Adobe work better with AMD cards today? and what will happen in the upcoming version?)

I am interested in buying the Maxed iMac27 5k Retina, but would like to know if it’s a good investment.
I will be using Premiere Pro cc 2014 to edit 4k footage on a 1080 timeline.
I will also use After Effects with 2-4k and plugins such as Particular, Element3D, Plexus, Magic Bullet Looks.

I actually was just about to buy the non-retina iMac27, since it had the option to upgrade to
3.5GHz Quad-core i7 + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB GDDR5
However, it looks like Apple has stopped offering this option (the i7 now ships ONLY with the 5k retina!!)

So, to sum up, what are your thoughts and experience with this configuration:

iMac Retina 5k with:
4.0GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7
32GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM – 4x8GB
1TB Flash Storage
AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4GB GDDR5

Also, do you think it’s better to go for the MacPro ?
3.5GHz 6-core with 12MB of L3 cache
32GB (4x8GB) of 1866MHz DDR3 ECC
1TB PCIe-based flash storage
Dual AMD FirePro D500 GPUs with 3GB of GDDR5 VRAM each

Thanks,
Tal

btw, I’m using Mac for years and I’m used to it. So, please don’t recommend a PC (I know, it might be a better choice) thanks 🙂