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Mathematica speedup from 2019 iMac over late 2015 iMac?

My current computer, a late 2015 iMac 27” has a 4 GHz Core i7 processor, 32 GB RAM, 3 TB Fusion drive, and Radeon R9 M395X with 4 GB VRAM, Retina display.

What kind of speedup with Mathematica, if any, might I expect from a new, 2019, iMac 27” with the following configuration?

  • 3.6 GHz Core i9 processor (8-core)
  • 64GB RAM
  • 3 TB Fusion drive
  • Radeon Pro Vega 48 with 8GB HBM2 memory

Although this new CPU has Turbo Boost up to 5 GHz, I’m concerned that the “default” of only 3.6 GHZ, being below my current 4 GHz, might impede perfornance.

Presumably the graphics rendering will be faster, right?

Or do the additional cores make up for that difference? In fact, can Mathematica take advantage of those additional cores (without my explicitly coding for parallel kernels)?
POSTED BY: Murray Eisenberg
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Now that Mathematica 12.0 has been released and is installed on my new 2019 iMac, I can now report the results, both running macOS 10.14.4:

  • Late 2015 iMac — 4 GHz Core i7 CPU, 32 GB RAM, 3 TB Fusion drive: 3.10
  • 2019 iMac — 3.6 GHz Core i9 CPU, 64 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD: 3.75
POSTED BY: Murray Eisenberg

No, sorry: 11.3 is gone from my new machine and I don't have an 11.3 benchmark from the old one (which was traded in).
POSTED BY: Murray Eisenberg
Updating Name
Updating Name
Posted 7 years ago

Could you perhaps also report the Mathematica 11.3 benchmark for both machines, if you still have version 11.3 installed?

POSTED BY: Updating Name

I'll report comparative Mathematica benchmarks once my new iMac arrives and I've finished configuring it.
POSTED BY: Murray Eisenberg

But undoubtedly many, many thousands of dollars more expensive than the newest iMacs, and probably thousands more than the newest iMac Pros. So that's like comparing apples with onions.
POSTED BY: Murray Eisenberg

I find this machine as disappointing as the upgraded Mac Mini from 2018. The Mini has a poor graphics card. Personally, I am waiting for the upcoming 2019 Mac Pro desktop machine.

POSTED BY: Romke Bontekoe
Julie Miller
Julie Miller, orar
Posted 7 years ago
POSTED BY: Julie Miller

Neil Singer: I missed those benchmark comparisons on the long Apple iMac info page. This information is very useful to me, so thank you for pointing to it!
POSTED BY: Murray Eisenberg
POSTED BY: Neil Singer

The RAM increase in size won't do much for speed, unless you ended up using virtual RAM from your HD in the old computer because of too little RAM, then RAM size will make a great difference. RAM speed is what you should look at. Your new computer will probably have a great increase in that!
POSTED BY: Marvin Ray Burns A.G.S. (cum laude)

The 2019 iMac I'm considering, like the late 2015 iMac I'm using now, has a 3 TB Fusion drive, which includes 128 GB flash storage.

There is an option for SSD only, but the max size Apple will offer, pathetically, is 2 TB for that.
POSTED BY: Murray Eisenberg

No benchmarks at geekbenchmarks yet for the 2019 iMacs, of course, since they have not quite yet been released to market.
POSTED BY: Murray Eisenberg

I would assume that my going from 32 GB RAM to 64 GB would help there.
POSTED BY: Murray Eisenberg
POSTED BY: Romke Bontekoe

Parallel code on a single multi-core computer in Mathematica is great and it is good on a cluster that is properly set up. See my progress with Mathematica since 2000 and parallel code since 2012 here.
POSTED BY: Marvin Ray Burns A.G.S. (cum laude)
POSTED BY: Neil Singer
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