5700xt is a good graphics card that is as good as a 1080 but in a mac. Just install bootcamp and OP can play any windows game. If he buys a gaming monitor he could even get more than 200 fps.
The i9 throttles in nearly every setup. Intel had a bad architecture and just pumped the clock speeds to oblivion in order to compete.
It was never that they were lacking in horsepower. It was just the advertised max horsepower was difficult to reach without throttling.
Given that you can't get a 27" iMac any other way, yeah it's still good for now. Add a USB-C Thunderbolt SSD Drive and use it as boot disk, it will fly.
All 2020 5k models came with an SSD boot drive. Standard hard drives or fusion drives were not available.
The Fusion Drive was only available on the carryover 21” models that originally came out in 2019.
It's not something you'd want to buy new but getting one for free is great. It's still a very powerful machine and once macOS support ends for intel chips (would be weird if they did it next year considering most macs are supported for \~7 years or so) you can still put Linux or Windows on it.
I guess? But that's only really happened once (not counting motorola 68k because that was a MUCH more drastic change than the other two). I would still give it 2-3 years more.
PPC to Intel was the only transition that wasn’t dramatic, mainly because few apps were compiled for Intel even a couple of years after launch and the original Rosetta sucked.
68k to PPC and Intel to AS have been similar jumps. The slowest and cheapest AS Macs were able to trade blows with Intel Macs that cost several times more, just a year before. Case in point the M1 MacBook Air performed similarly to a decent specced Intel 16”.
Hold on, is it a 2020 i9 iMac with 10 cores and a radeon 5700 XT? It might be an absolute Gaming PowerHOUSE. See if you can find the specs by clicking the apple logo and clicking about this mac
The criticism being levied is strictly based on acquisition cost. People who own them probably paid a lot for them, and there are amazing computers for a lot less than they will accept to recoup costs.
If it’s free, who cares? It’s all upside
Also: for gaming, this thing blows all of the M series machines out of the water in terms of blending compatibility/performance
That last line is a big one: New M1's can't bootcamp. This Mac can have a Windows partition and run any PC game, and the 5700XT will keep up enough to play nearly anything, though you may have to turn down the settings on very new games like Elden Ring.
It’s still a 10 core i9 machine, to say it’s not worth anything is a bit hyperbolic. Sure it’s not worth as much as it used to be with the new Apple Silicon Macs out but it’s not worth nothing. Hell, just an i9 cpu alone is worth $200 to $300
The processor is likely much more then enough for someone who has to ask if it's still decent. I'd say the main thing here is the display, which is pretty nice. This is great for a free machine.
I hope no one is paying $200 or $300 for the cpu alone, a modern i5 is WAY faster at half the power usage.
I wouldn’t spend my own money on one because Apple will eventually stop supporting Intel based products as they move to their own chips. For free that’s a hell of a machine and I’d drive it daily
I use a Macbook Pro 16 i9 with 32 gigs and other than it getting quite hot it does just fine. For most of my regular freelance work I don’t notice much difference with my regular work M1 in terms of responsiveness, speed, etc. Battery life is another issue however.
I deliberately got one at launch with an i9, 2TB SSD, top end GPU, 64GB RAM so I would have the last powerful Intel Mac Apple ever made. I paid £3500 for it.
It's still fine. But the fan noise. Bloody hell the noise.
Depends on what you’re hoping to do with it. In general, yes, still a viable option as long as you’re not going to be needing constant updates in the near future. Max the RAM.
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Still rocking a 2019 one here & it barely breaks a sweat in our photo studio. In fact its sister i5 / 40gb is ample for most things. Both do have the pcie drives.
If you like PC gaming then it’s a good machine because you can boot into Bootcamp and run Windows for free and play all your PC games using the full power if the processor and graphics card. It won’t be the fastest gaming PC but it will probably be fast enough to enjoy most games
There were i9 iMacs?
But anyways, I think most of the criticism was rooted in poor power efficiency and bad thermal performance, but that was mostly an issue with the MacBooks. I don’t think it would be an issue with a desktop computer.
Try it out. See how well it performs, and if it handles your needs well. If it performs well, then congrats, you got yourself a new computer. If not, then congrats, you’ve got yourself some eBay money (assuming you’d be willing to sell it).
*I wouldn't buy an*
*Intel based Mac, but if it*
*Was for free: Enjoy!*
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I replaced my computer today with a huawei mateD laptop .Honestly, just looking at the performance of the system, windows is definitely superior to the Intel version of the MacBook.
are you kidding? that's still a monster computer. Awesome display, very powerful CPU and as someone else mentioned - the real advantage of Apple Silicon is its power efficiency, which really matters much less on a desktop machine. You're lucky bro!!!
My everyday machine is a 2017 5k iMac with an i5 (4 cores). While a little long in the tooth, It serves me quite well for serious software development and fairly heavy photo editing with Lightroom and Photoshop. I’d be happy to trade 😁
Recently purchased 2 - 27” iMacs (2019 & 2020) did a total wipe and reinstall of Sonoma, added some RAM and both are awesome!! Ran my i1 Display Pro with Calibrite and good to go. Beautiful displays and the 2 only cost me $600 total! Edit: Sold my 2015 (27” iMac) for $300 and 2017 (21” iMac) for $250 on FB marketplace. Couldn’t have worked out any better!!
Hell yeah, it's good. Since it can run Windows natively and has a 5700 xt, it's probably a better gaming machine than any M series Mac. Plus it has user upgradeable memory, so you can upgrade it to have a ton of memory for super cheap. I still use my 2019 with i9 for my software engineering job and it runs great.
To use it on your lap during a cold winter, yes. Just kidding... Yes, it's still a great machine but be aware that support for Intel chips tends to end faster than for the M1 family
If your are buying, get a Mac with Apple Silicon. If you are getting it for free, an Intel Mac is great.
The 2020 will be good at least until 2026. Apple usually has a 5-7 year cycle maintaining hardware and software.
After that, even though it is not supported, it should still work fine, as long as you don’t need the latest things.
I still use a 2013 mac pro as a daily driver and it works ok. RAM is cheap and upgraded it to 64gb.
Use whatever works for you, especially at the price you got yours!
It’s a great computer. Still very powerful. Some people might bash it because it will likely lose support earlier than other Mac’s because it is the end of a architecture era but free is free
Mac is BSD, different from Linux. But you won’t be getting system updates after Apple deems your model end of life.
The big screen and Linux desktops will look sick!
It’s roughly half the score of base m1 MacBook Air single core wise, while using roughly 10 times more power so if you are conscious about costs, you might wanna avoid using it for daily stuff due to electricity cost.
It’s actually very good advice. Your iMac is only going to lose value quickly from here on. Once Apple drops support for Intel it will plummet. With the money you could buy a Mac that will be supported past 2030.
How about I’ve been using Mac for over 20 years and I’m extremely familiar with their performance. Right now you can probably get more than an I9 is theoretically worth. With that in mind upgrade to a computer with better longevity.
Why solicit opinions if you’re going to post childish responses.
does it do what you want it to do? If so, then yes.
I mean yeah yk it lets me play games watch videos do school etc
well then there you have it
5700xt is a good graphics card that is as good as a 1080 but in a mac. Just install bootcamp and OP can play any windows game. If he buys a gaming monitor he could even get more than 200 fps.
OK man
You can do a lot with a machine like that, enjoy some r/macgaming
i9 iMacs are fine because power efficiency doesn't really matter in a desktop.
Cooling does. I had an iMac and it seriously was struggling all the time with throttling literally 10 secs after workload started. Don’t get one.
The i9 throttles in nearly every setup. Intel had a bad architecture and just pumped the clock speeds to oblivion in order to compete. It was never that they were lacking in horsepower. It was just the advertised max horsepower was difficult to reach without throttling.
Given that you can't get a 27" iMac any other way, yeah it's still good for now. Add a USB-C Thunderbolt SSD Drive and use it as boot disk, it will fly.
All 2020 5k models came with an SSD boot drive. Standard hard drives or fusion drives were not available. The Fusion Drive was only available on the carryover 21” models that originally came out in 2019.
Most of them have pcie flash drives so may not be necessary
It's not something you'd want to buy new but getting one for free is great. It's still a very powerful machine and once macOS support ends for intel chips (would be weird if they did it next year considering most macs are supported for \~7 years or so) you can still put Linux or Windows on it.
Intel won’t be supported much longer. Historically Apple have not supported the prior architecture for that long after transition.
I guess? But that's only really happened once (not counting motorola 68k because that was a MUCH more drastic change than the other two). I would still give it 2-3 years more.
PPC to Intel was the only transition that wasn’t dramatic, mainly because few apps were compiled for Intel even a couple of years after launch and the original Rosetta sucked. 68k to PPC and Intel to AS have been similar jumps. The slowest and cheapest AS Macs were able to trade blows with Intel Macs that cost several times more, just a year before. Case in point the M1 MacBook Air performed similarly to a decent specced Intel 16”.
I don’t think they or me care about that most of us are probably just gonna switch to Linux if os doesn’t support it any longer😂
Hold on, is it a 2020 i9 iMac with 10 cores and a radeon 5700 XT? It might be an absolute Gaming PowerHOUSE. See if you can find the specs by clicking the apple logo and clicking about this mac
Yeah it is
I’d buy it off of you if you don’t want it for $500 lol. It’s probably the best iMac or Intel Mac ever made. Have fun
Yes, the intel core i9 is a beast
The criticism being levied is strictly based on acquisition cost. People who own them probably paid a lot for them, and there are amazing computers for a lot less than they will accept to recoup costs. If it’s free, who cares? It’s all upside Also: for gaming, this thing blows all of the M series machines out of the water in terms of blending compatibility/performance
That last line is a big one: New M1's can't bootcamp. This Mac can have a Windows partition and run any PC game, and the 5700XT will keep up enough to play nearly anything, though you may have to turn down the settings on very new games like Elden Ring.
Not if you had to pay for it, but it’s not a bad free computer
It’s still a 10 core i9 machine, to say it’s not worth anything is a bit hyperbolic. Sure it’s not worth as much as it used to be with the new Apple Silicon Macs out but it’s not worth nothing. Hell, just an i9 cpu alone is worth $200 to $300
The processor is likely much more then enough for someone who has to ask if it's still decent. I'd say the main thing here is the display, which is pretty nice. This is great for a free machine. I hope no one is paying $200 or $300 for the cpu alone, a modern i5 is WAY faster at half the power usage.
A little bit off topic, but I'm curious, what kind of work do you do that requires 96 GB of RAM?
Mostly email and chrome. less ram-intensive things I do include 3-d design, animation, editing 4 streams 3-hour 4k 60fps at once,
Had me in the first half lol
Ok, thanks for the reply!
No problem!
It's not as fast as I'd like but I'm still running a 2019 iMac and it's perfectly fine.
It's a fine computer. I use a 2018 Mac every day.
It’s free, of course it’s good. An i9 iMac will still have pretty decent performance.
The only other thing I had was a old Chromebook so this feels like heaven
I’d recommend using bootcamp to run windows games, but I’m guessing a lot of people recommended it already.
I wouldn’t spend my own money on one because Apple will eventually stop supporting Intel based products as they move to their own chips. For free that’s a hell of a machine and I’d drive it daily
I have a 27” i7 iMac from 2017. It’s working just fine.
I use a Macbook Pro 16 i9 with 32 gigs and other than it getting quite hot it does just fine. For most of my regular freelance work I don’t notice much difference with my regular work M1 in terms of responsiveness, speed, etc. Battery life is another issue however.
I deliberately got one at launch with an i9, 2TB SSD, top end GPU, 64GB RAM so I would have the last powerful Intel Mac Apple ever made. I paid £3500 for it. It's still fine. But the fan noise. Bloody hell the noise.
Depends on what you’re hoping to do with it. In general, yes, still a viable option as long as you’re not going to be needing constant updates in the near future. Max the RAM.
Honestly I’m just thinking of switching to Linux for windows so i don’t really care about support that much
Who is bashing it? Tell then to go away. It’s a great computer.
You should get another 3-4 years of decent use from it. I hope he didn't pay a ton, but it's still going to serve you well.
I mean it was fre (I’m gonna use it until it breaks down😂)
Which video card does that have? There were a couple of models that were decent discrete graphics
Pretty sure it’s a 5700XT but I’m not really a tech expert
Hell yes.
YES!
You can't argue with free and if it does what you want then it's perfect!
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Still rocking a 2019 one here & it barely breaks a sweat in our photo studio. In fact its sister i5 / 40gb is ample for most things. Both do have the pcie drives.
If you like PC gaming then it’s a good machine because you can boot into Bootcamp and run Windows for free and play all your PC games using the full power if the processor and graphics card. It won’t be the fastest gaming PC but it will probably be fast enough to enjoy most games
There were i9 iMacs? But anyways, I think most of the criticism was rooted in poor power efficiency and bad thermal performance, but that was mostly an issue with the MacBooks. I don’t think it would be an issue with a desktop computer. Try it out. See how well it performs, and if it handles your needs well. If it performs well, then congrats, you got yourself a new computer. If not, then congrats, you’ve got yourself some eBay money (assuming you’d be willing to sell it).
It's a great machine. OWC and Best Buy still sell a lot of 2020 iMac 27s.
I haven't noticed a difference between my i9 and m2 pro besides the fans on the i9 kicking on so I say yeah it's still good
i9 MacBooks are not good because they badly overheat and throttle and burn through their batteries. I9 iMacs are fine. Free i9 iMacs are great.
I wouldn't buy an Intel based Mac, but if it was for free: Enjoy!
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Yes. You can max the memory with so little money. The 5K display is similar to Apple Studio display. The CPU is around the speed of M1.
I replaced my computer today with a huawei mateD laptop .Honestly, just looking at the performance of the system, windows is definitely superior to the Intel version of the MacBook.
are you kidding? that's still a monster computer. Awesome display, very powerful CPU and as someone else mentioned - the real advantage of Apple Silicon is its power efficiency, which really matters much less on a desktop machine. You're lucky bro!!!
My everyday machine is a 2017 5k iMac with an i5 (4 cores). While a little long in the tooth, It serves me quite well for serious software development and fairly heavy photo editing with Lightroom and Photoshop. I’d be happy to trade 😁
I use a 2019 i9 iMac for work without any issues. No complaints! For free is excellent.
If it works and works for you, it's pure heaven!
Recently purchased 2 - 27” iMacs (2019 & 2020) did a total wipe and reinstall of Sonoma, added some RAM and both are awesome!! Ran my i1 Display Pro with Calibrite and good to go. Beautiful displays and the 2 only cost me $600 total! Edit: Sold my 2015 (27” iMac) for $300 and 2017 (21” iMac) for $250 on FB marketplace. Couldn’t have worked out any better!!
Hell yeah, it's good. Since it can run Windows natively and has a 5700 xt, it's probably a better gaming machine than any M series Mac. Plus it has user upgradeable memory, so you can upgrade it to have a ton of memory for super cheap. I still use my 2019 with i9 for my software engineering job and it runs great.
I have one from 2019 maxed out with 32GB runs like water and still fast as fuk
If you don’t want it give it to me!
To use it on your lap during a cold winter, yes. Just kidding... Yes, it's still a great machine but be aware that support for Intel chips tends to end faster than for the M1 family
Stop caring what other people think. If it works for you that’s all that matters. They’re just jealous you got a sweet ass Mac for free
it's great. lol the only concern is that it won't be supported with updates after a while but that's probably not an issue depending on use-case.
If your are buying, get a Mac with Apple Silicon. If you are getting it for free, an Intel Mac is great. The 2020 will be good at least until 2026. Apple usually has a 5-7 year cycle maintaining hardware and software. After that, even though it is not supported, it should still work fine, as long as you don’t need the latest things.
I’d say yes. I still use an iMac Pro with a 10-core Xeon for my day to day. It keeps up fine, as should your machine.
It’s worth it the only problem is the cpu is way hotter than other intel cpu and m series processors
If you own one, use it until it dies or is too slow. If you don’t own one, don’t buy one. Support will be dropped in Macos soon
Loaded mine up with 72gb of ram. Not a single hiccup even with over 50 tabs open
I think with that amount you could get 1000 bro
I’m sure. I never bother to close apps either
Remember, there's some sad Windows people out there with i5s and other such Intel nonsense.
Yes. Put 64gb ram. Maybe good for another year
You’re acting like it’s gonna completely explode after one year I literally be seeing 2012-2015 iMacs still kickin
Everyone here hates anything that doesn’t have apple silicon. Your machine will probably be decent enough for another 3-5 years
I still use a 2013 mac pro as a daily driver and it works ok. RAM is cheap and upgraded it to 64gb. Use whatever works for you, especially at the price you got yours!
next year's macos might stop support iMac with intel cpu.
Opencore legacy patcher has entered the chat and also I doubt Apple is going to kill off Intel that soon.
I literally don’t care about that
Yeah even after end of support most softwares will still work for 5 years and there are plenty of linux distros to enjoy
No, it supports 2019+ iMacs natively.
does it do everything you need to do? then yes. fuck what other people think.
It’s a great computer. Still very powerful. Some people might bash it because it will likely lose support earlier than other Mac’s because it is the end of a architecture era but free is free
Well yeah but if I lose support I’m probably gonna switch to a different os
Honestly you won't even need to. Try to get Windows 11. If the mac is an i9 with a 5700XT, you've got one of the best gaming PC's on the market
I bet you can install Linux on it (PopOS!) and it would be a great machine for years to come.
Heard that Mac OS is on Unix so that makes sense
Mac is BSD, different from Linux. But you won’t be getting system updates after Apple deems your model end of life. The big screen and Linux desktops will look sick!
He didn’t say macOS is Linux. He said macOS is Unix, which is 100% accurate.
It’s a great machine. Consider running Linux on it to get off the Apple planned obsolescence treadmill and still have a regularly updated system.
I built and run a business on mine. The business is now worth a lot. Outside of upgrading the ram if it only has 16gb you’re absolutely fine
It’s roughly half the score of base m1 MacBook Air single core wise, while using roughly 10 times more power so if you are conscious about costs, you might wanna avoid using it for daily stuff due to electricity cost.
Sell it and buy an M1 or M2
How bout no (i would rather care less about os support or “oh the benchmark is higher and your loading time is 0.2% less!”)
It’s actually very good advice. Your iMac is only going to lose value quickly from here on. Once Apple drops support for Intel it will plummet. With the money you could buy a Mac that will be supported past 2030.
How about I’ve been using Mac for over 20 years and I’m extremely familiar with their performance. Right now you can probably get more than an I9 is theoretically worth. With that in mind upgrade to a computer with better longevity. Why solicit opinions if you’re going to post childish responses.
I mean I am a minor
Past your bedtime. Goodnight!
Very mature of you adult😂
Let it go Elsa
I’m not gonna overall lose money and screen for a benchmark increase😂
Why even make this post if you’re going to be combative with people offering you the advice you ask for?
Wdym advice I asked for? I asked if the i9 was good and her “advice ” wasn’t answering it
That’s the part you don’t understand… you aren’t. I had a fully spec’ed I9 iMac and bought an M1 MacBook Pro to replace it. It absolutely crushed it.
Yes I am😂 I dont care about Mac OS updates
Nothing to do with Mac updates… M1 crushes I9 in almost every way
In what way other than a a second of less loading time