Need advice on iMac purchase for photo editing

[Nimec]

Hi all,

 

I was thinking about purchasing a 2nd PC and a 27' 2560xYYYY monitor for editing photos and other tasks such as client emails, schedules, etc. separate from my gaming PC. I am not typically an Apple client because I find with their products you end up paying a premium for style. I have recently been looking at some 27' iMac's and unfortunately against my will have begun quite interested in purchasing one.

 

Right now I my PC that is ~2.5 years old consists of:

i5 2500k, 8GB Ram, 128GB SSD and 500GB SATA drive, Radeon 6950, Windows 7

 

Performance in Lightroom while editing photos is for the most part snappy. It slows down here and there but overall I am happy with the performance.

 

I have heard iMac's being referred to as laptops built into a monitor, so I am wondering how high on the technical specs am I going to have to go to meet or exceed the speeds I currently experience with my PC, as I am not sure how the mobile i5/i7 processors (if they are mobile professors?) compare to the desktop counterparts, plus whatever extra workload is required for running programs at the higher screen resolution.

 

For the base 27' iMac for $1850 +tax the specs are:

i5 3.2GHz, 8GB (two 4GB) ram, 1TB drive,GeForce GT 755M with 1GB video memory

 

Is it safe to say that editing photos with Lightroom/Photoshop will be similar with this system, or would it in fact end up being slower in real world performance?

 

Jumping to an i7 3.5GHz iMac ups the price $400 to $2250. (also adds another 1GB to video memory)

 

How important is memory for editing programs like Lightroom? My photos are 6000x4000 resolution I believe (24mpix) and can be anywhere from 10-20MB+ each in RAW format. Is 8 enough or go for more? RAM is extremely expensive in the Apple store so I have heard to buy it separately somewhere else.

 

Adding an SSD is another $200 so the price is jumping very high compared to a similar spec'd PC.

 

What kind of specs should I be looking at for using this machine purely for photo editing and other related tasks, without it being slower than what I already have.

 

Any help is appreciated. 

 

[.Neo]

The iMac has a desktop grade processor. Same goes for the hard disk in the 27-inch model and memory.

 

I got the 3.5 GHz Core i7 model, with maxed out graphics and a Fusion Drive. I'm very satisfied with it. At the very least you should get a Fusion Drive (128 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD). It's probably the biggest increase in performance I noticed over my previous HDD-only iMac.

[Brian M. Veteran]

The only thing that will be slower is having a HDD instead of an SSD. Everything else will be quicker.