{"video_id":"-pbTZoX2a88","title":"Gaming on the iMac Pro - How bad can it be?","channel":"Linus Tech Tips","show":"Linus Tech Tips","published_at":"2018-05-06T14:53:29Z","duration_s":518,"segments":[{"start_s":0.16,"end_s":6.64,"text":"when we reviewed the imac pro we didn't really touch on its gaming potential in","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":4.16,"end_s":12.559,"text":"spite of apple's inclusion of their fastest GPU ever in an imac","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":10.48,"end_s":19.359,"text":"and the reason for that is let's be real here that's a 5k display","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":16.24,"end_s":21.84,"text":"paired with what is still a vega 56 a","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":19.359,"end_s":24.88,"text":"card that's optimized for half of that resolution","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":23.519,"end_s":28.88,"text":"but could there be a way around it","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":27.039,"end_s":33.36,"text":"could there be a way to game on the imac pro","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":30.72,"end_s":36.719,"text":"let's find out right after we find out who sponsored","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":35.36,"end_s":42.559,"text":"today's video ah yes thermaltake the thermaltake core","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":39.76,"end_s":46.079,"text":"p90 tempered glass case is an angled open frame design featuring five","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":44.239,"end_s":50.32,"text":"millimeter thick glass three-way placement layout options vertical GPU","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":48.239,"end_s":58.409,"text":"mounting with a riser cable included and more check it out at the link below","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":61.52,"end_s":67.76,"text":"so there were a few questions that we needed to answer before we could make","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":65.28,"end_s":73.52,"text":"any value comparisons one how much does a custom setup with","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":70.799,"end_s":76.159,"text":"the same basic spec as our base model imac pro cost","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":75.2,"end_s":82.72,"text":"two does that setup perform better or worse","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":80.159,"end_s":87.84,"text":"and perhaps most importantly three could we optimize that five thousand","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":85.119,"end_s":93.04,"text":"dollar budget to get better performance without sacrificing all of the features","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":90.479,"end_s":98.0,"text":"that make the imac pro special so this is what we ended up with based","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":95.759,"end_s":104.64,"text":"on pricing from pc part picker our first build adheres as rigidly as","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":101.759,"end_s":110.159,"text":"possible to apple's spec sheet like we couldn't find a vega 56 variant of the","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":107.6,"end_s":115.28,"text":"frontier edition for a true apples to apples comparison while our second build","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":113.04,"end_s":121.84,"text":"treats gaming as an equal priority rather than as an afterthought using a","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":117.759,"end_s":124.32,"text":"less expensive core i9 7900x and a much","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":121.84,"end_s":131.44,"text":"faster NVIDIA titan xp so we give up ecc memory Thunderbolt 3 a","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":127.92,"end_s":134.4,"text":"nice case and wireless peripherals but","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":131.44,"end_s":141.44,"text":"we still have a high resolution albeit 4k dci p3 display workstation level CPU","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":139.04,"end_s":147.76,"text":"performance with many cores support for up to 128 gigs of RAM and access to more","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":145.92,"end_s":150.959,"text":"professional code paths in the GPU driver compared to a consumer grade 1080","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":150.08,"end_s":155.36,"text":"ti running directly off the hardware right","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":153.12,"end_s":159.44,"text":"away our choices are far superior at this price point with the imac pro","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":157.28,"end_s":164.959,"text":"pulling worse numbers than equivalent hardware in deus ex mankind divided in","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":161.599,"end_s":166.8,"text":"both directx 11 and directx 12. middle","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":164.959,"end_s":172.239,"text":"earth shadow of war seems to be better news for apple and then cs go actually","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":169.28,"end_s":176.959,"text":"has it above our equivalent but then below our custom build so it should be","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":174.959,"end_s":182.0,"text":"noted that even for developers like valve who have made opengl a priority","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":179.36,"end_s":186.8,"text":"Windows is still way ahead for gaming so gaming directly on your imac pro not","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":184.48,"end_s":191.28,"text":"the worst experience but not a great choice especially since in our review we","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":189.2,"end_s":196.08,"text":"saw that the cooling isn't capable of handling full load for long as for","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":193.599,"end_s":200.959,"text":"productivity we've got significantly worse numbers again for CPU rendering in","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":198.4,"end_s":205.68,"text":"blender but we actually saw far better results with most of","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":202.879,"end_s":211.28,"text":"specuperf giving us a look at the pro aspect of apple's vega 56 solution","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":208.8,"end_s":216.72,"text":"drivers and in some cases frame buffer size can make a big difference because","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":213.84,"end_s":220.48,"text":"remember that these results are in spite of the throttling under sustained","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":218.319,"end_s":223.68,"text":"workloads that we've come to expect from the imac pro","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":222.08,"end_s":228.56,"text":"let us know by the way in the comments if you'd like to see a separate deeper","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":225.92,"end_s":231.76,"text":"dive into the imac pro's cooling for today though the focus is gaming so","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":230.48,"end_s":236.08,"text":"let's have a look at some of the other solutions we came up with starting with","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":234.08,"end_s":240.72,"text":"an external graphics card thanks to Thunderbolt 3 we can use a","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":238.08,"end_s":247.12,"text":"razer core or something similar to slot in a variety of aftermarket gpus from a","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":244.319,"end_s":251.12,"text":"very similar vega 56 all the way up to that titan xp from our build and the","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":249.439,"end_s":254.879,"text":"question here is how much are you going to give up by","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":253.04,"end_s":259.759,"text":"using an external solution with a titan xp our results are","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":257.359,"end_s":264.639,"text":"obviously worse than a normal internal pci express slot especially in directx","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":262.4,"end_s":269.36,"text":"12 but they're still quite a bit better than the stock GPU and cs go didn't seem","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":267.52,"end_s":274.32,"text":"to care that much anyway as you might expect our external vega 56","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":272.4,"end_s":278.32,"text":"results were generally disappointing providing us with bottom tier","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":275.759,"end_s":282.96,"text":"performance in almost every test we even lost the pro driver code path in spec","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":280.88,"end_s":287.52,"text":"view perf giving us much worse productivity performance so you wouldn't","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":285.6,"end_s":292.88,"text":"want to upgrade your imac pro with a standard vega 56 in other words but","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":290.639,"end_s":296.96,"text":"as new gpus arrive on the market it's good to know that a system performance","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":294.56,"end_s":300.4,"text":"upgrade should be possible via these means","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":298.0,"end_s":305.199,"text":"but bringing it back to gaming again considering the cost of an enclosure","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":302.96,"end_s":310.88,"text":"it's possible that you may be better off just having a second utility pc in the","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":308.08,"end_s":315.039,"text":"house bringing us to our next solution streaming","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":312.24,"end_s":319.84,"text":"steam in-home streaming lets you be like me and have a gaming pc in your closet","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":317.759,"end_s":325.84,"text":"or somewhere out of the way while you use your super clean setup for both work","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":322.88,"end_s":330.4,"text":"and for play and thankfully it actually works a treat on macOS","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":328.72,"end_s":335.039,"text":"and for those of you who don't want to deal with the upfront cost of building a","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":332.639,"end_s":340.56,"text":"separate tower there's actually a mac beta now of NVIDIA's g-force now cloud","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":338.0,"end_s":345.28,"text":"gaming service so when we tested g-force now over a year ago the experience was","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":343.28,"end_s":348.96,"text":"already pretty impressive and i would only expect it to have improved since","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":347.199,"end_s":353.52,"text":"then however your mileage","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":350.4,"end_s":356.24,"text":"quite literally may vary because the","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":353.52,"end_s":362.72,"text":"performance of GeForce now is highly dependent on your physical distance from","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":359.6,"end_s":365.199,"text":"NVIDIA's servers so let's summarize what","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":362.72,"end_s":371.759,"text":"we learned today first and foremost while apple's pricing is actually good","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":368.4,"end_s":373.68,"text":"for its choice of hardware a different","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":371.759,"end_s":378.24,"text":"configuration like if they were willing to use NVIDIA graphics for example","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":375.84,"end_s":383.44,"text":"would have the potential to achieve much better performance with our station's","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":381.12,"end_s":388.0,"text":"obvious trade-offs being the lack of ecc memory support and Thunderbolt","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":386.16,"end_s":392.72,"text":"and we also learned that thanks to third-party devices and services gaming","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":390.72,"end_s":398.0,"text":"on the imac pro doesn't have to be limited by its own hardware though","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":396.0,"end_s":403.12,"text":"like with anything on a mac that comes with an additional cost your choice","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":400.319,"end_s":406.479,"text":"whether it's upfront or monthly what we didn't learn","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":404.639,"end_s":411.12,"text":"we already knew this is that if you do plan to game on your mac you will need","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":408.319,"end_s":414.08,"text":"to buy better peripherals even ignoring the accidental weapon switches while","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":412.8,"end_s":418.639,"text":"moving the mouse due to the scroll gesture the mouse is an ergonomic","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":416.24,"end_s":424.319,"text":"nightmare has like has anyone but me ever noticed all those web 2.0 companies","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":421.36,"end_s":427.68,"text":"out there with their 800 chairs and apple mice","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":425.84,"end_s":431.039,"text":"sorry anyway i digress if you take anything away from this","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":429.12,"end_s":434.96,"text":"follow-up video on the imac pro it should be that your expectations need to","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":433.28,"end_s":439.44,"text":"be tempered when dealing with a form factor like this one you're getting","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":436.8,"end_s":443.44,"text":"beautiful and actually surprisingly powerful hardware","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":441.12,"end_s":449.759,"text":"but the configuration is a touch mismatched and it ends up getting choked","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":446.479,"end_s":451.599,"text":"by its insufficient cooling","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":449.759,"end_s":455.599,"text":"speaking of getting choked have you dropped your phone and broken","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":453.599,"end_s":459.68,"text":"your screen and are you choked well ifixit can help you because they","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":457.759,"end_s":463.44,"text":"really like teaching people how to take stuff apart and fix it they are leading","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":461.84,"end_s":467.599,"text":"the charge in the electronics repair tools industry with their iconic black","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":465.599,"end_s":472.8,"text":"and blue protect tool kit and it's now only 60 bucks it's got tons of features","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":470.4,"end_s":477.44,"text":"like their 64-bit driver kit a wide variety of opening tools spudgers and","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":474.879,"end_s":481.84,"text":"picks so you can safely poke and pry suction cups with a fancy new handle to","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":479.52,"end_s":486.08,"text":"remove display assemblies ifix its own rubber handle jimmy pry tool a set of","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":483.68,"end_s":491.199,"text":"metal spudgers esd safe tweezers and an esd safety strap all backed by ifixit's","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":488.879,"end_s":497.68,"text":"lifetime warranty so check out the over 25 000 free repair guides over at","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":494.08,"end_s":500.0,"text":"ifixit.com and visit ifixit.com Linus to","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":497.68,"end_s":503.36,"text":"snag the fully loaded protect tool kit now just 60 bucks we're gonna have that","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":502.08,"end_s":507.919,"text":"linked below so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but it","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":505.919,"end_s":510.879,"text":"was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to where to","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":509.12,"end_s":514.08,"text":"buy the stuff we featured in the video description also link down there is our","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":512.719,"end_s":519.68,"text":"merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":516.24,"end_s":519.68,"text":"you should totally join","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0}],"full_text":"when we reviewed the imac pro we didn't really touch on its gaming potential in spite of apple's inclusion of their fastest GPU ever in an imac and the reason for that is let's be real here that's a 5k display paired with what is still a vega 56 a card that's optimized for half of that resolution but could there be a way around it could there be a way to game on the imac pro let's find out right after we find out who sponsored today's video ah yes thermaltake the thermaltake core p90 tempered glass case is an angled open frame design featuring five millimeter thick glass three-way placement layout options vertical GPU mounting with a riser cable included and more check it out at the link below so there were a few questions that we needed to answer before we could make any value comparisons one how much does a custom setup with the same basic spec as our base model imac pro cost two does that setup perform better or worse and perhaps most importantly three could we optimize that five thousand dollar budget to get better performance without sacrificing all of the features that make the imac pro special so this is what we ended up with based on pricing from pc part picker our first build adheres as rigidly as possible to apple's spec sheet like we couldn't find a vega 56 variant of the frontier edition for a true apples to apples comparison while our second build treats gaming as an equal priority rather than as an afterthought using a less expensive core i9 7900x and a much faster NVIDIA titan xp so we give up ecc memory Thunderbolt 3 a nice case and wireless peripherals but we still have a high resolution albeit 4k dci p3 display workstation level CPU performance with many cores support for up to 128 gigs of RAM and access to more professional code paths in the GPU driver compared to a consumer grade 1080 ti running directly off the hardware right away our choices are far superior at this price point with the imac pro pulling worse numbers than equivalent hardware in deus ex mankind divided in both directx 11 and directx 12. middle earth shadow of war seems to be better news for apple and then cs go actually has it above our equivalent but then below our custom build so it should be noted that even for developers like valve who have made opengl a priority Windows is still way ahead for gaming so gaming directly on your imac pro not the worst experience but not a great choice especially since in our review we saw that the cooling isn't capable of handling full load for long as for productivity we've got significantly worse numbers again for CPU rendering in blender but we actually saw far better results with most of specuperf giving us a look at the pro aspect of apple's vega 56 solution drivers and in some cases frame buffer size can make a big difference because remember that these results are in spite of the throttling under sustained workloads that we've come to expect from the imac pro let us know by the way in the comments if you'd like to see a separate deeper dive into the imac pro's cooling for today though the focus is gaming so let's have a look at some of the other solutions we came up with starting with an external graphics card thanks to Thunderbolt 3 we can use a razer core or something similar to slot in a variety of aftermarket gpus from a very similar vega 56 all the way up to that titan xp from our build and the question here is how much are you going to give up by using an external solution with a titan xp our results are obviously worse than a normal internal pci express slot especially in directx 12 but they're still quite a bit better than the stock GPU and cs go didn't seem to care that much anyway as you might expect our external vega 56 results were generally disappointing providing us with bottom tier performance in almost every test we even lost the pro driver code path in spec view perf giving us much worse productivity performance so you wouldn't want to upgrade your imac pro with a standard vega 56 in other words but as new gpus arrive on the market it's good to know that a system performance upgrade should be possible via these means but bringing it back to gaming again considering the cost of an enclosure it's possible that you may be better off just having a second utility pc in the house bringing us to our next solution streaming steam in-home streaming lets you be like me and have a gaming pc in your closet or somewhere out of the way while you use your super clean setup for both work and for play and thankfully it actually works a treat on macOS and for those of you who don't want to deal with the upfront cost of building a separate tower there's actually a mac beta now of NVIDIA's g-force now cloud gaming service so when we tested g-force now over a year ago the experience was already pretty impressive and i would only expect it to have improved since then however your mileage quite literally may vary because the performance of GeForce now is highly dependent on your physical distance from NVIDIA's servers so let's summarize what we learned today first and foremost while apple's pricing is actually good for its choice of hardware a different configuration like if they were willing to use NVIDIA graphics for example would have the potential to achieve much better performance with our station's obvious trade-offs being the lack of ecc memory support and Thunderbolt and we also learned that thanks to third-party devices and services gaming on the imac pro doesn't have to be limited by its own hardware though like with anything on a mac that comes with an additional cost your choice whether it's upfront or monthly what we didn't learn we already knew this is that if you do plan to game on your mac you will need to buy better peripherals even ignoring the accidental weapon switches while moving the mouse due to the scroll gesture the mouse is an ergonomic nightmare has like has anyone but me ever noticed all those web 2.0 companies out there with their 800 chairs and apple mice sorry anyway i digress if you take anything away from this follow-up video on the imac pro it should be that your expectations need to be tempered when dealing with a form factor like this one you're getting beautiful and actually surprisingly powerful hardware but the configuration is a touch mismatched and it ends up getting choked by its insufficient cooling speaking of getting choked have you dropped your phone and broken your screen and are you choked well ifixit can help you because they really like teaching people how to take stuff apart and fix it they are leading the charge in the electronics repair tools industry with their iconic black and blue protect tool kit and it's now only 60 bucks it's got tons of features like their 64-bit driver kit a wide variety of opening tools spudgers and picks so you can safely poke and pry suction cups with a fancy new handle to remove display assemblies ifix its own rubber handle jimmy pry tool a set of metal spudgers esd safe tweezers and an esd safety strap all backed by ifixit's lifetime warranty so check out the over 25 000 free repair guides over at ifixit.com and visit ifixit.com Linus to snag the fully loaded protect tool kit now just 60 bucks we're gonna have that linked below so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description also link down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you should totally join"}