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First 2020 iMac benchmarks hit the web showing a handy speed boost

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iMac on the desktop
iMac on the desktop (Image credit: Mike Matthews/iMore)

What you need to know

  • Apple announced a refreshed iMac a couple of days ago.
  • The new machines have already started to be benchmarked.
  • Both the CPU and GPU upgrades performed well.

Apple announced some refreshed iMacs earlier this week and Japanese site Mac Otakara has already gotten its hands on one. So it did what anyone would do – benchmarked it.

According to their testing, the base model 2020 iMac – with its Intel Core i5 3.1GHz CPU – is around 1.2 times as fast as the outgoing model. Or 20% faster, if you prefer.

I compared the benchmark results of the iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020) using Geekbench (64bit), comparing it with the 5K 2019 model.Compared to iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2019)/Intel Core i5 3.0GHz, the iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020)/Intel Core i5 3.1GHz was about 1.2 times faster.Although it is the bottom Intel Core i5 3.1GHz model, it turns out that it has higher performance than the iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2019)/Intel Core i5 3.7GHz model which was the third model from the bottom

In terms of graphics performance, the report shows the new Radeon Pro 5300 is around 36% faster than the Radeon Pro 570X from last year. That's in terms of Metal performance with the number growing to 43% faster when OpenCL is used.

This is all great news for anyone who needs to buy a new iMac right now. But everyone else should probably hang fire until Apple gives is the iMac redesign we're waiting for. Hopefully, alongside some blazing fast Apple silicon, too.

If you are picking up a new iMac, be sure to check out the full Mac Otakara piece before deciding on what spec to go with.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.