Late 2012 iMac (new to me) Not impressing me. Possible Improvements?

[RainMotorsports]

I have acquired a Late 2012 iMac and hooked it up in lieu of my gaming desktop to force myself to learn my work flow on it. It will help me with end user support as well as finally getting to try out iOS development. Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Pro as well as Office, OneDrive, PHPstorm, all work on both platforms.

I am a firm believer that there is no difference in performance over time or support between "PC and Mac". So far this thing has not shown me I am wrong. But I honestly hope to find some improvement in it as well. I wiped it, did an internet recovery (oops). Upgraded from mountain lion to high sierra. Added my bare minimum compliment of applications. Learned quite a few things in the first couple of days.

The iMac is an i5-3470s (2.9Ghz) with 8GB of DDR3. GeForce GT 650M. While I have a newer desktop my comparison is my old, now my wifes custom built rig. It has an i5-2500K with 16GB of DDR3 started out on Windows 7 then 8.1 now 10. Still on a mechanical drive like the mac and that's always a performance issue with 10.

I get that MacOS displays progress to the user differently. This is something that in operating systems and applications is easy to get wrong and make something fast look slow. So I try to be patient and pay attention to the differences. But this thing is slow. I am using Chrome not Safari which isn't the greatest on ram consumption but I am keeping an eye on that in Activity Monitor. It varies but it's slower than I am used to and Netflix the quality is looking like crap in comparison. Usually we blame networking for this but it's consistently worse on the mac. I haven't tried using their app (i think they have one) yet. Adobe Premiere Pro is actually running fairly well considering it doesn't have a high end gpu to accelerate it.

Siri is running SLOW. It will open and and type out what I say fairly quickly. Sometimes it takes a long time to terminate listening. Results return at a decent speed. In comparison to google on an android phone this is usually all connection related. But it will take 15-30 seconds before Siri reads out whatever the results were. Long after doing such is relevant to me. I would expect reading to me would be local, unlike listening which is usually processed in the cloud. Is there any known issues, fixes, things to look for?

 

[ferrarr]

How are you connected to the net for both PC’s in the comparison? What speed are the drives?

 

[pigoo3]

If you've competely erased & reformatted the HD...did a fresh install of the OS...then you may have a failing HD...or possibily a bad/failing HD data cable.

- Nick

 

[RainMotorsports]

How are you connected to the net for both PC’s in the comparison? What speed are the drives?

Directly to the modem. I connected the ethernet cable after recovery errored out even on wpa2. Fast.com speedtest (the one Netflix owns) comes out to 270 Mbps through the chrome browser. Not sure what the specs are for the iMac drive. Comparison computer I believe is a 2TB 5400 rpm unless its one of my odd ball 5900's. I don't have any 7200 rpm drives anymore.

If you've competely erased & reformatted the HD...did a fresh install of the OS...then you may have a failing HD...or possibily a bad/failing HD data cable.

- Nick

Is the cable a somewhat common issue? Back in the day I could see it as we used to move drive cables all the time. But this day in age with a compact all in one that would have been more likely a common defect or something?

I guess I will try finding a benchmark for the drive.

 

[MacInWin]

If the iMac has the original drive, it's getting on to be 6 years old. That's pretty old for a drive and it may be starting to fail. If you decide to replace it, you can add some zip to that iMac by putting in an SSD to replace it. Check with OWC (macsales.com) to see if you need any other kit to change out the drives.

 

[harryb2448]

And is it is a 21.5" iMac, on that model Apple unwisely we nt to a 5400rpm laptop style hard drive which is as slow as a wet week?

Consider either having an SSD installed, orasimply connect an external caddy andSSD via USB3 for great improvements.

 

[pigoo3]

Is the cable a somewhat common issue? Back in the day I could see it as we used to move drive cables all the time. But this day in age with a compact all in one that would have been more likely a common defect or something?

I would say not that common at all. But I had an 2011 iMac that did have a bad HD cable...and like you I initially assumed it wasn't the cable. I worked my butt off for hours & hours trying to figure what the issue was. I literally opened the computer 15-20 times...and took it to a professional (since it was still under warranty)...and they couldn't figure it out. I FINALLY thought that I would replace the HD cable (a less than $5.00 part)...and instantly the issue was fixed.

If you were to end up opening your iMac to possibly replace the internal drive...it certainly wouldn't hurt to replace the HD cable as well (since it's so inexpensive). By replacing both parts (HD & cable)...you know you've done all you can do & minimize the need to open it a 2nd or more times.

- Nick

 

[RainMotorsports]

And is it is a 21.5" iMac, on that model Apple unwisely we nt to a 5400rpm laptop style hard drive which is as slow as a wet week?

Consider either having an SSD installed, orasimply connect an external caddy andSSD via USB3 for great improvements.

I forgot to enter that detail. Yes it's a 21.5". Wish it was a 27" i would put the cinema display to the side instead of the iMac. I actually have a thunderbolt display I use at work. Perks of the job finding and repairing stuff.

7200 RPM drives became really uncommon in 2.5in after 1TB.

Do you guys know of a good utility to monitor GPU usage? Activity Monitor doesn't seem to have it. I finally went to imgur.com which I often browser but have been too busy to. Their front page is a nightmare the for the mac. I have yet to see if Safari handles it better. But Netflix chokes badly when imgur is opened. Not important but it made me want to look at GPU usage in case the browser is accelerating imgur's previews or something.

It's been a few days since I got the thing and today was the first day I had to pull out my work laptop (my daily machine other than the currently disconnected gaming desktop). Dump truck came down my street and ripped out the cable lines. Fortunately the security camera client is available on Mac. Unfortunately these chinese manufacturers always find a way to screw something up. Unlike my work DVR's that use basically the same app. This version won't download in h.264. The only app I know of to convert RF files is on PC. Then both quicktime and Premiere pro can't open them... Handbrake probably works on Mac but im defeated on that one for the moment.

 

[harryb2448]

Go with an SSD is your solution., Even the 7200rpm 3.5" drive does not hack it anymore in the 27" iMac. The day of the slow platter drive is behind us.