New iMac or a egpu for a macbook?

Hi,

You're ideas on the following. I am editing main projects on a 27 inch iMac late 2013 and on the road projects on a Macbook 2018. The iMac has it's video footage on a thunderbolt G-raid and a second Dell display. With hiress 4k footage I notice a lot of performance issues. Only editing on proxy is fluid.
So what to do? Buy a new iMac. Or use my macbook 2018 2.6ghz as the main editing station with an egpu for extra performance? This will cost less money but will this be a good option for the long term?

I am a cynic when it comes to upgrades. Check the benchmarks and translate them into things relevant to your workflow. Does the rendering times go down from 24 hrs to 4? Or is the upgrade only like to give you a 10% boost? eGPU's work, when you can get them to work, I'm installing one myself and it's not been easy so far. You're not saying how many cores your CPU has, or what type or how much RAM. If it's a i7 and you have 16GB or over, you're likely only going to see an improvement if you do something drastic. The eGPU is the most cost-effective drastic upgrade.
In the long term, all upgrades are worthless. Worry about now. Set a budget, read reviews you trust and go for it!

Thanks, I agree with you that an upgrade is not always the solution. But when the system gets this slow then editing is no fun anymore.
Specs on the iMac 3,4 i5 24gb ram GTX780m. Anyone else using this?

I had the top-spec 2013 iMac 27, then the 2015, then the 2017 (which I still have) also a 2017 10-core Vega64 iMac Pro.

Smooth, lag-free editing of certain 4k H264 codecs is difficult on all of them. The 2017 i7 iMac is faster due to the Kaby Lake version of Quick Sync but it's still laggy. This is not an I/O issue or a GPU issue but a CPU decode issue for certain 4k H264 codecs. DJI and Sony Alpha XAVC-S are some of the worst.

Your 2018 MBP has the newer version of Quick Sync so that's probably why it's faster. Your options include getting a pre-owned 2017 i7 iMac 27 or getting an eGPU for your MBP. Obviously an 8-core 2019 iMac would be even better but that's more expensive.

I edit 4K H.264 from a variety of cameras (Panasonic, DJI, iPhones, Canon) on a 2005 15" rMBP daily without issue. I also use a very fast RAID for my Libraries and media. Again, no real issues in playback or anything.

I also use an iMac Pro and have zero issues with it, even doing multicams, again using very fast RAID.

That's not very helpful Mr FCPX Guru! WHY do you think your setup has no problems? The very fast RAID? Ok, sp what is it so we may try it as a solution? Again, what are your workflow tips to make life so lag-free?
Any info would help!

Cheers!