Advice for buying a new 2013 iMac

I work with Adobe Premiere, Photoshop and Illustrator.
1.) Will I benefit from upgrading to the card with the extra GB of video memory? OR is this really only going to be benefiical for video games?
2.) Will I see any noticable speed increase by upgrading from:
3.4GHz Quadcore Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz
vs.
3.5GHz Quadcore Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
Thanks in advance.

I also spend most of my day in Adobe apps (InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop), and I've just moved from an i7 machine (a Hackintosh) to an iMac with the 3.4GHz i5. The i7 was overclocked to 4.3GHz.
Generall speaking, once the app is open, performance on the i5 seems similar to the i7. The i7 used SSDs, and opening Photoshop, for example, would take 2 to 3 seconds. On the i5 with the standard 1T hard drive, it takes more like 20 seconds. Unless you are doing some heavy duty 3D rendering in PS, I would think that the i5 would be adequate for you.
I'll be adding an external SSD to the iMac in a few days in order to speed up file access.
On the graphics card side, the i7 used a 1G Radeon, and the new iMac has the 2G nVidia. I don't think there's a significant performance increase for Photoshop and Illustrator, at least from a 'how it feels running' perspective.
Perry
KidPub Press

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