Best Config for imac retina 27 inch

Hi
Im looking to purchase the new iMac but can't really decide what configiration to choose when purchasing. The main factors for me are speed and storage as I will have a huge amount of photos, (some photos will have a high resolution) and I really want the quickest response to opening of apps, programs etc. I also plan to use it it for some gaming. I don't really want to change my computer again in 2 years so really want to make it last and get the best performance possible to keep up with the ever changing tech world.
I am looking at:
core i7 - what's the main difference from i5? Speed? Boot up time?
8GB ram (will upgrade later as it's user accessable)
Storage? Is 1TB flash to excessive? or 512 Flash is more than enough these days?
Graphics. Whats the main difference between these two?
AMD Radeon R9 M290X 2GB GDDR5
AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4GB GDDR5
Any advise would be hugely appreciated.
Thank you

I'm in the same boat you are, replacing a 2009 era iMac...here's my thinking.
CPU -- i7 -- there's actually a pretty material difference between these kinds of chips but can vary depending on the specific ones Apple decides to use in terms of #cores and hyper threading... I'm going with the i7. The choice won't materially affect boot time.
RAM -- You definitely want 16GB not 8. Now, you could get the standard RAM from Apple, but they use super cheap 4GB sticks filling two slots so you'd likely end up with 24 GB of RAM which (4x2 + 8x2) which isn't the most efficient config. I plan to go with the 16GB config and then add another 16GB when/if needed. This has the benefit of not having to deal with Apple saying any particular early system issue are due to "nonstandard" RAM. Their RAM, their problem to fix :-)
Storage -- I started where you are now thinking about the 1TB SSD, but the price is just absurd. So I am going with the 3T Fusion drive which also has the SSD component which will make boot times about the same as with a pure SSD solution. Then, once the warranty runs out in 3 years, I would probably swap in a 3rd party SSD since there is no warranty to void and 3rd party 1T SSDs will probably be around $200 by then.
Graphics -- the 295 obviously has double the VRAM which is important for gaming in terms of textures, but as important it uses the new AMD GPU which one can only assume is a lot better. Given the number of pixels being pushed, I'm going with the most I can in this category.
I won't be getting mine for about another month so would love to hear your hands on impressions, especially with gaming. I currently game on my 2009 iMac and it's definitely showing its age. I don't expect my iMac to be a monster gaming rig, but do expect to be able to run current 3D games at medium to high quality but not at 5k, just at the standard 1080p.

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Message was edited by: sfandtheworld

Thanks for the advice and the links. yes, I would like to speed up ps as much as possible.
I wonder if putting the scratch disc on the same drive as the OS would cause them to interfere with each other? Even if they are on different partitions, they would not be able to be accessed at the same time, or could they? That's why I was wondering if I should place scratch disc on the internal HDD -- but then I don't know how much to partition for it (or to partition at all?)
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phantom_tran wrote:
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