acceptable performance with iMac?

[pmb]

I'm considering buying a 27 inch iMac. CPU is a 3.5 i7 haswell, GPU is a GTX 780M. I'm concerned about being able to play wow at the default 2560x1440 res of the monitor with that hardware. Any thoughts or have benches with this specific combination been performed?

[Viikkis]

You can play WoW with it but for a price that Macs have you could buy a way better PC for gaming just saying.

[Cyrops]

I'm sure you will be able to play wow at that res, now, at what settings, that remains to be seen.

And the first search I did:

I just purchased the updated iMac 27" with the 3.4GHz quad core Intel i5 processor and NVidia GeForce GTX 780M with 8GB RAM. While sitting in the middle of nowhere with no one around me I only get 40 FPS with ultra settings. With the recommended settings of "fair" I get 100 FPS. I could play on "fair" settings with my 2009 iMac with 2.93GHz single core processor and 256MB GPU. Am I doing something wrong? What is going on?

OS X 10.8.5 (up to date)

[Hexorcist]

You'd be better off buying a PC and customizing it for gaming, for the price of a Mac.

From experience, you can play at "fair" and even customize higher than that on an iMac but you'll never, ever be able to reach "high" settings and "ultra" practically makes it keel over. On top of that, iMacs hardware can't be updated as easily (or at all really) as a PC which means when your video card becomes outdated in like two years, there's nothing you can do.

Finally, iMacs have really, really shitty cooling systems, since they're designed to "look pretty" rather than function well for gaming. The top and sides of the computer become so hot you can't even touch them without almost burning yourself, and it will eventually cause issues with the rest of the hardware; I had my motherboard fail so many times I can't even count, which has never happened on anybody's (that I know) Mac that hasn't gamed on it like I do.

I'm not very computer savvy, but I used to play on an iMac for a few years, 'cause I had nothing else, and I can't count the number of times I wish I had gotten a PC instead because the cooling system is too shitty and basic to handle gaming and it's not designed nor equipped to play games at optimal settings.

You're much better off getting a good PC, which /will/ have upgradable hardware you can access and /can/ play on high and even ultra settings no problem, and you'll end up spending less too.