27" iMac for Gaming

[skycaptain]

iMac

gaming

see the problem?

User was infracted for this post.

[Tyrianth]

It's not really relevant in a thread in which we're discussing how it would run on a 27" screen with 2560x1440 resolution. Why did you have to brag about it running on ultra on your tiny screen?

We're making assumptions here but I'm assuming that the OP probably doesn't want to play games in a small window on such a giant screen.

I was hardly bragging. He asked about the performance and while I'm not most hardware savvy person, I would assume that his video card in a 2011 iMac would at least be a bit better than mine in a 3 year old macbook.

[Fuzzykins]

I was hardly bragging. He asked about the performance and while I'm not most hardware savvy person, I would assume that his video card in a 2011 iMac would at least be a bit better than mine in a 3 year old macbook.

Then why are you even posting? You've admitted yourself that what you've said is pretty much entirely irrelevant to his situation.

[Deleted]

Your hardrive or something else will selfdestruct after a year and since it's a Mac you can't change it yourself

User has been infracted for this post.

[Fuzzykins]

Allow me to outline something once again.
A Mac is just as good as a PC in gaming. You can literally do a side by side comparison, and if they have the same specs, they'll perform similarly. (Excluding WINE games, which do have occasional issues.) The difference is price. If a person is willing to pay a premium for a Mac, as long as you politely warn them, then allow them to do so.

The best we can do at this point is, instead of telling him to buy a PC, outline exactly where the flaws are in his current build, so he can either...
A.) Purchase a more powerful version of the computer.
B.) Purchase a different computer.

If he wants a Mac for gaming, he can have a Mac for gaming. You shouldn't belittle someone for a simple operating system choice. (Which, literally, is what it comes down to.)

Also, everyone knows Linux is the superior gaming platform. (I'm kidding.)

Your hardrive or something else will selfdestruct after a year and since it's a Mac you can't change it yourself

What is this, I don't even--

[Deleted]

Mod Warning:


Removed some posts here. If you continue the Mac vs PC bashing after this, you'll be infracted. Constructive feedback & criticism is fine. No bashing.

^You just won't listen :< /Deleted some posts & Infracted some people. Stop the trolling/bashing.

[Deleted]

My brother (who happens to work as an Apple Support Engineer) just bought the specced out one but bought the RAM separately (the 1 thing that Apple are known for more than anything for being dicks about is overcharging for RAM). I can say that it is an insanely well made piece of kit and the screen... *drools*

Anyway if you are happy with spending that much money, I would push it a bit further and get the better GPU. I have no idea if you will be able to play WoW on super duper ultra on that res, but I do know you can with TF2 and Civ V (although Civ V is probably the most buggiest piece of crap game I have ever played on a Mac. Although pretty much any other Aspyr port is in the same boat).

Basically my point is that you won't regret spending that money, if you have that much money to spend. But I would get as little RAM as possible and buy some after you have it for much cheaper and also get the better GPU.

---------- Post added 2011-07-04 at 01:39 AM ----------

<snip>

Mod Warning: Don't continue on this.

[bigjenk]

hmmm... highest resolution, everything on ultra except for shadows which are on good, and lets see.... 41fps.

http://imgur.com/5j5Oh

Lol running at 1440X900 and shadows on good, that is not close to max settings for a 27 inch monitor, I would guess with shadows max and fullscreen you run 10-15 fps there. Also the 27 inch apple monitors look nice but they ghost something mean on every one ive ever seen.

Also enjoy paying double for the actual product you are getting. You are paying 2 grand for acceptable for now amounts of ram(not fast ram either), a shitty gpu, and low end i5. Pc side i just got a new comp with a 580, 23 inch monitor, one of the best cases on the market, best 23 inch monitor on the market, top of the line i5 that overclocks ezpz to 4.5k for like 700 dollars more. Also the upgradabiltiy of an imac is pretty shit since there is really no more room for a bigger gpu or to extend the life of a current computer by getting a second gpu. Not sure what motherboard they use but my guess is it is second rate unless you pay up the ass for the upgrade, as that is the bussiness model of botique computers. Also the airflow in the imacs is not that good. But if you want to pay extra for less product based on the package they sell go ahead.

[Saithes]

Lol running at 1440X900 and shadows on good, that is not close to max settings for a 27 inch monitor, I would guess with shadows max and fullscreen you run 10-15 fps there. Also the 27 inch apple monitors look nice but they ghost something mean on every one ive ever seen.

The new 27" Apple Monitors have Overdrive I believe which eliminates the ghosting of the old ones.

[Deleted]

Lol running at 1440X900 and shadows on good, that is not close to max settings for a 27 inch monitor, I would guess with shadows max and fullscreen you run 10-15 fps there. Also the 27 inch apple monitors look nice but they ghost something mean on every one ive ever seen.

Colours and screen quality > a tiny bit of ghosting that you won't notice ever, unless you go looking for it with a ghosting test.

[bigjenk]

Fine, I had everything ultra but shadows. Better?

Also running at about 1/3rd the pixels that is native boosts your performance.

---------- Post added 2011-07-04 at 12:54 AM ----------

Colours and screen quality > a tiny bit of ghosting that you won't notice ever, unless you go looking for it with a ghosting test.

I know 3 people with 27 inch imacs and all ghost noticably in any gaming, then again some people just don't notice ghosting unless its terrible.

Also i cannot believe apple offers such a shitty graphics card in a 1600 dollar baseline computer.

[Redasurc]

The new 27" Apple Monitors have Overdrive I believe which eliminates the ghosting of the old ones.

yes, you wont see much difference in clearness of the screen if you lower resolution. having said that running wow in 1920x1080 with all on ultra except shadows wich is at 2nd highest. wow run with most raider mods at 40-60 fps. this is with vsync on, and it wont go past 60 for that reason. allso it will stabilize at an even number fps instead of running up and down all the time. Like, it will stay at 50 if it may get to 58, having a tiny overhead. allso if you get more than 4 gig memory you wont have any pagefile usage wich will improve performance alot.

[Deleted]

I'll assume this is one of the new 2011 imacs, but I think 512mb VRAM seems low...my MBP has a gig.Yes you can use as an external display, just get a minidisplay to HDMI cable (the mini display is now called thunderbolt) and you should be fine.Also, get an external hard drive to install Windows 7 on...but CHECK to make sure the external can run it (I know some can't for whatever reason). Reason I say this, is just for certain games.Other than that, you're fine for gaming. The performance is actually way better than people seem to put it at.

No... Thunderbolt the the new I/O such as USB and FireWire, just very very fast (like 20 gigabits pr sec). It still uses a MiniDisplay for the screen.

[vesseblah]

highest quality design and construction on market (you cannot even begin to compare the engineering that goes into an iMac with whatever random box you've got).

Need I remind you of MBP2011 debacle again? Only quality built Apple products are Mac Pro's, the rest are same chinese mass-produced shit that you can get from any manufacturer, but with a different brand. Even Mac Pro's are good quality only because they actually use expensive parts on it instead of the bottom shelf stuff that goes into iMac like the Radeon 6770M GPU in the computer OP was looking at.

It's not a gaming machine, but you can play WoW perfectly fine at the native resolution.

No, you will not play WoW or anything else with acceptable framerate at 2560x1440 with 512meg 6770M GPU without putting all settings down to low. That GPU is just too underpowered to run the screen, and would be more at home with laptop resolutions.

[Shakadam]

What is it with you and your inexplicable need to make provably factually incorrect statements on these forums? I play at 2560x1440 on my iMac every damn day and my settings are not low, they're custom settings somewhere between high and ultra.

I could say the same about what you just wrote there. Considering I have a 4850 1gig GPU and play at 1920*1080 ~high settings and still get fps drops now and then in 25man raids (if we're only talking about WoW here) I'm gonna have to claim you're lying or have wastly different standards as to what you consider playable (average framerate below 30 is normally not considered playable). The 6770 GPU is worse than a 4850 and you're playing at a higher resolution so I have a very hard time believing that you get any smooth gameplay.

[vesseblah]

Ok, link to any other manufacturer that provides a build like iMac. Single piece of aluminum, with all components stuffed into a very small form factor behind the screen. I think you are hugely underestimating the engineering skill that goes into designing and building something like that.

Do you realize that current iMacs are just laptops with external keyboard? Every single component in the current 2011 model is mobile part, unlike previous years that used low power desktop components. You can get twice as powerful gaming laptop for the same price in 17" size compared to 27" iMac, so no, I'm not terribly impressed about the size. Previous models were bit more impressive since they used actual desktop components for GPUs for example...

What is it with you and your inexplicable need to make provably factually incorrect statements on these forums? I play at 2560x1440 on my iMac every damn day and my settings are not low, they're custom settings somewhere between high and ultra.

...which brings me to this point.

You're omitting key details, like are you using last year's iMac with an actual gaming GPU and twice the VRAM as the 2011 model? Even the full-power desktop Radeon 4850 with 1GB RAM used two years ago in the first 27" iMacs is more powerful in gaming use than the current R6770M with 512MB RAM. Both the 2011 MacBookPro as well as the 2011 iMac has the big problem for gamers that all except the top of the line model use really underpowered GPU and are somewhere between crap and passable when it comes to gaming.

So no... You are not seeing anywhere close to acceptable framerates in a current mobile GPU iMac on 2560x1440 resolution at high/ultra resolution except either a) in your dreams, or b) standing alone in the middle of Silithus.

[Yohassakura]

@ OP : Basically, build your own machine for a lot cheaper than an iMac, then stick OSX on the hard drive, and you'll actually have the computer that you want, but it'll perform better, cost less and you'll be able to upgrade it.

(Click Picture)


^ That's full ultra. E8500 @ 3.8GHz + Radeon 6970 2GB @ 950 / 1440.

You wouldn't get anymore than I do @ 1080p, and you'd get worse by increasing the resolution.

[Deleted]

@ OP : Basically, build your own machine for a lot cheaper than an iMac, then stick OSX on the hard drive, and you'll actually have the computer that you want, but it'll perform better, cost less and you'll be able to upgrade it.

(Click Picture)


^ That's full ultra. E8500 @ 3.8GHz + Radeon 6970 2GB @ 950 / 1440.

You wouldn't get anymore than I do @ 1080p, and you'd get worse by increasing the resolution.

Exept that it's illegal to put OSX on non-apple hardware, and is considered piracy, which is not allowed on this site.

[Yohassakura]

Exept that it's illegal to put OSX on non-apple hardware, and is considered piracy, which is not allowed on this site.

Basically, it's not worth getting a Mac for gaming, as it's limited and over priced. As I said, the best thing would be the illegal way, which I can't really condone because.... yeah, there's a problem with that. (I said that he'd get the computer that he wants, not necessarily a properly licensed computer...)

If apple made it "legal" for computer owners to run OSX on a non-mac machine, then I'm sure that they'd be better off... Except the user would get screwed for the hardware conflicts that they have ofc, and that's why they don't have a wide variety of hardware for their machines.

[Deleted]

Basically, it's not worth getting a Mac for gaming, as it's limited and over priced.

But he isn't getting it just to play games on <.<

Plus it isn't that much cheaper to build a PC and then get a 27" IPS screen.