08-08-2007, 02:07 AM

so i am looking to buy one of the new imacs and i noticed that the 20-inch 2.4 ghz model has the same graphics card (ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO) and same vram (256MB of GDDR3) as the 24-inch, 2.8ghz model. which of these two has "better graphics." does the larger screen of the 2.8 ghz model mean that it will render images slower and play video games at with fewer frames per second? does the additional .4 ghz of clock speed in the 2.8 ghz model improve its graphics at all?

08-08-2007, 02:26 AM

If the CPU is not the bottle neck, then increasing the resolution of a game will decrease the returned frame rate in most cases. That does not mean it will be unplayable, but let's say the 20" at 1680x1050 the game is 'just' playable. Now you move the resolution to 1920x1200 and it becomes unplayable without decreasing quality settings. The more pixels/resolution at a fixed quality setting, the more the GPU and GPU Memory is utilized. So for gaming, the 20" would perform better 99% of the time at it's native resolution. That's not saying it will play every game at max resolution either.

For videos, I wouldn't worry about the GPU at that point.

08-08-2007, 10:56 AM

thanks a lot