Odds of iMac Video Card Upgrade

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Just a quick question. Has Apple in the past, released vid card updates later to an iMac? The only thing holding me back from a purchase right now is the video card. The Radeon card just isn't up to snuff yet. Maybe drivers will be improved, but the Nvidia cards were much better.
 
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Just a quick question. Has Apple in the past, released vid card updates later to an iMac? The only thing holding me back from a purchase right now is the video card. The Radeon card just isn't up to snuff yet. Maybe drivers will be improved, but the Nvidia cards were much better.

The short answer? No.

The long answer? A new iMac is a video card upgrade. New computer = new components. That's teh downside to purchasing a computer like an iMac or a notebook that you're not intirely happy with the internals of.

Why Apple flip flops between GPU manufactures instead of sticking with one is beyond me. Last gen MBP had an ATI and the iMac had an Nvidia. This gen MBP has the Nvidia and the iMac has an ATI. And Apple should know that if they want to attract gamers (which they do, or else they wouldn't be advertising that EA has come to OS X) then they should recognize that it's not all about software, but it's also about hardware.

Gamers don't want great games and mediocre hardware.
 
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Thanks for the response. I am not the hardcore PC gamer I once was. Really, I am more of a Blizzard gamer now than anything else. I want to be able to run WoW and Starcraft 2 comfortably.

THESE NUMBERS

are very telling about the capability of the current Radeon card. The old 2.33 iMac smokes a 2.8 in World of Warcraft. 40 fps is not great considering the cost of a 2.8 iMac. Gimme the 7600 numbers and I would be more than happy.
 
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Looking at one game's scores isn't really very telling at all.

Have a look at some more benchmarks here: http://xtreview.com/review209.htm

The 2600 isn't a bad card at all.
 
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I agree, the 2600 is a pretty decent card. My brother can manage to play BioShock at Medium settings with a really good framerate. He can run it on High, but it feels a bit sluggish.
 
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I have to agree. I have the 2600 as well. I have been playing prey at the highest settings with no hiccups at all. Call of duty 2 plays the same way. check out this video of bioshock.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbY1kTP79vc

same specs as mine except I havethe 20''
 
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I am wavering back and forth on this. So far, it seems like there is no way the 2600 is ever going to match the 7600. BUT...I think there will be improvements. If you look at a lot of the game tests, the speeds are quite different between Windows and OS X. I would suspect the Windows drivers for the 7600 are much more mature than the 2600.

Leopard is another unknown. The 2600 cards may be more fine tuned for Leopard than Tiger. Either way, playing WoW with everything maxed and getting framerates of 40-60fps is pretty **** good. Would I prefer more? Who wouldn't. When you think that EA sports released Madden 08 on the PS3 with a 30fps max and considered that "good enough", why ask more from the iMac than a next gen console.
 
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You know, you can't physically notice a framerate higher than 30fps
 

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