Gaming?

[zman2408]

Wow this thread really exploded over the last 5 days that I've been out of town.
I started it because I was hoping to hear I could buy an iMac that I'm dying to have and be able to play modern games on it as well.
I have figured from reading all the posts that I will have to keep a dedicated Windows PC for gaming & an apple for everything else. Which for me will not be bad.

As for consoles I will have the modern consoles too I have always been a video game junkie.

And as for graphics... omg who cannot tell the difference between AA off vs AA maxed out I mean jeeez AA is one of the best inventions of modern gaming you can have superb graphics but if you cannot have a smoothe curve w/out jagged lines it will look like crap... so yeah AA is huge.. Sorry that just blew me away when I read it makes no difference.


Thanks for all of the replies.

 

[Alexis]

I understand hardware, I built gaming rigs for myself and other people for 11 years, wrote numerous reviews for hardware for 7 years and spent far too much of my life analysing hardware performance.

It's fine that you dissagree, but don't assert that I am making assumptions. The iMac was not built for gaming, and it shows. Even the Mac Pro has a laughable 7300GT... a poor performer even last generation. At least it can be upgraded though.

Just because you're able to play a mainstream game from last generation, by a mass market publisher (EA) doesn't make the iMac a gaming rig.

Now I am not attacking your hardware, the iMac is NOT underpowered for what it was designed to do. But it was not designed to play Bioshock, Crysis or UT3 on anything other than modest settings for a quick blast. Don't take it so personally.

And YES, arguing that this either doesn't matter or is not the case, is deceptive, because it could influence someone less informed to perhaps buy an iMac thinking it'll cover gaming, rather than say a MacBook and an Xbox, which would be a much better choice.

Hi Zoolock. I appreciate your reply. I understand your reply, and before I turned to Macs a few months ago I used to build myself and friends gaming rigs every year or so.

I think the difference in opinion exists because there are always those who will spend big bucks on mad gaming rigs and stick in expensive new gaming cards. I've always seen it as a false economy - why spend £300 on a beefy graphics card when it will be £100 in 12 months? I've always seen the sense in staying one step behind, playing on high but not maximum, and saving the cash.

Which is why I'm happy with the 2600 iMac. It plays modern games well at medium - high settings. I'm not interested in maximum settings or having 100FPS.

Yes, the iMac is not a hardcore gaming rig. But neither is it a poor machine games wise.

Whilst hardcore gamers spend £300 on a mad GPU, £100 mobo, £150 CPU and maybe £60 on memory every couple of years, I can stick my iMac on ebay for £600 in two years and buy the 2009 iMac for £900, thus costing me £300 every 2 years.

I'm happy being in lane 2, playing games happily as opposed to obsessively, and saving the cash, rather than getting the unnecessary eye candy in games and paying through the nose.

And as for graphics... omg who cannot tell the difference between AA off vs AA maxed out I mean jeeez AA is one of the best inventions of modern gaming you can have superb graphics but if you cannot have a smoothe curve w/out jagged lines it will look like crap... so yeah AA is huge.. Sorry that just blew me away when I read it makes no difference.

At a decent resolution, with enough graphics memory for textures, AA is a luxury rather than a necessity. Modern games are not 'jaggy' and AA is not 'huge'.
This is a sidepoint though. AA steals some framerate, but it's not as if modern GPUs can't have it turned on!

 

[Zoolook]

I think the difference in opinion exists because there are always those who will spend big bucks on mad gaming rigs and stick in expensive new gaming cards. I've always seen it as a false economy - why spend £300 on a beefy graphics card when it will be £100 in 12 months? I've always seen the sense in staying one step behind, playing on high but not maximum, and saving the cash.

Which is why I'm happy with the 2600 iMac. It plays modern games well at medium - high settings. I'm not interested in maximum settings or having 100FPS.

Yes, the iMac is not a hardcore gaming rig. But neither is it a poor machine games wise.

Fair enough, and I think your approach is sensible. The original poster specifically asked if they could play modern (serious) games, and mentioned Bioshock and Crysis. I think it's important to answer the actual question, rather than argue about games other posters like?

Incidentally the 2400XT (I know you have the 2600HD which is a bit better) is more like a $50 card, which is also a false economy. Like the 440mx or the FX5200 or even the dreaded GeForce 2MX, these thing are just marketing gimmicks, but are pretty awful bits of hardware. They're pretty much there so OEMs can sell entry level computers and market them to people who want to play games. Afterall, even the FX5200 is better than an Intel Integrated solution... just.

It is one thing to buy a $400 card 12 months later for 25% of the price, and another thing to buy an already outdated entry level card that never cut it in the 1st place. I'd much rather buy the 12 month old 7900GTX for $120 of ebay than have a new 2600HD.

PS - The iMac is a great machine and will play 99.999% of all games exceptionally well. Just not DX10 games... and not the games mentioned in the opening post and there will be games in 2008 and 2009 that will really struggle to run, especially on the entry iMac (2400XT).

I respect your opinion too and your post, it was actually interesting reading the different opinions.

 

[Alexis]

I agree about the 2400. There's no getting away from the fact that it is a poor card and a waste of money when you can get so much better for not much more.

If I was in the market for buying a new GPU for a PC, I wouldn't even consider the 2600 either. But it is a decent enough workhouse for today's games.

Tomorrow's game's are something else I agree, but then again I've seen some pretty poor DX10 benchmarks even with the heftiest cards out there.

I'll stick to WinXP and DX 9 for gaming for the time being. In 2009 I'll probably buy the next iMac and move to DX10 then. I doubt they'll be that many DX10 only games during 2008 to be honest.