2010-Gen iMac and Gaming?

[Rookie1986]

Hey Guys,

Before we start I know that an iMac isn't ideal for gaming, in fact I have a separate gaming system for such purpose but my Fiancé and I both enjoy playing WoW and up until now we have only been able to game one at a time.

After taking my old iMac back to Apple today and them classing it as a write off I will be getting one of the new 2010 21.5" iMacs some time in the next two weeks, what I was wanting to know is how would one of these systems fair against the games that my Fiancé likes to play (WoW, The Sims 3 etc etc - Ran in OSX not Windows)?

I'm not really up-to-date with todays systems, processors, graphics cards etc so if someone is able to compare the performance of the new 2010 iMacs against what I already game on then that would be much appreciated. At present I am using an Intel C2D E8500 with a nVidia GeForce GTX 260.

Thanks a lot,
/Rookie

 

[biggd]

Hey Guys,

Before we start I know that an iMac isn't ideal for gaming, in fact I have a separate gaming system for such purpose but my Fiancé and I both enjoy playing WoW and up until now we have only been able to game one at a time.

After taking my old iMac back to Apple today and them classing it as a write off I will be getting one of the new 2010 21.5" iMacs some time in the next two weeks, what I was wanting to know is how would one of these systems fair against the games that my Fiancé likes to play (WoW, The Sims 3 etc etc - Ran in OSX not Windows)?

I'm not really up-to-date with todays systems, processors, graphics cards etc so if someone is able to compare the performance of the new 2010 iMacs against what I already game on then that would be much appreciated. At present I am using an Intel C2D E8500 with a nVidia GeForce GTX 260.

Thanks a lot,
/Rookie

Those games will play fine

 

[TMRaven]

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-4670.13881.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-5730.23825.0.html

The first link is the mobiltiy 4670, which is in the baseline iMac.
The second link is the mobility 5730, which is in the upper end 21.5 inch iMac and baseline 27 inch iMac.

Do note, most of those benchmarks are with laptop resolutions and under windows. The native resolution of the iMac is 1920x1080, so you can expect 5 or so less fps on average.

Also, if you plan on gaming under osx, you can expect even lower fps on average.

 

[Jim738]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

I use my mac to play games including Warcraft and starcraft on a 27" 2010 i5 iMac. On full native resolution with all settings on ultra I get 50-70 fps even in a busy dalaran. Starcraft I play on full res and it works fine too.

 

[Freis968]

Before we start I know that an iMac isn't ideal for gaming,

I totally disagree! My iMac runs COD MW2 like a dream! My daughter plays WOW on her 2006 iMac w/ 2GB of RAM with no problem whatsoever.

 

[DanielCoffey]

I play WoW on a late-2007 iMac 24" 4Gb and with sunshafts off and water low I consistently get 60fps+ with about half that in Dalaran so the new iMac should be great for her use.

 

[Ubuntu]

Hey Guys,

Before we start I know that an iMac isn't ideal for gaming, in fact I have a separate gaming system for such purpose but my Fiancé and I both enjoy playing WoW and up until now we have only been able to game one at a time.

After taking my old iMac back to Apple today and them classing it as a write off I will be getting one of the new 2010 21.5" iMacs some time in the next two weeks, what I was wanting to know is how would one of these systems fair against the games that my Fiancé likes to play (WoW, The Sims 3 etc etc - Ran in OSX not Windows)?

I'm not really up-to-date with todays systems, processors, graphics cards etc so if someone is able to compare the performance of the new 2010 iMacs against what I already game on then that would be much appreciated. At present I am using an Intel C2D E8500 with a nVidia GeForce GTX 260.

Thanks a lot,
/Rookie

They'll be fine. My friend who has the iMac 27 inch 2010 model says that WoW and SC perform better on a native bootcamp installation of Windows 7, getting 60fps in most active situations in WoW (except Dalaran ) whereas the mac version drops down to 40, with settings maxed out except for shadows. I don't know if I'd mind that much but still.

EDIT: Just read the other comments. Seems like there is something wrong with my friend's iMac, he has the i7 model I believe so it should be running better.

 

[iMacN00b]

The 27" i7 is not too bad for games. I uploaded some films to help folk like yourself.

1080p 60fps Black Ops (Max settings)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihlG2ge8hWY

2560 x 1440 50fps Black Ops (Max settings with AA reduced)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTX87OLL1C4

Crysis benchmark:
2560 x 1440 Native resolution on 27" IPS screen
Shaders set to "Medium"
All other settings at "Very High"
Running hotfix version 1.2.1
Average FPS about 28. Bench mark from 25-30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VcZkP6LrkY

----------------------

Conclusion? Most of the PC games are "Console Ports" and thus you can boost the visuals textures and resolution without too much trouble. Games that really punish the GPU can be played at 1080p with near to max settings. I hardly see a game use more than 20% of the i7 and never more than 1.2GB of the 8GB ram.

I need my iMac for productivity, but was amused that gaming performance was this good. Being a console gamer I am used to 30fps, so 2560 x 1440 at 40-50fps is quite a jump!

In 18 months the new generation of consoles will arrive, and this will be when the imac starts to struggle to do the games justice. At this stage, if I want to carry on gaming, I will either get a new console or a Mini-DP compliant GPU and PC and connect it to the 27".