27" vs 21.5" iMac

[agile460]

Hey all,

I was hoping to get everyone's thoughts on whether its worth it to go from the 1499 iMac to the 1999. My main concern is game performance, probably via bootcamp. I know the 1999's card is much better, but the screen is also enormous. I'm not looking to do superhardcore gaming (obviously) but I'd like to be able to run halflife 2, empire total war, and red alert 3 if possible. Will the upgrade to the 4850 + i5 be significantly better?

Also, my old laptop is a 2gHz dual core with nVidia 7800 go GTX. How much of a performance difference will I expect, if any?

Thanks (and yes..I already read the other thread on this)

 

[sfmountainbiker]

My experience with Mac's has always been that if you want to be able to do gaming, you need the highest-end model GPU available.

However, I just returned from the Apple Store in downtown SF, and the new 21.5" iMac gave me the impression of "that's a great looking iMac". The new 27" was more like "holy *****, is that a AIO computer!?"

I would go with the 27" with the 4850, and probably lean towards the quad-core since future games will likely utilize this technology.

 

[agile460]

I totally agree about the screen size, I feel like even though it'll have better graphics performance it'll be hard to even see the whole game I'm playing on the 27-incher, haha.