Dragon Age ATI HD2600 vs Nvidia 320m

[Jamovik]

I hope this is the right part of the forum....

I have ordered Dragon Age: Ultimate Edition and I'm wondering if I should install it on my 2008 iMac or my new 2010 MacBook Pro 13".

Here are the specs for the two computers:

iMac 20" 2008:

2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 800MHz RAM
ATI HD2600 with 256MB dedicated RAM

MacBook Pro 13" 2010:

2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 1066MHz RAM
Nvidia 320m with shared memory

The iMac has a 7200RPM hard drive while the MacBook Pro has 5400RPM

Which one will run the game best? I have Windows Ultimate 64bit on both.

Have anyone of you tried running it on one of the Macs mentioned above?

 

[flopticalcube]

It'll be close. The MacBook may have the edge.

 

[Jamovik]

Interesting, then it might not be worth installing it on my MacBook Pro. I only have the 250gb standard hard drive in it and my Windows partition is only 40gb, so it's probably better to install it on my iMac which have a 500gb hard drive.

Any one else have any idea what I can expect in performance with those cards?

 

[Cougarcat]

I have both of those computers. My iMac seems to run games better (especially Starcraft 2) but that's comparing OS X. I haven't installed Windows on my MBP and don't plan to. The 2600 is a better card, but the resolution of the iMac is higher, so it's kind of a tossup.

Incidentally, I will be buying DA: Ultimate as soon as it appears on Steam, so I hope it runs well on the 2600 too!

 

[Jamovik]

Thank you for the reply, Cougarcat. What other games have you tried running? What kind of settings can you run Starcraft 2 on?

 

[Cougarcat]

The only demanding game I've tried on the MBP is SC2. Patch 1.1 seemed to hurt performance on the ATI side. I get 25-30 FPS on medium on both, with the MBP usually closer to 30 and the iMac closer to 25.

In windows with the iMac, I get 32-40 FPS.

 

[edddeduck]

I would recommend the 320M over the HD2600. We have a few new games in development and the 320M can play them smoothly with a few options turned on, the ATI 2600 being a few years older is a min spec all settings turned down on the same game. The HD2600 is not a bad card just 2 to 3 years older than the 320M.

FYI when on a laptop/mini getting a faster HD makes a huge difference to performance as the built in drives are often quite slow compared to the same hardware in an iMac.

Edwin

 

[jakeguy99]

It really depends if you are playing on OSX or Windows in my opinion. If windows I would go for the macbook pro since nvidia graphics drivers are much better than ATI when installing them from their website. Overall it is really close, and may not make that much of a difference to begin with.