For gaming, is 395X worth it?

[Huddy]

I think I'll trust a few hundred Apple and AMD engineers over a bloke on a forum who has been 'dealing with GPUs for 10 years' (whatever that means).

I'm guessing they do a bit of testing to avoid losing millions of dollars in 12 months when all the computers they've sold melt. Applecare is redundant in the UK anyway because legislation covers you for 6 years.

Heat kills components of that there is no question, how fast that happens depends on the devices usage. A GPU running at 100c is at or near it's thermal limits which will eventually lead to damage due to heat stress, ideally you'd want to prevent the device operating at this temperature for long periods of time, to extend it's lifespan.

Your average iMac user will probably never encounter a problem, will get 5 or so years of use and upgrade, Apple knows this and will likely test around this criteria. For those that game daily for hours with titles that stress the GPU your chances of having a hardware failure are increased.

That 6 year legislation is great as long as you can prove there was a inherent fault at the time of purchase.

 

[codger]

Heat kills components of that there is no question, how fast that happens depends on the devices usage. A GPU running at 100c is at or near it's thermal limits which will eventually lead to damage due to heat stress, ideally you'd want to prevent the device operating at this temperature for long periods of time, to extend it's lifespan.

Your average iMac user will probably never encounter a problem, will get 5 or so years of use and upgrade, Apple knows this and will likely test around this criteria. For those that game daily for hours with titles that stress the GPU your chances of having a hardware failure are increased.

That 6 year legislation is great as long as you can prove there was a inherent fault at the time of purchase.

 

[MandiMac]

I invite all of you to my experience thread with i5/M395X/512. Have a look and decide for yourselves.

 

[AlifTheUnseen]

I think I'll trust a few hundred Apple and AMD engineers over a bloke on a forum who has been 'dealing with GPUs for 10 years' (whatever that means).

I'm guessing they do a bit of testing to avoid losing millions of dollars in 12 months when all the computers they've sold melt. Applecare is redundant in the UK anyway because legislation covers you for 6 years.

I know I am late, but I suggest you should mind your manners - have you googled macvidcards before writing?

In case you have superior knowledge or experience, come forth and offer a sound alternative way to analyse what's going on and how to evaluate all this.

Personally, I think the Apple Mac hardware engineers are not at all happy with the current state of affairs. I cannot believe that a proud engineer is satisfied to have a product that A) starts to throttle as soon as your throwing more than email checking at the top-of-the-line-aio-desktop, and, B) people are afraid to turn it on because of the risk for thermal death.

I guess the Apple engineers are as unhappy with the thermal properties of the iMac as we are. But that's how it is as Apple is ruled by designers and operational managers instead of technologists. There might be benefits, but the iMac is a physical example to the contrary (at least in this characteristic).

 

[Nirurin]

I know I am late, but I suggest you should mind your manners - have you googled macvidcards before writing?

In case you have superior knowledge or experience, come forth and offer a sound alternative way to analyse what's going on and how to evaluate all this.

Personally, I think the Apple Mac hardware engineers are not at all happy with the current state of affairs. I cannot believe that a proud engineer is satisfied to have a product that A) starts to throttle as soon as your throwing more than email checking at the top-of-the-line-aio-desktop, and, B) people are afraid to turn it on because of the risk for thermal death.

I guess the Apple engineers are as unhappy with the thermal properties of the iMac as we are. But that's how it is as Apple is ruled by designers and operational managers instead of technologists. There might be benefits, but the iMac is a physical example to the contrary (at least in this characteristic).

Well so far I know of a few people using their new 5k imacs, playing games on ultra settings in 1080p, 1440p and in some cases full 5k (on games like LoL and WoW, admittedly), and they are currently not on any kind of fire... and are also not experiencing any throttling. Their fans aren't even hitting max RPM.

The only thing so far thats causing max fan speeds is long term encoding on intensive media programs like premier/fcp/ae.

So if this is what you call one step above 'mail checking', then you have a pretty weird workflow.

I'm not saying the new iMac is perfect, personally I'd prefer a less slim form factor in exchange for a better graphics option and cooling performance. But I do think you need to learn not to exaggerate quite so much, it just sounds silly.

 

[AlifTheUnseen]

I would agree with you if what you say is universally acknowledged. However, if my memory doesn't play tricks, I have read of examples of massive heat generation just by watching movies, somewhere in the huge throttling thread in this forum. Maybe these are single cases, maybe not. That's more demanding than email checking, agreed, but much less demanding than the workloads you have given.

There is widespread indication / evidence that the temperature can raise to very high degrees, there is evidence for throttling. There is also a fraction of RiMac users claiming to not have or notice any such problems. Well, nothing is easy nowadays. ;-)

From an engineering point of view - if the throttling is indeed occurring reproducibly and systematically under certain non-extreme workloads, then that's the result of either
- bad case / design, wrongly configured heat dissipation scheme and/or suboptimal ventilation layout and performance, and/or
- wrong components for the given device case / cooling.

I agree that the iMac is no hardware focussed on gaming, but the iMac is a general-purpose machine. As such, I expect that gaming is indeed an accepted use case. I wish that I may use the iMac also as a gaming device sans fear of roasting its intestines.

After all, Apple earns quite some money for the CPU and GPU upgrades. And a number of those are bought with gaming in mind, don't you agree?

 

[DareDevil01]

I plan on getting an iMac for audio production, so I will be getting the i7 CPU, but the GPU is meaningless for audio. However, I also want to be able to play modern games at the best possible settings for as many years as possible. Using the iMac would be cheaper than building a separate gaming rig, assuming the iMac can handle it. How much of a difference will the 395X make over the 395 for gaming? My original thought was to go all out since the computer is so expensive anyway, but if I'm not going to be able to play modern games on high settings with over 30 FPS even with the 395X, I'd rather just save $250, take the standard 395 GPU, and build a gaming PC separate.

Any thoughts on this?

I wouldn't worry about the slight GPU upgrade just to get 10fps extra, and put that money towards a dedicated gaming rig, not only will you get better gaming performance from a full size graphics card like a 390x or 970, but you'll also easily be able to overclock them and there will be no thermal issues or throttling. I don't think the 395x will be much of a step up from the 295x (in fact in some tests the 395x performed worse than 2014 models 295x) as the 200 and 300 series are very much the same except for some power controllers and slightly better efficiency.
here is a good link for looking at relative graphics performance between the 295x and 395x
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/11/mini-review-test-driving-a-fully-loaded-4000-27-inch-5k-imac/2/