Waiting for Apple to release Windows GPU drivers....*totally* sucks if you're into gaming.
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Gaming on M395X: I'm satisfied
- Thread starter MandiMac
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My problem with the iMac line has become not so much what you get out of the box with a top end new 27" model but how rapidly the system ages in terms of keeping up with new releases given the high cost of it.
As a case in point, my last 27" iMac with close to top of the line specs has been in my possession for just a year and a half now. When I took delivery of it from Apple as a replacement for a failed mid-2011 27" iMac which kept melting itself literally, as in even the glass over the screen was being damaged (I am not making this up) that was the most current model available.
Fast forward just a year and a half later to the recently ended Steam Winter Sale. I bought Shadows of Mordor, Company of Heroes 2, Homeworld 2 Remastered and Alien Isolation among other less demanding games. Every one of these has to be run at way under native 1440p resolution on this system to ensure frame rates stay above 30 FPS consistently and every one of them has to have various settings reduced. In other words, just a year and a half old I've hit the end of the line already in terms of what I can consider purchasing for new games for this computer.
Consider also this: when I purchased a top of the line 27" iMac because I wanted gaming capability with my Mac goodness, it ran me just over two grand complete with Apple Care brand new. Fast forward to now and a top of the line iMac has risen in price by roughly a thousand dollars in a relatively short period of time as computer tech goes. That is a lot of money for many people including myself. That is why my next Mac will not be a 27" iMac but rather a Mac I purchase with all the apps I like to run kept in mind and whatever gaming that system happens to be capable of will be good enough particularly in light of a large library of older titles I own which would run on anything really even now. So I'm considering whether I want a MacBook Air or maybe a Mini but probably a MacBook Air for a variety of reasons I won't bore you with here. The money saved there will easily cover a brand new XBox One Elite Edition (first console with hybrid drive for improved performance, etc.) and quite a number of games to play on it besides. That box for 500 bucks will last a whole lot longer than any Mac I could buy so far as gaming goes and everything released for it will "just work" on the first day and for as long as the thing starts up unlike an Apple computer which has its operating system upgraded annually which inevitably breaks games.
Case in point about game breakage: It was not very long ago that Aspyr finally implemented skirmish in the Company of Heroes game which many folks had wished for but now beyond Mavericks, the game is broken. Aspyr unfortunately no longer has the rights to work on the title so that's the end of that game. The list goes on believe me but I won't spend time on that here. Suffice to say stability on this platform is more problematic than either Windows or certainly consoles. As such I find it pretty difficult now to become enthused about any Mac when it comes to spending money on games which may be broken next OS upgrade permanently.
It is worthy of note that with my own little solution to this issue both my Mac and my console ought to be good for 5 plus years at a total cost well under a decked out 27" iMac. That longevity and the associated monetary savings is rather substantial, more than enough to pay for all sorts of games and probably a lot of music and movies too not to mention dining out!
If you are okay with this stuff that's fine too. I am not here to tell anybody else how to live but I did think a little reality check in a discussion about spending three grand to play games on a Mac was probably in order. Don't get me wrong either. I love Apple products. I really do. I love using a Mac for everything including some games but I will never consider it a primary place to play again unless there is some really dramatic change which I cannot see being in the cards at all given Apple's present and planned focus areas.
As a case in point, my last 27" iMac with close to top of the line specs has been in my possession for just a year and a half now. When I took delivery of it from Apple as a replacement for a failed mid-2011 27" iMac which kept melting itself literally, as in even the glass over the screen was being damaged (I am not making this up) that was the most current model available.
Fast forward just a year and a half later to the recently ended Steam Winter Sale. I bought Shadows of Mordor, Company of Heroes 2, Homeworld 2 Remastered and Alien Isolation among other less demanding games. Every one of these has to be run at way under native 1440p resolution on this system to ensure frame rates stay above 30 FPS consistently and every one of them has to have various settings reduced. In other words, just a year and a half old I've hit the end of the line already in terms of what I can consider purchasing for new games for this computer.
Consider also this: when I purchased a top of the line 27" iMac because I wanted gaming capability with my Mac goodness, it ran me just over two grand complete with Apple Care brand new. Fast forward to now and a top of the line iMac has risen in price by roughly a thousand dollars in a relatively short period of time as computer tech goes. That is a lot of money for many people including myself. That is why my next Mac will not be a 27" iMac but rather a Mac I purchase with all the apps I like to run kept in mind and whatever gaming that system happens to be capable of will be good enough particularly in light of a large library of older titles I own which would run on anything really even now. So I'm considering whether I want a MacBook Air or maybe a Mini but probably a MacBook Air for a variety of reasons I won't bore you with here. The money saved there will easily cover a brand new XBox One Elite Edition (first console with hybrid drive for improved performance, etc.) and quite a number of games to play on it besides. That box for 500 bucks will last a whole lot longer than any Mac I could buy so far as gaming goes and everything released for it will "just work" on the first day and for as long as the thing starts up unlike an Apple computer which has its operating system upgraded annually which inevitably breaks games.
Case in point about game breakage: It was not very long ago that Aspyr finally implemented skirmish in the Company of Heroes game which many folks had wished for but now beyond Mavericks, the game is broken. Aspyr unfortunately no longer has the rights to work on the title so that's the end of that game. The list goes on believe me but I won't spend time on that here. Suffice to say stability on this platform is more problematic than either Windows or certainly consoles. As such I find it pretty difficult now to become enthused about any Mac when it comes to spending money on games which may be broken next OS upgrade permanently.
It is worthy of note that with my own little solution to this issue both my Mac and my console ought to be good for 5 plus years at a total cost well under a decked out 27" iMac. That longevity and the associated monetary savings is rather substantial, more than enough to pay for all sorts of games and probably a lot of music and movies too not to mention dining out!
If you are okay with this stuff that's fine too. I am not here to tell anybody else how to live but I did think a little reality check in a discussion about spending three grand to play games on a Mac was probably in order. Don't get me wrong either. I love Apple products. I really do. I love using a Mac for everything including some games but I will never consider it a primary place to play again unless there is some really dramatic change which I cannot see being in the cards at all given Apple's present and planned focus areas.
The thing to remember is that any imac thats new or even some of the older ones, are more powerful than the xbox one/ps4...
The secret is putting your games on 1080p and sitting back further from the imac with a wireless logitech controller. The gaming experience will be more enjoyable and you wont even notice the lowered visuals.
This is what I plan on doing.
The secret is putting your games on 1080p and sitting back further from the imac with a wireless logitech controller. The gaming experience will be more enjoyable and you wont even notice the lowered visuals.
This is what I plan on doing.
I was aware when buying the mid-2011 iMac how the 6970m compared to midrange desktop GPUs at the time and I was fine with that. I never owned better than a midrange desktop GPU when I owned Windows PCs so it was not really any different other than I did not expect to play much at 1440p. It was fine too and ran anything current at the time at decent settings. The same was true with the replacement iMac when I got it.
Just the same, your point is well taken sadly. I should have known better than to expect much in the way of longevity with a mobile GPU that only offers midrange performance at best vs desktop options when the system is brand new. I also most importantly should have given more thought to what not being able to upgrade that GPU was going to mean.
The thing is, I had hoped to milk 3 years out of a system and understood in the final year I'd start hitting its limits but with a library of many less demanding titles I figured that would not be a major issue. Then Apple upped the ante to the tune of a grand for the next system and that more than anything is why it is game over here and that was basically the point of my post. Two grand every 3 years I could live with and midrange performance I could live with. A price increase of one thousand dollars I cannot live with. Lastly, having thought more carefully about all of this and learned from the experience I realize that I would have been better off doing what I plan to now to begin with but hindsight is 20/20 as they say. I wanted one system to do it all but Apple does not sell that at least not in a form I feel is worthwhile to me.
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I don't care about the tech or the specs. I care about the experience and if you've played any recent AAA game on XBox One or a PS4 you'd quickly realize there is no comparison between the smooth trouble free experience there on a large screen and trying to run that same AAA game on any current Mac short of perhaps a Mac Pro which I sure hope nobody blows money on specifically for gaming. An iMac cannot compare to a console most especially with the passage of time. When you experience both there's really no contest when it comes to value in terms of AAA gaming that's for sure.
Personally I feel it's frustrating that Apple can't care enough to release more or less a "Mac Pro Light" or "Mac Medium" or whatever with an i7 and desktop graphics cards. Sell it at the same pricepoint as the iMac but without the display.
Let the user choose: AIO with Mobile GPU or Tower with Desktop GPU
I've owned a 2007 24" iMac and a 2011 27" iMac, both with more or less full specifications when it comes to RAM, GPU and CPU (and on the cheap side when it comes to storage), the GPU on both the next best version.
The only thing the iMac has been lacking is gaming performance, and I've been OK with that as I knew from the get-go that it was so. But this time around I'm seriously thinking about buying a PC or even an old Mac Pro 5.1 to be able to run a decent graphics card. I seldom play games, maybe 10 hours or so per year (and I'm not exaggerating how little I play, it seriously is that little), but the few hours I actually play games are when some new game in a series I've actually liked i released. I do want the option to actually install a new AAA game and be able to run it without being able to get a coffee during each frame at something other than the absolutely minimum settings.
That the 2015 retina iMac more or less has the exact GPU performance as the previous 2-3 models or so is fascinating and irritating at the same time. Why ship a 6700k with a GPU that is more or less a rebadged version of lasts years model, which in turn also was a rebadged/reengineered version of older Mobile GPUs?
On the iPhones and iPads apple brags about "best on market" GPU performance, but on their desktops their GPU choice is more or less a running joke in the gaming community (even in the Mac community one can hear remarks about how bad Apple is to put decent GPUs in their computers).
I'm not switching back to a PC, I've had nothing but Macs as my primary computers since 2005 but this time is the first time I seriously feel as no Apple option satisfies my wants and needs (but no PC do either).
iMac 27" Retina with a decent GPU and I'd click "Buy now" as soon as the page loaded. like the GTX980 notebook-version (not the GTX980M) released this fall, if it can be used in quite thin laptops it would surely fit in an 27" iMac.
I agree - Apple is selling subpar entry models - the real stuff is with a number of options (more RAM (not from Apple), SSD instead of HDD, better CPU/GPU) and that's where it hurts, costwise.
Personally, I just bought the top end 27" and I am quite happy with it (HW2 Remastered runs greatly, albeit the new GUI is very very annoying!). It replaced a mid-2010 middle-speced 21" iMac. I plan to change my selling/buying strategy - I will probably try to sell it in 2 years (iMacs have great reselling value), with still 1 year of Apple Care left - I guess I'll be able to get a decent prize, which will help me buy the top-end in 2 years... Don't know whether this works out, but I think I'll upgrade my stuff more frequently from now on...
Funny you would mention that. I've been toying with the idea of selling the iMac I have now and applying the funds to its replacement which I'd hope to get 5 years or so out of because gaming would not be any kind of focus for it. Whatever it could do, old games, etc., great. However, as I mentioned above I'll be going console this time around for the serious gaming and I'll probably get around 5 years out of that box too given all the titles already out for it that I'd like to play, the new 360 compatibility that features a bunch more and of course the continuing releases each year. I have a lot of time for this stuff but even my time is limited.
I probably ought to sell this late-2013 iMac while it is still worth something although alternatively I guess I could just keep it until it dies. That would work almost as well except I'm thinking I would enjoy the mobility a MacBook Air would give me for a number of reasons even though travel with it would be rare. It would be quite nice to have when I do though. The thing that's really appealing to me is that i like the idea of camping out in the living room with it when I want to or possibly the kitchen when it is morning coffee time, etc. For me who enjoys a lot of classic games the smaller screen would actually be a plus where they'd look better too. Stretching those to huge resolutions is not pretty even though I'm not too fussy about that for something special. Nicer looks are still a plus of course. I'm thinking classics like Ultima VII or old Might and Magic games (RPG and TBS), etc.
Anyway, I should stop here about the alternatives I like, etc. as this thread is about iMacs. I just was tossing in my view about having tried this I found it more expensive as an option than I felt it was worth given alternatives to it. Three grand is an awful lot of money for a system that only delivers midrange GPU performance when it is brand new out of the box and it cannot be upgraded which means that as i just saw, in less than two years you have to make substantial compromises to play a new release from the two best porting companies for Mac. I just can't deal with value that poor from a gaming perspective as much as I too would like one system that could do it all. Apple just isn't interested in offering that it seems. The only people this really works for I think are those with enough disposable income to throw at it without feeling it I guess. That would not include me.
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Not satisfied running my Trainz (TANE) game in OS X on the M395X, with GPU temperature reaching 99 degrees C and no way to cap frame rates. Temperatures are lower when running in Boot Camp Windows, but then I have to shut OS X down.
So, I've given up on my iMac for gaming, am building a gaming PC (Z170/GTX970) right now. My iMac is still my best Mac ever, just not for gaming.
So, I've given up on my iMac for gaming, am building a gaming PC (Z170/GTX970) right now. My iMac is still my best Mac ever, just not for gaming.
Why does it bother you that it reaches 99°C? If there was any problems with that according to AMD, Apple wouldn't allow the temperature to rise that high...
It sounds like a hurricane.
Are you referencing the guy above that has had multiple fried GPU's from heat......?
Assuming v-sync is on (since you didn't reference anything else) that is 10-15% WORST case scenario. That is significant and certainly worth the effort of gaming in bootcamp.
Sorry I just quickly did the math in my head. More accurately its 8-17% (using your 5-10 fps with a 60 fps vsync cap).
Or were you disagreeing that is a significant amount?
I was disagreeing that it was a significant amount!
There are hundreds of threads on here over the years about gaming on Mac and a lot of them feature the ongoing discussion about Bootcamp vs native Mac.
There are 2 views on this. firstly, there are those who decry any gaming on the Mac and say that Bootcamp is the only way to go. There are others, like me, who would only use Bootcamp when absolutely necessary, i.e. when there is no Mac version of a game in prospect, e.g. Witcher 3.
The reasons for these 2 positions are this.
Some people on these forums are quite obsessed with things like fps and cpu/gpu temps etc. and want to squeeze the most out of their gaming. Therefore they do most of their gaming in Windows Bootcamp. Fair enough.
Others, like me, buy Macs because they want to work in the OS X environment at all times and are prepared to sacrifice some fps etc. for the sake of remaining in OS X. With Feral games, for example, you are only ever a 4-finger swipe away from your desktop, then do some other stuff, then 4-finger swipe back to where you were in the game.
I personally, can't be bothered to boot in and out of OS X and Windows to get a few more fps, but that's my choice, and I totally understand those who have the opposite view. By the way, it's not the few seconds or minutes that it takes to reboot that's important, it's the break in continuity with everything else I do on my Mac.
Again, only a personal opinion, but I doubt if most people can really see the benefit of playing at 50-60fps compared to 40-50fps. Now, if the comparison was 20-30 against 10-20, then that would be a different matter!
As things stand, I am happy to accept the compromise in fps for the convenience of remaining in OS X, others are not.
I very happily play many games @ 1440p with Ultra settings on my iMac, and that is good enough for me.
Just a follow-up: I finished bolting together my new game-PC, and first game impressions are that I should have done this a long time ago.
Anybody worried about this being a first step towards Windows for regular computer use -- try reversing the scroll direction in Windows to match the OS X way...
inverted scroll is default on my dell latitude and takes a couple of minutes to fix on other machines as well... Not really brain surgery.
So there are people that want the absolute max performance where performance matters.
And there is you that is prepared to sacrifice that performance merely for the sake of running a particular OS.
Are you sure they are the ones that are obsessed with something?
I play homeworld remastered in 5k and it's usually 40fps with max settings. I can keep it at 60fps by turning a few of the effects down. I play witcher 3 at 1080p and ultra settings (with hairworks off and foliage distance set to high) and I'm usually close to 60fps without many drops.
This is a high end laptop gpu. It's a bummer there's not a better option but honestly this serves my needs quite well.
After returning my iMac with m395 and fusion drive being a little disappointed in the m395 performance I built a gaming ITX machine. I ran it for a month and although the performance was amazing I missed all the little things from the iMac so bought the m395x with 512gb ssd. I am much happier with this combo and the gaming PC will be hitting eBay soon.
I have decided that performance ins't everything and I am happy to drop future titles to 1080p medium settings if necessary. But currently playing BF4 @ 1440p high settings with 60+ fps and Black ops 3 at 1080p high settings with fps capped to 60.
I have decided that performance ins't everything and I am happy to drop future titles to 1080p medium settings if necessary. But currently playing BF4 @ 1440p high settings with 60+ fps and Black ops 3 at 1080p high settings with fps capped to 60.
That's great but let me know how things are going when that system is two years old and you are trying to run The Witcher 4 or The Elder Scrolls VI or Fallout 5, etc.
Your post completely ignores my point which was about longevity. You are telling me stuff about a 2015 system playing 2015 games.
It does strike me as laughable that you can pay upwards of £2000 for a mac and Apple can't even give you a GPU better than something you could buy off amazon for £80