Gaming on new iMac 24"

[armani]

Hi, few people asked me about gaming in other posts, so I can tell about few I tried.

I tried three games so far,not counting two-five year old ones, which did not work at all under boot camp.

Halo (for Mac) works OK, 1920x1200 res, I don't see any noticable lag, but sometime a little bit.

Two other ones are for PC, so I used Boot Camp.

One is Need For Speed Carbon: first of all I had to apply a hack to make it work wide screen, as the game does not support widescreen (I don't get it at all), the game plays OK, but if to apply all the max settings then it will lag.

Second is Call Of Duty 2 (demo). It is nice it has a native 1920x1200, but it lags and badly. I had to scale down to 1280x800 and it played smooth without noticable lag. But I noticed that when I turned on "force Direct 7" it played OK on 1920x1200.

Now, please tell me, the game is one year or two old, requires 64 MB video card and it plays that bad on such new video card? I read somewhere that this video card is great for new games and not for the old ones, but I doubt it very much. I hope new drivers will help.

 

[CajunCARTFan]

I just hope it will play Grand Prix Legends.

 

[gcortega]

I have the 20" running Vista through bootcamp. I have Half Life 2, Counter strike and day of defeat running perfectly with no lag. The games look great as well.

 

[SolrFlare]

Keep in mind the Source engine is far more CPU dependent than GPU dependent. So, you should expect better performance on HL2 and source engine games. More GPU dependent engines, like the ones mentioned by the OP definitely take a more noticeable hit.

 

[Haoshiro]

Now, please tell me, the game is one year or two old, requires 64 MB video card and it plays that bad on such new video card? I read somewhere that this video card is great for new games and not for the old ones, but I doubt it very much. I hope new drivers will help.

It's because you are running the games in such high resolution.

If you look at benchmarks, most brand new top-tier cards have problems running new games at resolutions like that. The 8800 Ultra can just muster 30 fps in Oblivion on those settings (see here).

As you raise the resolution the amount of pixels on the screen go up exponentially. Such resolutions require a lot of bandwidth, even in older games.

Keep in mind even 1280x720 is considered "HD". That's one of the reasons I chose the 20", it has a less demanding native resolution (although still quite high, at 1680x1050).

 

[Haoshiro]

Keep in mind the Source engine is far more CPU dependent than GPU dependent. So, you should expect better performance on HL2 and source engine games. More GPU dependent engines, like the ones mentioned by the OP definitely take a more noticeable hit.

Which could be good news, since I've heard that TF2/Half-Life 2: Episode 2 will be running on an updated version of the engine that supports multiple-cores. That should further help these iMacs.

 

[Gerwin]

I just hope it will play Grand Prix Legends.

Me too!
GPLGPLGPLGPLGPL, woohoo, I want to play GPL again Please let me play GPL!
Well, I guess a 2007 imac is able to play a 1998 game.

 

[armani]

I have the 20" running Vista through bootcamp. I have Half Life 2, Counter strike and day of defeat running perfectly with no lag. The games look great as well.

Your native resolution is lower than 24". I am sure the games I tried would run fine on lower resolution.

 

[armani]

It's because you are running the games in such high resolution.

If you look at benchmarks, most brand new top-tier cards have problems running new games at resolutions like that. The 8800 Ultra can just muster 30 fps in Oblivion on those settings (see here).

As you raise the resolution the amount of pixels on the screen go up exponentially. Such resolutions require a lot of bandwidth, even in older games.

Keep in mind even 1280x720 is considered "HD". That's one of the reasons I chose the 20", it has a less demanding native resolution (although still quite high, at 1680x1050).

You are right. That was what I thought when picking up 24". as I knew I would have problems with native resolution. So yes, 20 " is better in this respect, but other than games the screen is great. But I bought not just for games and my son is fine with lower res. But I have to tel you, when I looked at the picture at COD2 at 1920x1200, it looked so real, dirt on wheel looked pretty much real. But like I said, when I forced to use Direct7 it was working smooth. Do you think the driver updates would help?

 

[armani]

I installed Call of Duty 2 Demo for. It runs well on max settings, at 1920x1200. But what I noticed, is that it looks very much like when I forced the game to Direct 7 in windows, the picture is the same. I guess that is why it runs fine. But still looks good. I suppose that the qaulity of PC games are better than mac ones? And Mac games are more expensive than pc, so I guess I will go for PC.