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Gaming performance with the new 8800 GS?

J

Jack Flash

macrumors 65816
Original poster
May 8, 2007
1,160
7
Just curious what sorts of results users have had. The Aple Games forum is pretty slow.

Specifically, using either a 2.8 or 3.06 with the 8800 GTS, has anyone tried Warcraft III (Of course it'll fly), The Orange Box, Bioshock or others?
 
Jack Flash said:
Just curious what sorts of results users have had. The Aple Games forum is pretty slow.

Specifically, using either a 2.8 or 3,06 with the 8800 GTS, has anyone tried Warcraft III (Of course it'll fly), The Orange Box, Bioshock or others?
Click to expand...

Macworld wasn't too impressed. But then again I've never had any problem running any of the games you mention above at decent graphics settings and native 1920x1200 resolution on my now second generation 2.4GHz 24" iMac. :p
 
3.06 ghz with 4 gb of ram and 8800 GS, I had Bioshock demo, Company of Heroes Demo, and Half-Life 2 Demo, all running at Highest settings with 1920x1200 at 60+ fps, World of Warcraft with all settings maxed ran at 70-80 fps

Crysis Demo ran at high medium (most things high, a two things medium) at about 30 fps, ultra high unavailible due to lack of dx10 in xp.

wasn't sure about the driver though, XP said that it was for an newer system but seemed to run fine, couldn't find the right update through nvidia.com
 
SaSaSushi said:
Macworld wasn't too impressed. But then again I've never had any problem running any of the games you mention above at decent graphics settings and native 1920x1200 resolution on my now second generation 2.4GHz 24" iMac. :p
Click to expand...

The Macworld article focuses on games for OSX, and pretty much ignores playing games in Windows. Similarly, the frame rates in the table at the end are based on OSX. I'll be ordering one soon and, having not had access to a Windows gaming machine for more than three years, I'm looking forward to catching up with the world.

Morton
 
Is it me or did they totally miss that the Apple branded Geforce 8800 GS is actually a Geforce 8800M GTS?
 
SaSaSushi said:
Macworld wasn't too impressed. But then again I've never had any problem running any of the games you mention above at decent graphics settings and native 1920x1200 resolution on my now second generation 2.4GHz 24" iMac. :p
Click to expand...

I think Macworld seemed to be complaining more about the lack of native Mac games than the actual hardware capability of the machine.
 
James Howlett said:
3.06 ghz with 4 gb of ram and 8800 GS, I had Bioshock demo, Company of Heroes Demo, and Half-Life 2 Demo, all running at Highest settings with 1920x1200 at 60+ fps, World of Warcraft with all settings maxed ran at 70-80 fps

Crysis Demo ran at high medium (most things high, a two things medium) at about 30 fps, ultra high unavailible due to lack of dx10 in xp.

wasn't sure about the driver though, XP said that it was for an newer system but seemed to run fine, couldn't find the right update through nvidia.com
Click to expand...

That sounds great. I'm thinking about getting an iMac as a powerful help for my 12'' PB.

How does the MacBook Pro's GPU compare to the iMac's one?
 
more iMac 2008 results

Mac OS X Games on two different 2008 iMacs:

ETQW at 1920x1200 High
2600 Pro = 28 fps
8800 GS = 60 fps

Prey at 1920x1200 High
2600 Pro = 33 fps
8800 GS = 78 fps

Halo UB at 1920x1200 High Quality
2600 Pro = 64 fps
8800 GS = 127 fps

I say the 8800 GS is a no brainer for iMac gamers.
 
MortonH said:
The Macworld article focuses on games for OSX, and pretty much ignores playing games in Windows. Similarly, the frame rates in the table at the end are based on OSX. I'll be ordering one soon and, having not had access to a Windows gaming machine for more than three years, I'm looking forward to catching up with the world.

Morton
Click to expand...

Well, I didn't say I agreed with anything written in the article anyway. After all, like I said I enjoy Bootcamp gaming with my now superseded 2.4GHz 24" aluminum iMac and it's HD2600XT card. ;)
 
Barefeats has now published some test results, again playing in Mac OSX. It says the nVidia card doubles the frame rates. The games tested are getting 70+ fps at 1920 x 1200 with almost full settings. Fantastic!

Morton
 
MortonH said:
Barefeats has now published some test results, again playing in Mac OSX. It says the nVidia card doubles the frame rates. The games tested are getting 70+ fps at 1920 x 1200 with almost full settings. Fantastic!

Morton
Click to expand...

Great news indeed for gamers. But it wasn't all good news for the nVidia part in those benchmarks. The ATI HD2600XT actually outbenched the 8800GS in Core Image benchmarks (by about 22%). So at the moment it would not be a compelling choice for those who use Apple pro apps.

See also here.

LOL! I just noticed Barefeats posted those results above in this very thread. Anyway, as he said in his benchmark article I do think driver updates might close the performance gap for the 8800 in Core Image apps.
 
The Macworld article focuses on games for OSX, and pretty much ignores playing games in Windows
Click to expand...

Without these, any benchmarks are the equivalent of road testing a car on A roads, but not B roads or the motorway.
 
What are Core Image or Apple Pro Apps?

SaSaSushi said:
Great news indeed for gamers. But it wasn't all good news for the nVidia part in those benchmarks. The ATI HD2600XT actually outbenched the 8800GS in Core Image benchmarks (by about 22%). So at the moment it would not be a compelling choice for those who use Apple pro apps.

See also here.

LOL! I just noticed Barefeats posted those results above in this very thread. Anyway, as he said in his benchmark article I do think driver updates might close the performance gap for the 8800 in Core Image apps.
Click to expand...

I will be using my new Imac to create home movies with iMovie. Does iMovie use core apps or Apple Core Image apps? I want to get the video card that will provide me with the best and fastest results using iMovie. Can anyone answser my question? I am also wondering if the only real benefit of the Nvidia card is in playing games, why else would you spend $150 more to get this card?
 
Jagster222 said:
I will be using my new Imac to create home movies with iMovie. Does iMovie use core apps or Apple Core Image apps? I want to get the video card that will provide me with the best and fastest results using iMovie. Can anyone answser my question? I am also wondering if the only real benefit of the Nvidia card is in playing games, why else would you spend $150 more to get this card?
Click to expand...

There's a lot more in a video card that playing games.
The test with 2600 that was made doesn't mention few important issues that overall still make this card far worse than the 8800.

Pro apps.. Right... Try running two 24" screens set at 1920x1200 with a 4 million edges object on the 2600.:rolleyes:

Besides some occasional hickups the 8800 is at least 2-3 times better all around. And also I want to remind you that nVidia is already working on optimizing the drivers so they fix those tiny issues.
 
Jagster222 said:
I will be using my new Imac to create home movies with iMovie. Does iMovie use core apps or Apple Core Image apps? I want to get the video card that will provide me with the best and fastest results using iMovie. Can anyone answser my question? I am also wondering if the only real benefit of the Nvidia card is in playing games, why else would you spend $150 more to get this card?
Click to expand...

iMovie uses CoreVideo. We know that the 2600 is slightly faster in CoreImage but we don't know about CoreVideo.

Certainly Motion is faster on the 2600 than the 8800. http://www.barefeats.com/harper10.html

iMovie probably will be too.
 
D4F said:
There's a lot more in a video card that playing games.
The test with 2600 that was made doesn't mention few important issues that overall still make this card far worse than the 8800.

Pro apps.. Right... Try running two 24" screens set at 1920x1200 with a 4 million edges object on the 2600.:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

If the objects are being rendered in Core Image the 2600 machine will be 22% faster.

Besides some occasional hickups the 8800 is at least 2-3 times better all around. And also I want to remind you that nVidia is already working on optimizing the drivers so they fix those tiny issues.
Click to expand...

I already said I think that nVidia driver updates should improve the situation but a 22% gap is far from tiny, lol.

If you're into games in Bootcamp get the nVidia card. If you're not into gaming I don't think it matters as much right now, particularly if you are into using Apple pro apps. :)
 
1920x1200 3ghz 2GB ram

World of Warcraft - All settings on maximum. I average around 100 FPS with drops down to 60FPS in the most populated areas. Performance in WOW is very good.
 
Nvidia 8800

<<Besides some occasional hickups the 8800 is at least 2-3 times better all around. And also I want to remind you that nVidia is already working on optimizing the drivers so they fix those tiny issues.>>

i see this a lot. does anyone know this for sure? i only see this on forums i have not seen anything from apple or nvidia. did i miss something?
 
bugbear2 said:
1920x1200 3ghz 2GB ram

World of Warcraft - All settings on maximum. I average around 100 FPS with drops down to 60FPS in the most populated areas. Performance in WOW is very good.
Click to expand...

Is this under Mac OS or Windows?
 
bugbear2 said:
1920x1200 3ghz 2GB ram

World of Warcraft - All settings on maximum. I average around 100 FPS with drops down to 60FPS in the most populated areas. Performance in WOW is very good.
Click to expand...
Awesome, thanks for posting that, it's all I need to know. Strange that Barefeats did not do a WoW performance test (as they have done for previous tests), it seems like a lot of people would want to know that. I'm going to the  Store to buy one right now. :)
 
i just installed COD4 on windows on my iMac yesterday and turned on all the graphics settings and it ran flawlessly at 1200*... resolution. 1920*... works but lags a bit in multiplayer when there's too many ppl.

Now i can finally play the single player campaign :D in all its glory on my shiny new iMac. Playing the first two levels was an amazing experience and I'm not an FPS fan. I highly recommend this game to everyone.
 
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