it should also be noted that the resale value of an imac with a 'good' gaming card would be greater
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How bad is ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT graphics ?
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it should also be noted that the resale value of an imac with a 'good' gaming card would be greater
the rest of the quality of the machine is disproportionate to the video card.
the entire value retainment is decreased because of the video card.
e.g.: 12 months from now, as is, would resell for 64%(percentage chosen for illustration purposes) of cost today.
with a proportionate video card, would resell for above 64%.
ounce for ounce, this imac is worth less than if it had 'the right' video card.
so no, in terms of resale- it is not a wash
edit:
another way to illustrate this is to say that a an imac purchased $2000.00 imac today with it's subpar video card is only worth $1800.
compare to a $2200.00 imac with a sufficient video card is worth $2200.00
bottom line, the current video cards devalue the rest of the machine. A significant percentage of computer purchasers will never consider purchasing this imac for it's retail price.
I'd almost suggest waiting on the iMac if a video card is essential. Either wait for the next Mac Pro or wait until the next gen of video cards is released. For NVidia, that is due sometime before the holidays (the G90 / 9000 series) and ATI is supposed to release a refresh of their 2xxx series within the next 3-6 months (the 2900Pro is due within a couple months supposedly). The big reason why no good cards were released this generation is because all the good cards are extremely large and hot.
The undisputed king of performance this generation of cards was the 8800 Ultra. Now try fitting the 8800 Ultra inside the iMac and you'll realize that the 8800 Ultra's 10.5 inch long size (no typo, it's really large enough that some PC mid-tower cases can't even fit it without modding the case), is dual slot, and at idle can put out 60 C of heat and at load 80+ C of heat (no typo, this can boil water if improperly cooled).
The 2900XT from ATI is in the same boat.
Both ATI and NVIDIA though are promising lower heat dissipation and power usage (the 2900XT sucks up an amazing 180+ watts of power alone) with their refreshes/next gen cards because they will all be moving to lower transistor sizes, have dies shrinks, memory upgrades (ATI moving to GDDR4 on a lot of their current GDDR3 cards for example) and so on. Maybe then they will have a better card with more features (for example, Nvidia cards currently do NOT have a UVD or HDMI capability) and are smaller and more efficient.
The undisputed king of performance this generation of cards was the 8800 Ultra. Now try fitting the 8800 Ultra inside the iMac and you'll realize that the 8800 Ultra's 10.5 inch long size (no typo, it's really large enough that some PC mid-tower cases can't even fit it without modding the case), is dual slot, and at idle can put out 60 C of heat and at load 80+ C of heat (no typo, this can boil water if improperly cooled).
The 2900XT from ATI is in the same boat.
Both ATI and NVIDIA though are promising lower heat dissipation and power usage (the 2900XT sucks up an amazing 180+ watts of power alone) with their refreshes/next gen cards because they will all be moving to lower transistor sizes, have dies shrinks, memory upgrades (ATI moving to GDDR4 on a lot of their current GDDR3 cards for example) and so on. Maybe then they will have a better card with more features (for example, Nvidia cards currently do NOT have a UVD or HDMI capability) and are smaller and more efficient.
Apple has never cared about gaming. Apple always does this; they always put in cards which are good enough for video/photo editing but never for gaming. They always have put in terrible/outdated graphics in their consumer products (macbook/imac), the ones geared towards students, home users who would do the most gaming. Even the Mac Pro has pretty outdated GPUs compared to the competition so why would the iMac get something recent?
Because they had John Carmack (id software) on stage at WWDC07? Because EA announced to bring games on Mac? The question now is for what Mac? Mac Pro and MBP? Fine! The majority of apple costumers buys the consumer line products and will be upset with gaming performance.
And Steve Jobs said on stage while presenting the new iMac "much faster graphics card". Yeah you have now h.264 hardware playback, uuuuhhh, as the GeForce 8600M GT from the MBP have too.
And Steve Jobs said on stage while presenting the new iMac "much faster graphics card". Yeah you have now h.264 hardware playback, uuuuhhh, as the GeForce 8600M GT from the MBP have too.
We are ofc not entirely happy with the new gfx in the iMac.
But what are the other options?
NVidia 8600GT(S) and Ati 2600XT is the only options that would fit in an iMac,
and neither of them are very much better.
If Apple decides to make an 8600GTS BTO option on he 24" i guess we would get the best card that it's possible to put in an iMac.
Anyways, with the drivers currently available from Apple for 8600M GT (in MBP) I guess we are better off with the ATi cards, since the 8600M GT in the 2.4GHz MBP is beaten by the 7600GT 2.16GHz iMac by nearly 50% in most tests i've seen. And that has to be a driver issue, since tests i've seen with wintels the 8600m GT is on par or better than the 7600GT (not M version)
But what are the other options?
NVidia 8600GT(S) and Ati 2600XT is the only options that would fit in an iMac,
and neither of them are very much better.
If Apple decides to make an 8600GTS BTO option on he 24" i guess we would get the best card that it's possible to put in an iMac.
Anyways, with the drivers currently available from Apple for 8600M GT (in MBP) I guess we are better off with the ATi cards, since the 8600M GT in the 2.4GHz MBP is beaten by the 7600GT 2.16GHz iMac by nearly 50% in most tests i've seen. And that has to be a driver issue, since tests i've seen with wintels the 8600m GT is on par or better than the 7600GT (not M version)
But that'll only matter a gamer. I think the point is that a gamer wouldn't want the new iMac now, and they're not going to want it in 2 years either. A person who wants to use iMovie, Mail, iTunes, etc though would be fine with that machine in two years and will pay the same percentage of original price in two years from now as they would if the iMac had a better GPU and cost $100 more new.
Quite true. It's just getting software that uses the GPU that's hard to come by.
I think that this will start to change in general now that the APIs are being provided by the manufacturer to easily use it. Also, the fact that this is Apple we're talking about gives us a good shot at getting OS wide library support for advanced GPU features. Hardware decoding and encoding on the GPU as part of the QT framework would mean that devs can just target the library in their app and OSX will decide the fastest way to do the task for them, just like Quartz does.
I'll be waiting for those libraries then.
My hopes are still very low. The X1600/7600GT had these features as well and we didn't see anything.
the point of that was to show that an imac with a 'proper' video card is going to hold it's value better in the long run
Is it possible The 2600 pro in the iMac is modified like the Sapphire Radeon HD 2600 PRO 256MB GDDR3 OC Edition. This is the only reference I can find that shows a 2600 pro with GDDR3.
Step aside from the whole "gamer" debate for a second. Say you're buying the top of the line iMac: $2300. Really nice CPU, roomy hard drive, gorgeous screen, etc. $90 video card. Why wouldn't Apple at least give the OPTION to upgrade the card?
As others have said, a $90 video card running at that resolution on a 24" screen on a $2300 machine is a joke. Worse, for those of us who really *did* want to upgrade (I wanted to move on from a 3-year old self-built PC rig) it *was* like a punch in the stomach.
Why on earth does my 3-year old PC have better video than a new iMac? Especially when every other aspect of the iMac (CPU, hard drive, etc) wipes the floor with it?
Let me be brutally frank here: it's stupid to defend Apple's decisions on video cards. These are the "consumer" models. You've got incoming college students looking to buy machines right now. They've captured young people's mindshare with the iPod. WHY would you give buyers ANY excuse not to buy a Mac? ("It doesn't play games well. Dude, forget that. I'll get a Dell").
I'll be waiting for those libraries then.
My hopes are still very low. The X1600/7600GT had these features as well and we didn't see anything.
Well, my only hope is that it was due to there being no new OS being release shortly afterwards? I thought the hardware video encoding/decoding for the NVidia cards was fairly weak and ATI's only real strength this time around?
Meh, shows what I know I guess!
Yeah, there's a chance Leopard might take advantage of these hardware features. Both ATi and nVidia have hardware decoding. ATi's is just better now.
Out of curiosity, has anyone taken any temperature measurements of the 20" imac w/ the 2400xt versus the 2600? I've been very curious about this. Thanks.
Yeah but all you need now for even better gaming is a 360...having both I would safely say the PS3 is just a fantastic blu ray machine but for the best gaming, online, offline, the 360 wins hands down. Not even MGS4 was enough to warrant getting a PS3. But this is a whole different debate!
Might just be a 'green' thing, but I've been wondering how much more or less power the base spec iMac would draw when compared to the 2.66 version. I've been looking all over for kill-a-watt results for these, but have found nothing yet.
If you're that concerned about being green get a MacBook with integrated graphics.
The differences with mobility graphics is going to be under 10-20 watts at full load.
wouldn't it be easier if apple used mobile graphics cards in their imacs.
256mb 8600gt base
512mb 8600gt mid range
512mb 8700gt or 8800 gtx hidh range
they are more designed to be in small enclosures and all of these cards are fast
256mb 8600gt base
512mb 8600gt mid range
512mb 8700gt or 8800 gtx hidh range
they are more designed to be in small enclosures and all of these cards are fast