iMac 27 inch and gaming

[palebluedot]

Just do yourself a favor and think of it as a desktop card! It's a unique mobility card in that it's based directly off its desktop counterpart (same number of shaders, transistors, bus width etc) except it's clocked lower than desktop version.

It's a very good card, and will run most modern games at native resolution just fine with high-max settings. Only thing it won't do is pump your epenis.

That resolution is huge though! I highly doubt you could run modern games at high-max settings on a middle-grade GPU! But i'll take your word for it

 

[TMRaven]

Honestly, you'd find the extra resolution to put a very small dent in your gaming performance, you should be more worried about using high amounts of anti-aliasing at that resolution.

Anti-aliasing generally maxes the bandwidth more than resolution does on gpus. The card in the iMac suffers the same fate almost every other mobility card does (altho way less thanks to 256 bus width)-- and that is a low amount of bandwidth compared to desktop counterparts.

Since most modern games have highly detailed and refined figures, the "jaggy edge" issue is less apparent than older games (especially considering a higher resolution will reduce amounts of jaggedness and need for aa altogether.)

The difference between 4xaa and 0xaa on dirt2 is virtually non-apparent, especially considering you'll be racing your car at high speeds. About the only thing you could make an argument for would be the antenna.

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c104/twisted_metal_2/dirt2-2010-03-30-19-22-10-8.jpg
http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c104/twisted_metal_2/dirt2-2010-03-30-19-21-49-4.jpg


As far as being a middle-grade gpu, notebook check still considers the 4850 a tier1 mobility gpu. Only the likes of 4870, 5870 and sli'd cards beat it clearly.