iMac or i(not)Mac? On the fence.

[nStyle]

So I want to love the iMac... I really do. I love my MBP and I have wanted an iMac for a while...

But, I got to looking Apple's website and glanced over the specs. I saw a Radeon 5670 and a 5750 on the top models. I assured myself these were good cards . . . until I Googled them. The first result for the 5670 came up with: "ATI Radeon HD 5670: DirectX 11 For $99". That was in January 2010. What is this card worth now: $20?

This is more than mildly disappointing for me. I was more than willing to shell out $1k+ more for the Mac than for a $350 PC (from a friend) loaded with a GTX260 and i7 920 and 6gb of ram.

I believe in functionality over anything else, though I do want to love the iMac. I feel that it excels EVERYWHERE else except specifications.

Anyway, all of this rant aside, I highly doubt the 5670 or 5750 will run many games other than WoW (which is the primary game I will be playing on it anyway, but just saying). The card isn't super important, but it is when you are paying that much.

Does anyone look for Apple to refresh their iMac line any time soon with better cards?

Also: if it is not clear already, I am not bashing the iMac.

 

[Hellhammer]

ATI 5750 (aka 5850M) is actually a pretty decent card. It can run most games at 2560x1440 with adequate graphics settings (at least medium). WoW should run fine with maxed out graphics.

If you can get that PC for 350 bucks, that would be a bargain. The CPU alone costs nearly as much.

 

[Macginger]

ATI 5750 (aka 5850M) is actually a pretty decent card. It can run most games at 2560x1440 with adequate graphics settings (at least medium). WoW should run fine with maxed out graphics.

If you can get that PC for 350 bucks, that would be a bargain. The CPU alone costs nearly as much.

Hellhammer, do you think there will be a change in graphics with the new iMac revamp?
Only asking as I was in the same dilemma as nStyle but have now made my mind up to get the iMac later this year, the bundle as a whole far outweighs the low graphic options.

 

[nomanstool]

if you're a hardcore gamer, build up a Gaming Rig/PC most of the games you want are on Windows Platform probably.

For my game fix, I just hook up a ps3 in my iMac, and just hit command f2, swiching from ps3 screen to osx screen,

that's my setup, if you're up to it, iMac + ps3 owns

 

[MacHamster68]

you cannot count with the amounts you got to pay for hardware as a end customer , apple like all computer manufacturers get everything a hell of a lot cheaper then you might expect , if they get today a huge discount from ati they buy ati cards for the iMac , if at the next revision they get cards from nvidia with a bigger discount they take nvidia cards and as long as they can make the customer believe that it is a good card they are happy and the customer too , but i bet apple pays to produce the top spec iMac not even half what they charge the customer , after all apple is a profit based company not a charity , thats why you for example cannot say the ips display cost $1000 , yes it does to you , but apple is likely getting it with a discount of 40% and depending how many they order possibly even higher discounts , same goes for the processors you would not see any intel's inside the iMac's if apple would need to pay the full whack a end customer has to pay , after all from the profit they make on the iMac you buy a substancial amount goes to pay the apple stores (buildings) the staff there and thats why you only get 90 day telephone support in the standard warranty because it cost money too , the staff in the apple headquarter want some money , and even the workforce in china who put everything together doesn't work for free and after that all is payed , there has to be profit left over for the ceo
thats the main reason why the same hardware cost less in a dell for example as dell can order lots more as they sell more and dell has no shops , dell does not make a operating system instead they get huge discounts from microsoft , they dont put their hardware into a fancy alu case ... so less cost means higher profit and or cheap for the end customer
i did not take into account the overall build quality or overall customer service as thats a totally different matter , you got apple users who are disappointed from apples customer service/quality and you got dell customers who are happy about the dell customer service /build quality and vice versa you cannot please everybody if you sell millions of computers and want to make profit

but back to graphics apple likes to rename the cards to make it more complicated for the end user to make a direct comparison
same they did in my iMac core duo 's processor which is a T1400 dual core a processor that has never been officially sold by intel as its normally sold as single core , but has two cores with one disabled because of possible manufacturing defects usually,
so apple has very likely asked intel if they could forget to disable one core if there is a possibility that some didn't have defects ..and intel found some without and did not disable the second core , likely that apple got these dual cores then for less they would have to pay for the single core as intel did have no work with disabling

 

[Hellhammer]

Hellhammer, do you think there will be a change in graphics with the new iMac revamp?
Only asking as I was in the same dilemma as nStyle but have now made my mind up to get the iMac later this year, the bundle as a whole far outweighs the low graphic options.

I would expect Apple to update the graphics to AMD 6000M-series. My predictions are here

 

[gdeputy]

the 5750 runs SC2 under bootcamp on high settings at 2560x1440 at like 60 fps.

It also runs for example battlefield bad company 2 at 1920x1080 on high around 40-50 fps.

Point is, for general gaming it's MORE than adequate. If you want everything maxed out to the brim than get off Mac and get on PC.

 

[nStyle]

gdeputy, you have the exact configuration that I would order: Do you see Apple significantly increasing graphical power on the next refresh?

Is it worth waiting? When did you get yours?

 

[Garrett67]

if you're a hardcore gamer, build up a Gaming Rig/PC most of the games you want are on Windows Platform probably.

For my game fix, I just hook up a ps3 in my iMac, and just hit command f2, swiching from ps3 screen to osx screen,

that's my setup, if you're up to it, iMac + ps3 owns

How do you hook your PS3 to your iMac? or do the new ones have an input?

My iMac is a year old.

 

[robo456]

I was more than willing to shell out $1k+ more for the Mac than for a $350 PC (from a friend) loaded with a GTX260 and i7 920 and 6gb of ram.

That sounds like a pretty good deal to me for the i7

--rob