Great info and sounds mighty impressive. I can only afford the base model but a friend has one already and he is going to let me test drive dayz on it... The only game I actually play.
Thanks.
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OS Neutral Mac Pro or retina iMac for gaming?
- Thread starter Eightarmedpet
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Great info and sounds mighty impressive. I can only afford the base model but a friend has one already and he is going to let me test drive dayz on it... The only game I actually play.
Thanks.
I have had a really good experience with my iMac late 2012. If I had to do it right now, I'd either build a custom PC or get the 5K iMac.
Well, from what little I have had a chance to play around with the base model nMP, I think you should have no problem playing Dayz on it. I played a couple of racing games on it and they ran flawlessly on as high as they could go. But I admit that I have not tried a lot of games on it since it's not my Mac Pro.
Thanks for sharing your experience with one. I'm still uncertain what to go for really, if the mini came with a desktop GPU that would be the obvious choice as I have a screen. I read somewhere that the non retina iMac with the 4gb nvidia GPU is the best mac for gaming but they are now discontinued and will be tougher to find second hand... Le sigh.
I have 2014 Mac Mini at the company I run and I have played some games on it. I was surprised a bit by what I could get out of some of the games I played, but if you want eye candy, it's just not powerful enough. The owner of the company has a 2013 iMac with the 780M 4GB, 16GB RAM and 3.4 Ghz i5 and it handles most of the games I've thrown at it with ease on the highest settings. There's no doubt that these choices can be daunting when it comes to macs and gaming. Though the choices are slimmer than the Windows PC market, you definitely want to make a good choice. Good luck.
Edited: Sorry it was a 2013 iMac.
For what it's worth, I do some gaming on a nMP with the D500 video card in it. I've never been able to do head-to-head comparisons between it and one with the D300 or D700, or between it and the new Retina iMac. But I can tell you I'm perfectly satisfied with its gaming performance. I'm not chasing after benchmarks here... Don't really know or CARE exactly how many frames per second it's drawing in a given game title. The point is, I didn't buy my Mac to be primarily or only a "game machine". I bought it for many other purposes with gaming one of them.
I don't own 4K or 5K displays, but I do run 3 27" IPS panels at 1600x900 native resolution.
To be perfectly honest? I think your primarily motivations to choose either a high-end Retina iMac or a nMP should be based on other things. If gaming is of enough importance to where it dictates which of the two you go with -- then maybe your money is better spent on a Windows gaming PC rig. (If the rest of the things you want a Mac for are less dependent on the system configuration, you could go with an inexpensive Mac Mini or something as a second machine, keeping the games on the PC.)
Not saying the above to be rude .... It's just that I've observed games running very well on either Mac, and I'm sure specific titles will wind up performing better on one machine than the other due to quirks in their programming and demands of the specific video chipsets found in each one. My reasons for spending more on the nMP had more to do with preferring the "headless" configuration where I can put a mix and match of any displays on it I like, and an interest in the expandability it offered me (up to 64GB of RAM in a nMP).
I don't own 4K or 5K displays, but I do run 3 27" IPS panels at 1600x900 native resolution.
To be perfectly honest? I think your primarily motivations to choose either a high-end Retina iMac or a nMP should be based on other things. If gaming is of enough importance to where it dictates which of the two you go with -- then maybe your money is better spent on a Windows gaming PC rig. (If the rest of the things you want a Mac for are less dependent on the system configuration, you could go with an inexpensive Mac Mini or something as a second machine, keeping the games on the PC.)
Not saying the above to be rude .... It's just that I've observed games running very well on either Mac, and I'm sure specific titles will wind up performing better on one machine than the other due to quirks in their programming and demands of the specific video chipsets found in each one. My reasons for spending more on the nMP had more to do with preferring the "headless" configuration where I can put a mix and match of any displays on it I like, and an interest in the expandability it offered me (up to 64GB of RAM in a nMP).
I should add to my previous posted experience of nMP, that the crossfire (which is only available in windows) proves to be a hit-and-miss in some cases. Not all games work under it; some of them will work eventually after some patch or a gpu driver update, while others will never work, forcing you to turn it off and use only 1 gpu. However, this is not an nMP issue at all, it is equally true for PCs using multiple AMD gpus as well.
For example, the Witcher 3 will not work (yet?) under crossfire; tried the apple bootcamp drivers and AMD latest drivers as well.
For example, the Witcher 3 will not work (yet?) under crossfire; tried the apple bootcamp drivers and AMD latest drivers as well.
As mentioned previously... In this thread...
Won't be gaming in 5k, 1440 is fine.
All Macs are pretty capable these days for Graphic Design work (its main role) so that does not dictate purchase.
Eyeing up eGPUs ATM... Dreaming of the xMac.
Won't be gaming in 5k, 1440 is fine.
All Macs are pretty capable these days for Graphic Design work (its main role) so that does not dictate purchase.
Eyeing up eGPUs ATM... Dreaming of the xMac.
It's a pretty formidable gaming machine, a lot of people don't really know how to optimise it properly..
almost every benchmark I have seen uses AA on 2k and above, absolutely not necessary, this is a real FPS killer.
most games without AA run at 2.5k ultra with around 50fps/60fps
my experiences so far:
Assetto Corsa 4k ultra(no AA) average 58 (locked to 50)
Far Cry 4 4k ultra (no AA) 60fps
Elite Dangerous 4k ultra (no AA) 60fps
GTA5 4k ultra (no AA)18-40 (i believe the driver is a bit crap for this)
Bf4 4k (no AA) 50fps
I assume you are talking about the iMac? YouTube isn't loading for me ATM on my phone for some suspect reason but thanks for sharing, some pretty decent results...
Yes, sorry.
I don't have dayz I'm afraid but I've played arma 3 on it and it provides a similar experience to most of the games above, I'd say 4k at 40-60 and 2.5k would be solid 60