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Mac Pro vs. iMac for WoW - iMac runs far better

Sean Dempsey

Sean Dempsey

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Aug 7, 2006
1,622
8
Sorta sad, lol. The 7300gt in the Mac Pro can't even compete with my al iMac 2.4. The iMac is totally smooth, and the Mac Pro is quite jerky.

lol, oh well. that's what I get for trying to game on a work machine. Funny how big a difference the video card can make. All the ma pro's raptors, raid0's, ram, and processors can't compete with the slightly improved imac video card.
 
Ya for gaming, the video card makes most of the difference.

Sean Dempsey said:
Sorta sad, lol. The 7300gt in the Mac Pro can't even compete with my al iMac 2.4. The iMac is totally smooth, and the Mac Pro is quite jerky.

lol, oh well. that's what I get for trying to game on a work machine. Funny how big a difference the video card can make. All the ma pro's raptors, raid0's, ram, and processors can't compete with the slightly improved imac video card.
Click to expand...
 
....

I've seen a mac pro run WOW on maxed settings before with the 7300. It's really not "that" bad of a card....but yeah, you are right, the iMac has got a much better one.
 
The 7300 is a depressingly bad choice from apple, to cut otherwise minuscule costs.
Hell my 12" laptop has a 7400 and once overclocked its a decent little card for the low resolution it has to handle. But on a professional workstation, apple is kidding themselves.
 
booksacool1 said:
The 7300 is a depressingly bad choice from apple, to cut otherwise minuscule costs.
Click to expand...
The 7300 is a fine choice for people who need CPU, and not GPU, power.

Not to berate the OP (especially since they mention it's their work machine, presumably work of the requirements I mentioned above) but it seems so silly to me when people complain about the 7300GT not being good enough for gaming — you could have gotten the X1900 XT if you wanted to game.
 
apfhex said:
it seems so silly to me when people complain about the 7300GT not being good enough for gaming — you could have gotten the X1900 XT if you wanted to game.
Click to expand...

Right. iMac was made as an universal machine that can play some games, edit some video, make a site, edit photos. It excels at neither of these tasks however.

Mac Pro is, on the other hand, a machine built specifically for video/photo/other editing. Its a workstation, NOT meant for gaming AT ALL. But if you need more graphics firepower (for gaming, for Aperture, Motion or whatever), there's optional Radeon X1900 XT that smokes every other card available in Macs in performance (yes, even Quadro, but they are meant for different markets).
 
Whats silly is for a machine such as a mac pro to have a baseline video card which would likely be considerably slower in something like Maya when compared to a consumer computer such as the imac 24". I think the mac pro should be no slower in any function when compared to its cheaper consumer computers. True that the video in the imac is newer but still, at the time for an extra $50 it could have been a 7600GT which is a better card by immesurable amounts. Its not like its a $300 computer and we're saying toss in a $50 video card upgrade in there... Its a $2000 machine probably at its cheapest so come on, either eat a bit of the margins and just give a better baseline video card or bump the price by $50.

Not even sure why the ATI leaf blowers are in there. so loud and annoying (I've owned both and the ATI was god awful for noise when the fan kicked on high). Anyway at the time, the lineup should have been (IMO):

7600GT --> 7900GTX ---> Quadro

Whats
 
Raid 0

Hello All,

Glad what your enjoying WOW. But rememeber when it comes down to RAID -0 with OS X. Your using software to do the RAID. when you use software there is atleast a 30% hit on disk IO and CPU usage. Thus resulting in a lower performance. The iMac has a great hardware list. but technically speaking the Macpro will own the iMac if you went to basic specs and ran the res @ 1024x768w/32bmp. Give it a shot, it is always fun to tweak.

Cheer
Shawn
 
Remember the base card of the Mac Pro is about power, as in 35W.

Need to think in terms of the best sub-35W card for that machine.

Sucks that the only way for Apple to get volume on that card is to make it standard.

Since not that many would downgrade a fast GPU for low power cards for the 4-6-8 DVI ports.

Still need the consumer tower, so people can stop worrying about the card on the workstation.
 
motoxpress said:
Strange. WoW runs like blazes on my MacPro...with the x1900 :D

-mx
Click to expand...

must elaborate what is "blazes" and i think that apple should just hire blizzard to port mac games for every game, they seem to be the only ones that can really make good solid running native games
 
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