Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
New iMac GPU`s: Are you happy? :)
- Thread starter SimonasLT
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I don't think electrical use that is the concern here. It's heat. And the fact that a desktop card won't fit in the imac.
Yes there have certainly been some instances of unannounced (by Apple, you will see the news here), of options being offered after a update release and prior to a lineup change. It doesn't happen all the time.
When I bought my 2.8 Extreme Rev. A (Aug 07) I opted for the cheaper 24", bumped the CPU and HDD and purchased more RAM myself, saving over $150. My understanding is that the 2.7 has certain advantages over the 3.1? but the 3.1 has the better GPU. I would pay a $100-150 premium for the 1GB vram.
the 2GB option on the very high end 27" is a nod to the silly high resolution, i would expect a 1GB option on the high end 21" as the resolution there is still "high" for a 512mb card
While I agree with you, I'm not so sure that the increased memory will give enough significant gains to justify the additional $100.00 price tag... not to mention I would have to wait to receive it in the mail, as opposed to getting it right now at my local Apple store.
Would there be any gains at all? Are current GPU's strong enough to utilize 2GB effectively? Or would it only be a few frames per second more, if even that?
With more memory, it allows larger textures to be loaded up on the memory. On a game like Crysis 2, I could see the 2gb gpu to add more than a couple FPS.
its not really about adding FPS. anything over 30FPS is wasted on the human eye, and anything over 60 just pointless, it is however about being able to hold all those high resolution textures and, with modern physics capable GPUs , the maths and models for all that "on the card" to speed up access, increase view distance in games and things like that, RAM on a card past the basic amount needed to hold 3-10 frames in advance at the resolution your running is largley redundant in increasing frame rate, more ram is about the QUALITY of image you can produce, not number of images you can pump out.
look at the distance between low and high settings on games, high has more details, needs more ram (and as a by product has more to do which lowers frame rate, but thats usually the GPU bogging down, not a ram limitation)
with a fast enough GPU, and these are fast enough, 1GB should really be the minimum, 512mb is introducing an artificial bottleneck as textures have to be swapped from the Macs onboard RAM to the RAM on the video card and back when running anything modern at native resolution, and im not talking about the 27" here, im talking about the smaller screen one)
Anyone telling you you can't see a difference between 30 and 60 FPS is a liar.
Your eye can see up to 60FPS easily, after that the difference is negligible. 30 next to 60 FPS is a VERY BIG difference.
You can't simply switch to desktop GPUs, the power consumption of desktop GPUs is much higher than that of mobile ones.
More Power = More Heat
To compensate for heat gains Apple would need to make the iMac thicker and have larger/noisier fans, IMHO Apple would view this as a step backwards.
+1, but it's not going to happen without a major case redesign.
They already put a ~100W CPU, a ~75W GPU and a ~100W display into that slim case. There is simply no way they can suddenly put a 200W GPU there without massively increasing fan noise.
60fps barely human eyes boundary. Same analogy with HD video. I used to love 720p videos on my 1080p plasma. I cant notice difference between 720p and 1080p content from my viewing distance. I was thinking anything more than 720p is a waste and negligible from normal distance. Not the same case with iMac monitor. I can see 720p suddenly feels like garbage, a bit blurred and some artifact on the edge, that wasnt there on my plasma!!
1080p still looks okay, but this 1440p display really insane and define what my eyes couldnt see before
Higher VRAM allows for higher quality settings such as MSAA to be set higher without reducing performance as much.
There are games that will tax more than 1Gb of Vram. Especially if you're going to run it on the resolution of the 27" iMac.
Fundementally this poll is flawed, as for the average user of the iMac, the current GPUs are more then enough. What you should be asking is, if your a gamer, are the current GPUs good enough? Then you will get more realistic results.
From my point of view, Apple has never had proper GPUs in their machines, unless you were prepared to fork out for a mac pro to get a dedicated gaming GPU, but that was a hell of alot to pay. When I say proper, its compared to what happens on the PC side with crazy stuff like 4xSLI or crossfire etc.
From my point of view, Apple has never had proper GPUs in their machines, unless you were prepared to fork out for a mac pro to get a dedicated gaming GPU, but that was a hell of alot to pay. When I say proper, its compared to what happens on the PC side with crazy stuff like 4xSLI or crossfire etc.
Agreed. It's essentially the same as a desktop Radeon 6850. It's not the best card, but when you consider that people are still primarily using GeForce 8800GT/9800GT(X) cards (according to the Steam hardware survey,) it's a good leap forward.
Mind you those people are using monitors that don't display as many pixels, but the raw power is still improved. It may not be at the same level all things being equal, but it is a good upgrade.
I've had problems running WoW with my i7 1GB 6970. The game defaults to 800x600 on every startup and all options are low/off by default.
Anyways, one thing I have noticed is that I have the VRAM listed as 2GB total, 1GB on the card and 1GB presumably from system RAM, anyone lese seen this?
I've tried everything from a PRAM reset to a complete format/OS reinstall and it's still affected.
I put Win7 on a partition and when attempting to update the mobility drivers I was reliably informed that there wasn't a 'viable graphics adaptor installed'.
That's a first for me!
Aside from that once you drag all the options up to 'good' and disable sunshafts I get 50fps in Orgimmar but in a raid environment I'm getting random disconnects which I'm sure are connected to the GPU as it's always when there's loads of effects going on.
Anyways, it's going back and I'm going to order the 2GB variety as I really feel that for my uses 1GB is just not enough.
I just wish that Apple stuck the 2GB card in the top-end i7's by default instead of the hassle of going BTO.
Anyways, one thing I have noticed is that I have the VRAM listed as 2GB total, 1GB on the card and 1GB presumably from system RAM, anyone lese seen this?
I've tried everything from a PRAM reset to a complete format/OS reinstall and it's still affected.
I put Win7 on a partition and when attempting to update the mobility drivers I was reliably informed that there wasn't a 'viable graphics adaptor installed'.
That's a first for me!
Aside from that once you drag all the options up to 'good' and disable sunshafts I get 50fps in Orgimmar but in a raid environment I'm getting random disconnects which I'm sure are connected to the GPU as it's always when there's loads of effects going on.
Anyways, it's going back and I'm going to order the 2GB variety as I really feel that for my uses 1GB is just not enough.
I just wish that Apple stuck the 2GB card in the top-end i7's by default instead of the hassle of going BTO.
Install the Catalyst 11.5 drivers.
Apple's supplied Boot Camp drivers has most games (Mass Effect 2 comes to mind) listing the VRAM as -21487xxx MB (yes negative.)
Try deleting your config.wtf file in your WoW directory and re-launch WoW. That should have it redetect what's in your system.
My 2GB 6970 in Windows (in the WinSAT property page) lists that I have 9972MB of VRAM, 7GB and change coming from my RAM. To my knowledge, there's no way to reduce/eliminate that. That's just how Windows 7 rolls. No adverse affect though. WoW screams on the new iMac (when it behaves.)
Apple's supplied Boot Camp drivers has most games (Mass Effect 2 comes to mind) listing the VRAM as -21487xxx MB (yes negative.)
Try deleting your config.wtf file in your WoW directory and re-launch WoW. That should have it redetect what's in your system.
My 2GB 6970 in Windows (in the WinSAT property page) lists that I have 9972MB of VRAM, 7GB and change coming from my RAM. To my knowledge, there's no way to reduce/eliminate that. That's just how Windows 7 rolls. No adverse affect though. WoW screams on the new iMac (when it behaves.)
Any other 27" i7 / 2GB WoW players here? I'm not too impressed with the new iMac with WoW. At native reso, with 1x multisampling and some things turned down like Shadows (Sunshafts off, Liquid = Fair), it gets choppy sometimes, and just feels clunky. Can barely handle zones like Twilight Highlands.
From the information I've seen from other posters, it sounded like it ran almost like butter at Ultra settings. I went down to Good quality, and it's not terrible. What am I doing wrong?
From the information I've seen from other posters, it sounded like it ran almost like butter at Ultra settings. I went down to Good quality, and it's not terrible. What am I doing wrong?
Well .. OP posted this thread when no one owned iMac with Thunderbolt, notice it was created May 3rd, the day iMac 2011 released.
So, instead of looking at number .. yeah 6970 is huge number .. how does it perform actually? I´ve yet seen some gaming test on YouTube, but thats it, still not too much real benchmark anyway
Please share your experience with 6970M, doesn´t need to be exact FPS .. maybe you can call it smooth, buttery, laggy ..
So, instead of looking at number .. yeah 6970 is huge number .. how does it perform actually? I´ve yet seen some gaming test on YouTube, but thats it, still not too much real benchmark anyway
Please share your experience with 6970M, doesn´t need to be exact FPS .. maybe you can call it smooth, buttery, laggy ..