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New iMac: Nvidia GeoForce GT 130 -or- ATi Radeon HD 4850?

B

BG-Mac

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 31, 2007
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Just as the title states I'm ordering a new 24" 3.06 iMac. I'm well aware of all of the issues with the 4850, but just curious if it's still worth upgrade. The $50 doesn't matter to me as the machine is $2K+. I'll be doing extensive work in Adobe CS4 Photoshop, inDesign, and Dreamweaver along with some light gaming (command and conquer games are my fave :D). Let me know your opinions, thanks!
 
If you want it for work ,u don't want any problems and u want it now get the GT130 ..u'll be fine and trouble free.

If u don't care to hassle with a problematic 4850 and don't mind wait for the fix then go for it..
 
Wow. Lot's of love for the 4850 even with the issues! Does anyone prefer the 130? :D
 
Warrior09 said:
Wow. Lot's of love for the 4850 even with the issues! Does anyone prefer the 130? :D
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They all choose the Ati 4850 because of the small difference in price and the believe that it will be a much much better card especially for games .

I'm also very curious to see some real life benchmarks ,both in OSX and Windows .
 
A few benchmarks have pointed out that the 4850 is in fact faster than the GT130 (there's a thread somewhere, search if you want confirmation). Also, if you already plan on spending 2000 dollars on a computer, why not spend 50 dollars more for a better GPU?
 
Get The GT 130 Or Wait Until Next Rev

From where I sit - behind a 24" 3.06 with the GT 130 - things look real good. I love this machine - it laughs at anything and everything I throw at it (some photoshop, itunes, imovie, iphoto, gaming titles such as WoW, Spore, Fable, COD etc) and I have not turned it off once since I bought it first week of release.

You people putting up with all of these ati issues and STILL fanboy'ing the 4850 baffle me. You waited forever for a new iMac - and now you got it and IT DOES NOT WORK! I would be livid if I was any of the many 4850 customers out there with machines that freeze - this much I know.

If you need a new iMac and need it now and want it to work get the GT 130 unit. It will more than handle what you need it to. If you can wait - I'd say wait until end of Q4 when most likely we'll see quad core iMacs with better gpu's in them anyway. Or at least tried and true cards that are tweaked and working as intended.

As for buying a unit with a card that is known faulty (ok probably not the card but something ain't kosher in the town of Denmark we know this much whether it's a driver or hardware issue remains to be seen) and has issues before it's even shipped....well that's just silly imho.
 
GT130 is actually a variant of GeForce 9800M which is a very decent chipset and many bench test that I have seen people post, shows that ATI4850 is just marginally better if any at all.

So do you want to suffer through random freeze that the current imac ATI 4850 is experiencing without no estimate time of fixing for some marginal graphics benefits? I for sure know that I would not be happy if I have a new $2000 imac :apple: that just freezes multiple times everyday.

Just my 2ct.
 
Warrior09 said:
Any more opinions? Thanks for the help everyone!
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If you hadn't mentioned gaming, even you said light, I would have said for sure go with the GT130 and avoid the problems. The 4850 benchmarks by barefeats, though show (what I think are significant) improvements over the GT130, ~50% FPS. Makes it a tough call. For my part, I decided to go with the 4850. I figure, if I get a unit with a problem, Applecare should keep taking care of it until it's right.

My opinion. Take it for what you paid for it.

pmb
 
Warrior09 said:
Any more opinions? Thanks for the help everyone!
Click to expand...

The 4850 benches 60% faster than the GT130 in X-Plane and in COD4. I don't call that fanboyism, I call that facts. In fact the 4850 equipped 2.93ghz iMac performed almost as well in COD4 as the $3000 Mac Pro with Radeon 4870 graphics card.

Yes, there are freezing issues that need to get ironed out, but $50 for a 60% performance increase in demanding games? Sign me up for that!
 
Alright guys thanks again for the advice. I'm making my decision today and am going to have my order in in the next couple hours. After running the numbers I can order the GT 130 from Amazon an have it tomorrow for $150 less than the 4850 from Apple is going to cost me. If I ordered it from Apple it will ship in 5-7 days. So, I ask one more time, is the 4850 worth $150 and the wait? I'm leaning towards the 4850 not because I'll see a huge benefit now, but down the road when Snow Leopard is released, etc. But the $150 and having it tomorrow is tempting.. :D:apple:
 
Warrior09 said:
Alright guys thanks again for the advice. I'm making my decision today and am going to have my order in in the next couple hours. After running the numbers I can order the GT 130 from Amazon an have it tomorrow for $150 less than the 4850 from Apple is going to cost me. If I ordered it from Apple it will ship in 5-7 days. So, I ask one more time, is the 4850 worth $150 and the wait? I'm leaning towards the 4850 not because I'll see a huge benefit now, but down the road when Snow Leopard is released, etc. But the $150 and having it tomorrow is tempting.. :D:apple:
Click to expand...

The 4850 is substantially better than the GT 130. You'll have to decide if it's worth it.
 
Just wait, Apple will release a patch. It is new, there would be chance for error, and I am sure not many people actually get the problem out of all the people that got the 4850.
 
Done and done. Thanks guys. Ordering the 4850 as I'm writing this!
 
OP, nice iMac you ordered with the ATI HD 4850. Im still waitnig / debating on whether to go for the Nvidia GT 130 or the ATI HD 4850 as my new Apple.
 
Warrior09 said:
Done and done. Thanks guys. Ordering the 4850 as I'm writing this!
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I just hope you read the 4850 freezing threads first. It baffles me how someone would a buy a $2500 computer knowing these problems and not waiting until they are solved. The poll on this forum currently is at a 50% failure rate.
 
sotov said:
I just hope you read the 4850 freezing threads first. It baffles me how someone would a buy a $2500 computer knowing these problems and not waiting until they are solved. The poll on this forum currently is at a 50% failure rate.
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It's a software issue.

It baffles me to know someone would buy a $2,450 computer knowing that for $50 more they could have 60% better 3D performance.
 
sotov said:
The poll on this forum currently is at a 50% failure rate.
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I believe you that the poll on this forum indicates a 50% failure rate, but I cannot believe that the true global failure rate is anywhere close to 50%. If it were, most news outlets in the world would be talking about how Apple is doomed etc.
 
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