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jmonfire

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 28, 2009
33
0
Hi. I'm looking to get a new imac 21.5 base model

My question is:
Is nvidia 9400m a real bad graphic card for gaming?
If so, it the upper model with ATI 4670 worth the price difference?

I'm not a serious gamer. Just want to play things like pro evo soccer,...GTA etc..
 
Trust me, even if you game a LITTLE go for the 4670. I have the 9400m on my MacBook and have problems running The Sims 3 or SPORE at max resolution...
 
Hm..

Trust me, even if you game a LITTLE go for the 4670. I have the 9400m on my MacBook and have problems running The Sims 3 or SPORE at max resolution...

would i have trouble with ATI ?
 
would i have trouble with ATI ?
With the newest games you should have some trouble at max resolution (as with the 4850 at 2560x1440). Lowering the resolution a little would help. In any case the 4670 is WAY better than the 9400m. Always go for a discrete solution if you want to play something, integrated GPU's for gaming aren't good enough :)
 
According to the benchmarks in Macworld's review of the new iMacs here the Nvidia 9400M matches the ATI 4670 in most tasks except for gaming. Framerates for Call of Duty 4 were over 3x higher with the ATI card (69.1 vs 21.9). If you want to play games on your iMac then you're better off upgrading to the ATI 4670 card.

In addition to a better graphics card (for gaming at least) you also get a 1TB hard drive if you upgrade from the base model. Whether that's worth the additional $300 is up to you.
 
Well I don't think if you play games like RuneScape using Nvidia 9400m would make it craw onto its knees. I have Intel GMA on my current PC and RuneScape runs just fine and it only has about 120 MB of video memory. If the processor matters its a 3.06GHz Pentium D.
 
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