Hi, I've been looking at the iMac's on the apple website and have come down to the computer I want. However, with me being 16, with no job, I don't currently have the money to buy it. But, I was wondering if I should get either the NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 or ATI Radeon HD 4850. I plan on getting a job this summer though. I'm not a hardcore gamer as of yet. However if and or when I get this computer, I would like to play Half-Life 2, and Diablo 3 for sure(whatevers out after that I will look into). I read several other threads and people said that the NVIDIA would become outdated in a couple years and it would be safer to get the ATI to future proof my computer. Any suggestions?
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NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 or ATI Radeon HD 4850?
- Thread starter Es ist Zach!
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If you're doing any gaming, you should get the ATI. It's only $50 dollars more, and it offers more lasting relevance than the 130. So unless 50 bucks breaks the bank, buy the better bundle.
so, I'm not gonna tell you what you should do, but I recently had the same decision to make and i came up with the apple cert. refurb. iMac 3.06 with the geforce 8800gs and i bout more ram for about 60 bucks, so it came out like 1670 dollars, which is like 750 less than the iMac with the 4850, while the 4850 posts better stats than the 8800 it wasnt enough to me to justify the difference, and as for the gt130, the 8800 is about the same and on some games the 8800 is better with the only real difference being that the most recent iMacs can hold 8gb of ram, but good luck affording it...anyway thats my 2 cents.....hope it helps
Not everyone has the same budget, and besides, some of us get discounts on new Apple gear.
In any event, if purchasing a brand new mac, the $50 premium for the 4850 is a no brainer now that the issues are sorted out.
The 4850 eats the GT130 and the GT120 isn't even in the running.
P.S., the 4850 eats the 8800GS too.
I'd like to know where you are getting $750 bucks from.
The price difference between a base 24" iMac with a video card totally incapable of playing any real 3D games and the 24" iMac with Radeon 4850, 11% faster CPU, etc, is $500.
Not $750.
If you want to compare a 2008 iMac refurb to what a brand new iMac costs with newer vid card, etc, then naturally the new 2009 one is going to cost more.
To give you a real world example;
The 2009 iMac with Radeon 4850 can play Crysis at High Details 2XAA and decent resolution at a fairly consistent 30fps.
No previous generation iMac can do that. Best that a previous iMac could do was playing with medium details and no AA and maybe squeaking out 25-30fps if you were lucky.
This is just an example, but the point is that over the next 2 years games are only going to get more demanding. The 4850 is going to have far more useful life for playing far more newer games than older tech like an 8800GS or a GT130.
Shoot, are you kidding me? I could build you a PC and put a 4850 in there for 750, and you can use it for gaming, and get a cheeper iMac for everything else.
Actually, if you want to take me up on the offer PM me.
Umm.. duh.
Actually it would cost you about $600-$700 to build a comparable PC with no display. To build one with a display as good as the iMac you would be looking at about $1100-$1200.
And then of course there's the whole matter of having two machines setting on your desk, having USB KVM switches hooked up so you don't have to have two keyboards and mice and speakers for the whole thing. Having to switch between the two machines every time you want to do something. Oh, and the joy of listening to a loud ass PC with cheap cooling fans that sounds like a hair dryer every time it's running when you play a game. The fans on the iMac going full boar during a game still make less noise than most budget PC rigs make when idling.
Or, just having one elegant machine that does a great job of running both operating systems and can still play those games very well.
Option B please.
im not arguing that the 4850 isnt better, all i am saying is that if you look at the performance increase, its like 15%, is a 15% increase better enough to spend 750 more dollars?
Maybe you should go to www.barefeats.com and look at the benchmarks. In the GPU limited applications like COD4, X-Plane, etc, the 4850 is 30% faster (or more) than the GT130 or 8800GTS. You might not be aware, but serious gamers will spend hundreds of dollars just for a card that is 10% faster, let alone 30% faster.
And again, a refurbished Mac is not the same as new.
You can go and get a lease return car with very low miles for a much lower price than the exact same car model brand new for the current year, but it's not the same car.
The refurb is not a bad bargain, but the 4850 equipped iMac mops the floor with it. Yes, it really does. Not only are the graphics 30% faster or more in the more demanding games, but the new iMac will also hold more of its resale value if you choose to upgrade in a year when the quad core iMacs with even faster GPUs and Blu-Ray drives hit the market.
The 2009 Radeon 4850 equipped iMac I bought for $1870 will be selling for $1500, where as the 2008 refurb you got for $1600 will be going for $1000.
I apologize and this does not mean that I agree with you, but the original post was just asking for advice and that is what I did. I gave my two cents for what it is worth to the original message. I apparently am not on the same budget that you are and so I made my choice and thought that maybe they were in the same boat I was on what I wanted to spend and what I thought was overspending. So to the originator... I hope my experience helped.
Noone is going to fault you for making the decision you did within your budget. Bravo for not going overboard just to get the best and greatest. Unlike many of you young guys here scraping up what you can to buy an iMac, I'm older (mid 30's) and have a good job. I can buy whatever iMac I want, or a Mac Pro, or 2 or 3 of each if I wanted to.
I only responded as strongly as I did because for the price difference between a GT120 or GT130 equipped iMac and the one with the 4850, it really is wiser to get the 4850 equipped iMac if it is in your budget. It will run newer games better and will able to play new games coming out for a longer period of time. Critical if you want the best gaming performance, and more so if you will be keeping the computer for a long time.
Personally I have no understanding of how 14, 15 and 16 year olds like the OP have the funds to buy any 24" iMac, let alone a top of the line one that goes for as much as a really nice 50" flat screen.
I appreciate all of your advice, I'm glad I found this site. Redraider, I did find your advice useful, thank you, now I am considering other options as well. And also Mydesktopbroke, thanks 
And yes jmpage2, I can see where you are coming from, I maybe not be in my mid 30's or even an adult yet, but one can always dream right? I won't be able to buy it immediately but I do plan on placing some money aside, as soon as I get a job, until eventually (hopefully not too long) I can get it. What you guys don't know, is I live in the state of Alaska. I do get a PFD every year, and this year I believe estimates are around $1200. So I will be setting some of that aside too.
And yes jmpage2, I can see where you are coming from, I maybe not be in my mid 30's or even an adult yet, but one can always dream right? I won't be able to buy it immediately but I do plan on placing some money aside, as soon as I get a job, until eventually (hopefully not too long) I can get it. What you guys don't know, is I live in the state of Alaska. I do get a PFD every year, and this year I believe estimates are around $1200. So I will be setting some of that aside too.
...with the price differential being minimal, I would get the ATI. The 4850 is the best Graphics card Apple offers, so for the price, you mine as well cough up the extra $50. I got bashed earlier in another forum about this...but there may be a new iMac coming early/mid fall. So, in your case, since your are not buying today or this week, you may want to wait.
Also, the PFD?!?!? ...is that money coming from the oil companies? - I have always wondered about that...
Best of luck...
CrackBookPro
...with the price differential being minimal, I would get the ATI. The 4850 is the best Graphics card Apple offers, so for the price, you mine as well cough up the extra $50. I got bashed earlier in another forum about this...but there may be a new iMac coming early/mid fall. So, in your case, since your are not buying today or this week, you may want to wait.
Also, the PFD?!?!? ...is that money coming from the oil companies? - I have always wondered about that...
Best of luck...
CrackBookPro
iMacs got updated two months ago with half year of speculation, new update isn't expected before Q4 '09.
Previous discussion aside, to answer your origional question, if it is between the 130 or 4850 there is NO reason why you should take the 130 over the 4850. The 4850 is a no brainer when it comes down to the two.
so, just did some math and figured out something interesting, by taking the cost of the imac with the 4850 and the imac with the 8800 and dividing it by the frames of each game posted on barefeat then averaging them out, i found that each imac costs aprox. 19dpf or dollars per frame.....so, just thought that you might find that interesting....
That's not a fair comparison. Some of the games Barefeats tests are badly written ports of Windows games that are then CPU limited when run on OS X.
A more comprehensive test, with modern games under Windows would show that most of the time the 4850 equipped machine would be substantially faster than the 8800, to the tune of 20-35% or more. The 8800 series GPU was developed over three years ago. The Radeon premiered 12 months ago.
This can be easily seen by comparing 4850 Win games benchmarks with benchmarks of the same games on similar spec PCs running with the 8800GS mobile card.
Duh. I never said otherwise. A search of my posts will also show that I've said this consistently for months now.