Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Quad i7 iMac w/4850 - how good for Windows 7 gaming?

G

gwhitta

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 11, 2009
44
0
So my i7 quad iMac shipped and I'm excited. I don't play a lot of PC games any more but I am hoping that this machine will be powerful enough to run the few games I do want to play well; I will be installing Windows 7 via Boot Camp to allow for some Steam gaming and other stuff.

All I ever really play is World of Warcraft, Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2 and maybe at the top end something like Modern Warfare 2. I hear the 4850 is a pretty decent GPU but not exactly top-end and I certainly don't expect to be running games at the monitor's absurdly high native res (maybe WoW?) but I am wondering what kind of performance to expect and if there is a scaled-down res for 3D gaming that would be best suited for this 27" display.

Any thoughts?
 
There are a few threads on this topic already

To sum them all up you will be just fine

the 4850 is not the greatest gaming card out there but it will play all the games but you will have to tweak the setting to suit.

Good luck and have fun :)
 
I don't understand this. I played WoW, and games like Oblivion, Call of Duty, etc with maxxed out settings at 30" resolutions years ago without a problem on an x1900XT on the Mac Pro I had at the time. People actually say you'll need to "tweak" settings to get decent performance on a graphics card generations ahead of what I was playing with maxxed resolution 3 years ago...I'm confused.
 
what was this ' 30" resolution ' years ago? Probably that was a 30" tv with much lower resolution than 27" imac. Physical screen dimensions aren't the same as its resolution. A 15" screen can have a higher resolution than a 30" screen. The graphics card is generations ahead but also modern games are much more demanding.
 
MovieCutter said:
I don't understand this. I played WoW, and games like Oblivion, Call of Duty, etc with maxxed out settings at 30" resolutions years ago without a problem on an x1900XT on the Mac Pro I had at the time. People actually say you'll need to "tweak" settings to get decent performance on a graphics card generations ahead of what I was playing with maxxed resolution 3 years ago...I'm confused.
Click to expand...

I have a 1GB 4850 in my gaming rig and on newer games I have to drop my settings some. My most recent buy Tomb Raider Underworld at 1920x1200 some scenes are too much for my card so I dropped AA and AF to 4x from 16x to make the game run perfectly smoothly. With my two to three year old games I could do max everything but now I am considering getting a 5870 before getting Assassins Creed 2, the GTX's would generate too much heat for my modded G4 case.

Also the X1900XT was a near top of the line GPU when it hit the market while the 4850 was a mid to high end GPU, as the 4870 trumped it and nVidias GTX line far outpaced it. It already has over a year on it and is a generation behind.

It should do fairly well with gaming on new and about to be released games. With how old WOW is it should do exceptionally well. Some games it will be abysmal with as it only has 512MB VRAM (GTA IV). What really hurts is the higher resolution meaning you will need to drop the AA and AF on games to play at full resolution without stuttering. Which the OP will likely need to do with CoD Modern Warfare 2.
 
I am sure he was referring to the 30'' apple display which is 2560x1600 and yes YEARS AGO. It was released in 2004 almost 6 years ago!!!!

No apple graphics card are generations ahead. If apple kept up with the times on graphics cards I would have abandoned my pc forever the second bootcamp was released.
They are usually about 1 year behind the times on that stuff.


madwolf said:
what was this ' 30" resolution ' years ago? Probably that was a 30" tv with much lower resolution than 27" imac. Physical screen dimensions aren't the same as its resolution. A 15" screen can have a higher resolution than a 30" screen. The graphics card is generations ahead but also modern games are much more demanding.
Click to expand...
 
I'm not expecting to play at the full native res of the 27" display, FWIW. If I can play at 1900x1200 or something like that I'll be happy.
 
MovieCutter said:
I don't understand this. I played WoW, and games like Oblivion, Call of Duty, etc with maxxed out settings at 30" resolutions years ago without a problem on an x1900XT on the Mac Pro I had at the time. People actually say you'll need to "tweak" settings to get decent performance on a graphics card generations ahead of what I was playing with maxxed resolution 3 years ago...I'm confused.
Click to expand...

you are absolutely DELUSIONAL if you are trying to convince me that you played Oblivion maxed out on a 30" screen with an X1900XT. Dude, and YEARS ago? I want whatever you are smoking because it is good !@$!!%.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back