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Which iMac for gaming?

S

Spurk

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 28, 2010
18
0
What do you guys recommend i go for, i plan to game aswell as run Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign. I reckon the 3.60GHz Intel Core dual core i5 + the 1GB video card is better then the quadcore for my needs? Sure it cost a bit more but i don`t see the need for 4 cores with my usage. The quad core only offers a 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 aswell.

And how does this compare against the 21.5 i5 ATI Radeon HD 5670 512MB 3.60GHz setup?


Please shed some light on this.
Thanks
 
Quad core is faster in most games because the CPU is not the bottleneck. Don't waste your money on i5 upgrade, get the quad. Real cores are better
 
Spurk said:
What do you guys recommend i go for, i plan to game aswell as run Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign. I reckon the 3.60GHz Intel Core dual core i5 + the 1GB video card is better then the quadcore for my needs? Sure it cost a bit more but i don`t see the need for 4 cores with my usage. The quad core only offers a 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 aswell.

And how does this compare against the 21.5 i5 ATI Radeon HD 5670 512MB 3.60GHz setup?


Please shed some light on this.
Thanks
Click to expand...

Clock speeds are largely irrelevant, and have been for years. You're getting more performance out of the 2.8GHz quad core i5 over the 3.60GHz dual core i5.

Further, you're one of the people who will actually see value in the quad core because you'll be running apps that love multithreading.
 
hazerjohn said:
That bad? :confused:
Click to expand...

not bad but the same performance.

The GPU is the bottleneck and the mobile 4850 is approximatively the same as the desktop 5750 or mobile 5850.

In France the refurb imac is 1.529 (quad core i5 and 4850M) and the new imac is 1999, so i save 470€ (=611$) for the same performance in games.

To be honest I am really disappointed by the imacs price increase

[EDIT] Do we pay for the last generation screen issues ?
 
Hellhammer said:
Quad core is faster in most games because the CPU is not the bottleneck. Don't waste your money on i5 upgrade, get the quad. Real cores are better
Click to expand...

it depends on the game. given that most games are still dual core, you would want to go with the i5 (TB of nearly 4Ghz!), the OP would have to research more for each individual games.

as for the video work etc, a quad core cant be beat!
 
DoFoT9 said:
it depends on the game. given that most games are still dual core, you would want to go with the i5 (TB of nearly 4Ghz!), the OP would have to research more for each individual games.

as for the video work etc, a quad core cant be beat!
Click to expand...

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2901/12

It's faster in every game that Anandtech tested. There is no i5-680 included in those tests though. Anyway, the CPU is not the bottleneck here so there won't be major difference between dual and quad.
 
Hellhammer said:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2901/12

It's faster in every game that Anandtech tested. There is no i5-680 included in those tests though. Anyway, the CPU is not the bottleneck here so there won't be major difference between dual and quad.
Click to expand...

wow. i wasnt aware that HT so actively killed benchmarks like that! i knew that it effected synthetic marks but not REAL ones (gaming counts as real right? ;) ).

i guess a lot of the games are becoming fully multicore aware :)
 
DoFoT9 said:
wow. i wasnt aware that HT so actively killed benchmarks like that! i knew that it effected synthetic marks but not REAL ones (gaming counts as real right? ;) ).

i guess a lot of the games are becoming fully multicore aware :)
Click to expand...

i5-750 doesn't even have HT and it's still faster than Clarkdale ;)
 
So i guess the 27" quad is the way to go.
Should i get the # 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 upgrade?
 
Spurk said:
So i guess the 27" quad is the way to go.
Should i get the # 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 upgrade?
Click to expand...

If it's only gaming, then probably not but if you're going to do something else which is CPU intensive, it's worth it. It's only 200$ for up to 30% performance increase
 
Hellhammer said:
If it's only gaming, then probably not but if you're going to do something else which is CPU intensive, it's worth it. It's only 200$ for up to 30% performance increase
Click to expand...

Does it really provide 30% better performance? Not that i doubt your word but any chance you can elaborate some on that. Seems like a major difference when they seem almost the same?

Cheers
 
Spurk said:
Does it really provide 30% better performance? Not that i doubt your word but any chance you can elaborate some on that. Seems like a major difference when they seem almost the same?

Cheers
Click to expand...

It does provide ~30% better performance when all threads (8) can be utilized. Those tasks are usually video encoding and rendering, most games cannot take advantage of the extra threads. See some benchmarks here
 
Only that the benchmark you provide uses the i5-750 while the one in the new iMac is the i5-760, with higher clocks. I think that in real-time applications the i7-870 will be at most 10-15% faster
 
ofcourse, and yes i understand. thats why i think people who are buying imacs to game are fine of with just going the i5.
 
henrikrox said:
ofcourse, and yes i understand. thats why i think people who are buying imacs to game are fine of with just going the i5.
Click to expand...

haha great - sorry, bit tired at the moment and cant think straight! i think the i5 is probably the best for users who do single tasks at a time. if they are doing multiple things such as converting, heavy PSing, video editing ALL AT THE SAME TIME - then they will most certainly see a difference in the HT. but not for singular. :)
 
Hi everyone. I've been reading these forums for quite some time, and this is my first time replying to a thread.

I've been using an eMac for the past five or six years, and like many of you, I waited for the current iMac update before deciding on which new computer to buy.
Thought it would be good to ask in this thread: Any opinions on which graphics card would be best for playing Starcraft 2? I know there are already lots of threads on this, but it seems no one really knows...

Being a student, I'm considering buying the 27" iMac (not quad-core, a bit too expensive). Would it be worth paying extra to upgrade from ATI Radeon 5670 to 5750?
 
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