24" iMac + 2GB Ram + Upgraded Video Card = 200+ FPS in WOW!!!!

Some of you may know me as a guy that switched from Windows to a Mac Pro... and returned it because it just wasn't worth the money and the Windows performance was So pathetic I couldn't stand it.

Well, I JUST GOT my 24" iMac (thought I'd try that one out)... and... my only reservation was the 1920x1200 resolution in Games... would it be enough of a video card.

Well, 3 things sold me on the iMac.

#1)... Upgradeable Video Card Potential
#2)... Firewire 800 Port
#3)... 24" Monitor

Had not all of these things been in the iMac I would NOT have purchased it.

Well, first impressions are AWESOME.

My config:

24" iMac
2Gb Ram
500Gb HDD
7600GT 256MB Graphics

Settings with World of Warcraft...

1920x1200 and 4x FSAA enabled with all settings on High, and VSYNC DISABLED...

Windowed Mode I get spikes of 200+ FPS!!!!! OMG!

In FULL SCREEN MODE I STILL GET UPWARDS OF 170FPS! I average 120-140FPS!!!!!

Just awesome. I couldn't be happier.

Also loaded Civ IV for Mac... 1920x1280 works great. Just wish that game wouldn't still make the actual game so big... I want to see more field area, not bigger people lol...

So.. now I'm downloading BootCamp and going to try out Windows

I'll keep ya posted!

Oh, and I also got a Firewire 800 Case with 2 drive RAID 0 support and 2 Seagate 7200.10 16 Meg Cache 320Gig Drives to boot off of, and use my entire 500GB Internal Disk as my Windows Partition.

I'll let you guys know... any tests anyone wants to run Windows or Mac?

Old Smuggler said:

congratulations!
what are you doing here then? "game on!"

Click to expand...

What am I doing on here? HA! I'm waiting for Windows to finish installing, of course hahaha

mulletman13 said:

Holy crap....

I sadly have the default card in my 24", and I'm scared on how WoW will play

Think it will be able to handle full resolution (i dont need max settings) retaining a solid 25/30 FPS?

Also can you try Video Stress Test for HL2/CS:S?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

I'll try to get that tomorrow... I'll borrow it back from a friend for the test

Old Smuggler said:

i wasnt being rude if i came off that way sorry
i am glad to hear about the performance as i will be in need of a desktop soon
i was just sayin play your little heart out and get lost in that 24 screen goodness
thats what i would be doing

Click to expand...

I didn't take it as you were being rude at all. No worries

nagromme said:

Cool--that's the exact config I'm thinking of. (2.33 doesn't sound worth it.)

Click to expand...

My Bad.

It is also a 2.33

Ok... great news.

The machine is BAD A$$ even at 1920x1200 ULTRA QUALITY in Quake 4...

Running in Windows XP using the Hardware OC Benchmark, I get...

Get ready for it...

52FPS AVERAGE on a REALLY INTENSE Benchmark!

Not too shabby for a little iMac.

Now, I did increase the Video Card Mhz using Coolbits for nVidia...

Without, at stock SLOW speeds, it was still a VERY respectable 44FPS Average!



Nice One Apple!

sigamy said:

Great setup. I'm still debating. I'd be interested in iDVD encoding benchmarks, if you have the time to run some tests.

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I'm currently doing some DVD Ripping Tests in Windows (using only a home made DVD movie of course, I'd NEVER break the fine laws of this country!...lol...)...
currently using an external firewire CDRW/DVD Combo drive I'm getting a full Dual Layer rip in about 6 minutes at about 7500K/s ripping/encoding (DVDSHRINK 3.2.15)

I'll try the internal drive here shortly.

Update: The internal drive, as I suspected, is horribly slow at ripping (about 2,400K / second)... and the same DVD will take almost 30 minutes to rip.

Trying my new external Phillips 16x DVDRDL drive shortly.

2nd Update: The new external Phillips 16x DVDRDL rips at about 2x the speed of the internal iMac drive, but nowhere near the non-rip-limited Mad Dog CDRW/DVD Combo.

About to install OS X on my external FW800 RAID 0 Disks... will report more later

So, the processing power is there... the iMac is just hampered by design (can't get a super fast disk in a tiny slot loading space... lol)

twoodcc said:

if you get a chance, could you use Handbrake to encode a dvd with H.264 (MP4 file) and under Avg. bitrate (kbps), make it 1500, and 2-pass encoding?*

just let it run for a few minutes, and let us know the fps

thanks

Click to expand...

No problem.

Trying to figure out why my FW800 RAID0 Stripe is slower than the single internal drive... Hmmmmmmm

mulletman13 said:

... because SATA has more bandwidth than FW800...?

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True, however, by only utilizing a single SATA drive (which is running about 63 Megabytes a second transfer)... the ceiling is much higher (theoretically) with 2 drives in RAID 0 via Firewire 800.

A Megabit is .125 of a Megabyte, therefore FW800 has a theoretical throughput of 100 MegaBYTES per second... WELL above the current single drive performance capabilities in the iMac.

Hmmmm... wonder why it is.

Seems that the internal READS faster, but the external RAID writes faster...

twoodcc said:

if you get a chance, could you use Handbrake to encode a dvd with H.264 (MP4 file) and under Avg. bitrate (kbps), make it 1500, and 2-pass encoding?*

just let it run for a few minutes, and let us know the fps

thanks

Click to expand...

Averaged (From DISC, not from Hard Drive) between 30 and 31 fps... Is that good?