2010 iMac GPU Speculations.

[leftywamumonkey]

Hi, This is my first post, I am sorry if i have done something incorrectly in advance.

I am going to buy an iMac when they get refreshed, whenever that will be. I am no so confident in the dates I have seen in the forums.

The main thing I wanted opinions about was,

What kind of Graphics Card do you think will be in the new iMacs? In the high-end. Right now it is a ATI Radeon HD 4850 Mobility.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-4850.13975.0.html
Benchmarks in the link above.
I want to play URT, Counter Strike Source, Team Fortress 2, and Modern Warfare 1 and 2. So I want to get the best Graphics card possible in the iMac, and no I cannot afford a Mac Pro.

What Kind of Graphics card might be in the new iMacs? 5850? which isn't much better than the 4850... Or possibly NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480M :D http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-480M.30196.0.html

Thanks,

[Durious]

I'm figuring it will be the 5870, from the 3Dmark scores I've seen the 5850 seems comparable to the 4850 (comparing both the mobile ones)

http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-5870.23073.0.html

[leftywamumonkey]

That would be nice, but the GTX 480M would be nicer :)

May I ask you a question? I know it is possible to connect a third monitor to the iMac via USB, but do you know if this is a good way to go? The quality would be good from what i've seen from the websites, but I dont know about the response time and lag, etc. Just wondering if you knew anything about this. Thanks again.

[aphxtwinin]

i play on my 4850 iMac on all high setting and all Steam games play beautifully

[Durious]

i play on my 4850 iMac on all high setting and all Steam games play beautifully

yeah I totally agree with you aphxtwinin the current i7 Mac is amazing and I would get it except were too close to a refresh to not wait 0-3 months more. If I had the $ in October 09 I'd definitely be on the iMac right now! :)

[leftywamumonkey]

yeah I totally agree with you aphxtwinin the current i7 Mac is amazing and I would get it except were too close to a refresh to not wait 0-3 months more. If I had the $ in October 09 I'd definitely be on the iMac right now! :)

Durious, may I ask you a question?

[Durious]

Durious, may I ask you a question?

sure what is it?

[leftywamumonkey]

I don't know if your familiar with this but here it goes. I know it is possible to connect a third monitor to the iMac via USB, but do you know if this is a good way to go? The quality would be good from what i've seen from the websites, but I dont know about the response time and lag, etc. Just wondering if you knew anything about this. Thanks again.

[Durious]

I don't know if your familiar with this but here it goes. I know it is possible to connect a third monitor to the iMac via USB, but do you know if this is a good way to go? The quality would be good from what i've seen from the websites, but I dont know about the response time and lag, etc. Just wondering if you knew anything about this. Thanks again.

I don't believe they are using USB, I think they are using the mini display port on the back of the iMac and using a the connector that allows "dual dvi's" I think that would allow 3 monitors but i'm not 100%

[TMRaven]

I think they will put 480 desktop version in mac pros, and a mobility 5870 in the iMacs. The 480-- even in mobile version, still has a tdp of 100 watts, which is way too much for the iMac.

[leftywamumonkey]

I don't believe they are using USB, I think they are using the mini display port on the back of the iMac and using a the connector that allows "dual dvi's" I think that would allow 3 monitors but i'm not 100%

The problem is that the two monitors would have to be the same resolution and size, but there are products that use USB such as this one, http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/VIDU2DVIA/
and these are all of them.
http://www.displaylink.com/shop/index.php?product=5

Thank you for your reply. It means a lot to me.

[Durious]

I think they will put 480 desktop version in mac pros, and a mobility 5870 in the iMacs. The 480-- even in mobile version, still has a tdp of 100 watts, which is way too much for the iMac.

yeah that's what I was figuring to, I'm sort of curious on bus speeds if well see anything above 1067 for ram\board or perhaps a jump to 8Gb on high end model... doubtful but we'll see! :)

[TMRaven]

The iMacs can already support ram of up to 1333mhz. The lynnfields don't have a frontside bus for it, but they do have their own bulit-in memory controller capable of ram up to 1333mhz. Intel did this so the lynnfield's dual channel memory can rival bloomfield's tri-channel memory. Dual channel 1333mhz memory in theory has 21gb/s bandwidth while tri-channel 1067 memory has a bandwidth of 25gb/s.

But when it comes down to it, you won't notice the difference between 1067 and 1333mhz ram, because hardly anything would take advantage of such a high memory bandwidth.