Gaming question

It is bad form to bump your own thread, particularly <20 min after you started it.

Malone1878 said:

Bump it or it gets lost...

Click to expand...

Well...no reply it seems.

Malone1878 said:

Looking to purchase the 2.9 Ghz 21.5 inch version of the new iMac next week. Not looking for a gaming machine but i'm wondering how Battlefield 3 performs on the new system (FPS). I've seen a few demo's of it running on single player however I would like to know if anyone has tried it on multi-player, thanks.

Also if anyone has tried Arma 2 (FPS and what settings it performs best with)...

Click to expand...

Arma 2/Day Z laggs on full fledge 680's. The 21.5" iMacs most likely will only run at the absolute worst settings, and even then its performance might be more than questionable.

The game is just horrible written, and lacks any optimization at all. If you wish to play the game on a mac you'll have to rely on 680MX or Mac Pro with 680's or higher. Would be interesting to know though, more so for the 680MX though honestly.

This however, is entirely speculative, given there have been no benchmarks on those games thus far, not even with the 680MX. But given that games history, it doesn't look good.

Malone1878 said:

Looking over some video's from the previous iMac and it ran ok (Arma2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntSFofFd6GI

Is the GPU on the new iMac superior or inferior ?

Click to expand...

I'm not sure if I would call that ok, though I'm sure the screen recording took a toll. Frames are dropping and the screen is tearing at every turn.

In any case, I went through and selected the model you saw in the video (at the bottom due to it being the weakest), and the models currently available with the new iMac's.



To put it simply, yes they are all more powerful, however the starting GPU is only a little more powerful than that ATI (though given the 640 is nvidia, the drivers are probably a lot better...).

Then lastly, the 680MX is more or less the standard for mobile GPU's.

For you however, with the 2.9 model you'll be using the 660M, which according to that same site will get you ~37FPS at high settings for BF3. So it looks to be pretty great for it there. Ultra however, is out of the question.

Lastly, there were no Arma 2 benchmarks...

A 680MX will provide (approximately) a 20-30% jump from the 6970M (equiv. to a desktop 6850) in the 2011 iMac.

There's some details around (although slim) if you do some searching:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-680MX.83519.0.html
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5212432
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/693683-nvidia-gtx-680mx.html

The 2012 iMac seems to get a score of 6333 in 3DMark11; the old 2011 model with the 6970M around 3139 (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3132266?start=0&tstart=0).

In short: the 2012 27" iMac will run BF3 fine at native resolution & medium settings, especially if you spec up to a 680MX.

The 21" iMac could probably cope at native resolution and low settings, but if you're regular gamer I wouldn't recommend the 21" as it'll become obsolete more quickly.

elithrar said:

A 680MX will provide (approximately) a 20-30% jump from the 6970M (equiv. to a desktop 6850) in the 2011 iMac.


The 21" iMac could probably cope at native resolution and low settings, but if you're regular gamer I wouldn't recommend the 21" as it'll become obsolete more quickly.

Click to expand...

The 680MX is a more than a 20-30% jump from the 6970M...

Blkant said:

The 680MX is a more than a 20-30% jump from the 6970M...

Image

Click to expand...

I'm being intentionally (perhaps a little too?) conservative, as a 100% increase in performance in 3DMark doesn't often translate to the same increase in the real-world.

elithrar said:

I'm being intentionally (perhaps a little too?) conservative, as a 100% increase in performance in 3DMark doesn't often translate to the same increase in the real-world.

Click to expand...

Ah, understandable. Probably is a bit too conservative, but yea, those numbers are most likely misleadingly high to assume a direct relation to performance.

elithrar said:

I'm being intentionally (perhaps a little too?) conservative, as a 100% increase in performance in 3DMark doesn't often translate to the same increase in the real-world.

Click to expand...

From real framerate tests conducted by Apple and available on their Performance page for the iMac, the 680MX does 50-60% better than the 6970m, and the 650M does 20-40% better than the 6770m.

----------

Malone1878 said:

Looking to purchase the 2.9 Ghz 21.5 inch version of the new iMac next week. Not looking for a gaming machine but i'm wondering how Battlefield 3 performs on the new system (FPS). I've seen a few demo's of it running on single player however I would like to know if anyone has tried it on multi-player, thanks.

Click to expand...

BF3 isn't a good choice here. "Not wanting a gaming machine" and "want to play Battlefield 3" don't go well together; BF3 is a very demanding game. Your 650M model will run it passably with many settings turned down.