Is an iMac good for gaming?

if u like and mostly depend on OS X but still want to play some windows based games then iMac is really good choice, my personal experience using 27" late 2012 with GTX675MX is awesome.
BF 4 with native resolution I able played it perfectly (dunno about fps, everything just smooth), also Tomb raider 2013, Far Cry 3 and DOTA 2 everything runs very smooth

I'm using an external SSD Samsung 256Gb via Thunderbolt interface for bootcamp windows 8.1 and its really perfect for my need

now I just need to buy a bigger SSD (at least 480/512Gb)

I bought an iMac 27" with the following speccs:

- 3.5 ghz i7 processor
- 16GB Ram
- Geforce GTX 780M 4GB

I installed Windows 7 Bootcamp (used 250GB of the 1TB total fusion drive).

I play the following games, all on the highest settings possible without the slightest lag or fps-problems:

- League of Legends
- Skyrim
- Battlefield 4
- Elderscrolls Online

I use my iMac for video-edits with Finalcut Pro X. Yes the machine was pretty expensive - but in my opinion: if you don't want to have an ugly huge (noisy) tower with tons of cable, if you want to have one of the best screens available at the moment BUILT IN your gaming-machine, if you want to have OSX and Windows and if you want to have a clean desk with a beautiful designed machine - the iMac is your choice

It's by the way my first mac ever - i previously always bought gaming-pc's.

edit: if you have troubles connecting your PC Gaming-Headset - just buy something like this: https://shop.digitec.ch/de/s1/product/sweex-soundkarten-adapter-usb-20-soundkarte-361250 (USB-Soundcard Adapter). Works like a charm under Windows and Mac. (The new iMacs don't have a Mic-IN!!)

itsVashi said:

if you have troubles connecting your PC Gaming-Headset - just buy something like this: https://shop.digitec.ch/de/s1/product/sweex-soundkarten-adapter-usb-20-soundkarte-361250 (USB-Soundcard Adapter). Works like a charm under Windows and Mac. (The new iMacs don't have a Mic-IN!!)

Click to expand...

cool stuff

Sound Card Adapter USB, amazon.de

Read the article at anandtech.com about using thunderbolt 2 with an external GPU card (GTX780ti). It stated that they were able to achieve 80-90% of the regular performance. It's an uncomplete article, since they don't include any real benchmarks and talk about screen resolution etc., so the real life performance could actually much lower in certain cases.

Mac32 said:

Read the article at anandtech.com about using thunderbolt 2 with an external GPU card (GTX780ti). It stated that they were able to achieve 80-90% of the regular performance. It's an uncomplete article, since they don't include any real benchmarks and talk about screen resolution etc., so the real life performance could actually much lower in certain cases.

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Benchmarks are available in the original TechInferno post: http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-...0gbps-tb2-sonnet-echo-express-iii-d-win8.html

yjchua95 said:

Benchmarks are available in the original TechInferno post: http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-...0gbps-tb2-sonnet-echo-express-iii-d-win8.html

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Thanks, but I wonder how performance would be affected when playing in 1440p. Still, a very expensive solution, but interesting - if the next iMac got a Thunderbolt 2 update.

Mac32 said:

Thanks, but I wonder how performance would be affected when playing in 1440p. Still, a very expensive solution, but interesting - if the next iMac got a Thunderbolt 2 update.

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You can't use the internal screen when you do this, unless the system supports Optimus, and this doesn't work on machines that already have dedicated GPUs. For example, with the setup in the video, you can't use the internal display on rMBPs with the 750M, but you can using the rMBP that only has the integrated Iris Pro.

Shuttling the image back to the internal for display on the laptop's screen costs about 5-10% performance also.

joe-h2o said:

You can't use the internal screen when you do this, unless the system supports Optimus, and this doesn't work on machines that already have dedicated GPUs. For example, with the setup in the video, you can't use the internal display on rMBPs with the 750M, but you can using the rMBP that only has the integrated Iris Pro.

Shuttling the image back to the internal for display on the laptop's screen costs about 5-10% performance also.

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Of course, forgot about this. It's been quite a while since I read about external GPUs, but I remember being disappointed then. It's obviously not a feasable solution for making the iMac a more powerful gaming machine. That's what PCs are for I guess..