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Finding my iMac's weak spot? ( performance )

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The Hockaday.

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Original poster
Aug 14, 2010
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I apologize if this is in the wrong sub forum.

I have 3.06 ghz intel core 2 duo 27" iMac. I run a windows partition to play some games on but I have trouble with fps on higher settings for two games ( Rift / EQ2 ). Can anyone suggest a way to find my mac's weak spot per say?

If I understand correctly you can't upgrade the video card and such but you can increase the memory; so I thought perhaps that might help my fps.

I know there is a performance monitor under windows but I'm not sure what to look for, I do know that I see my memory being peaked a decent amount. But i figured it might be a video card issue.

Any advice would be great, thank you.

Edit: I bought this mac september of last year if that matters.
 
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archer75

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Jan 26, 2005
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Anything beyond 4gb of ram is going to be a waste for those games. Your limiting factor is primarily the video card.

Your only option is to turn down settings and accept it.
 
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The Hockaday.

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 14, 2010
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Well that sucks...guess I'll have to sell it soon and build a pc / mac.

Really can't upgrade the vid card ehh?
 
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archer75

macrumors 68040
Jan 26, 2005
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Nope.

But you could try and sell it and use the money towards the upcoming new imacs. That's the biggest drawback to an imac, when you need more power you can't upgrade it. Throw the thing out and get a new one.
 
T

The Hockaday.

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 14, 2010
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Nah, after this I'm never buying an iMac again. If it can't handle a 7 year old game that kinda sucks. Will have to build a new mac or see if I can install osx on an alien pc
 
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archer75

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Jan 26, 2005
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well to be fair the EQ2 engine is pretty bad. It does require a pretty high end system to be able to play at max and even at max it doesn't look great.
 
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The Hockaday.

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 14, 2010
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Agreed. Hoping I will be able to run swtor fairly well. I still find it hard to believe you can't upgrade the video card...why is that? I heard the ima is a glorified laptop but you can upgrade laptop vid cards iirc.
 
DustinT

DustinT

macrumors 68000
Feb 26, 2011
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archer75 said:
Nope.

But you could try and sell it and use the money towards the upcoming new imacs. That's the biggest drawback to an imac, when you need more power you can't upgrade it. Throw the thing out and get a new one.
Click to expand...
This is the best approach. You can sell it for a very good price and buy a new one with a much better graphics card. Or, you can use the money towards a Mac Pro if you want a system you can expand as needed. Personally, I know how well Apple products hold their resale value so I just sell and buy a new one. Its a lot less money than you think.
 
T

The Hockaday.

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Original poster
Aug 14, 2010
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Thanks guys ( and perhaps gals ) for your input, just throwing this out there...as I am a novice in the mechanics of a pc / mac. Would more ram help? at all? I am running win 7 x64 for games.
 
Badger^2

Badger^2

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Oct 29, 2009
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How are you running Windows? via bootcamp? or emulation?

You needed to spring for the 4850 video card.

Id say the weak spot is trying to run 7 year old games on current tech and having them look good.

What modern games have you tried?
 
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The Hockaday.

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 14, 2010
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Running it via a bootcamp parition.

I run civ 4/5 just fine on high settings. I've tried rift and anything more then the " low " lettings my fps starts to plummet.
 
DustinT

DustinT

macrumors 68000
Feb 26, 2011
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The Hockaday. said:
Running it via a bootcamp parition.

I run civ 4/5 just fine on high settings. I've tried rift and anything more then the " low " lettings my fps starts to plummet.
Click to expand...
Well, all you can do is just monitor the amount of free ram. If it starts dropping too low you can upgrade it. Otherwise you really don't have any other options.
 
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dxr808s

macrumors member
Mar 10, 2011
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The Hockaday. said:
Agreed. Hoping I will be able to run swtor fairly well. I still find it hard to believe you can't upgrade the video card...why is that? I heard the ima is a glorified laptop but you can upgrade laptop vid cards iirc.
Click to expand...

They are not like laptops. They are all in one machines, not really meant to be upgraded as such.

They can be used on "power" levels, but they are mostly marketed towards people that use them for general use.

Plus, you're complaining about a C2D processor. Which most likely means you have a very old GPU.

The iMac is great for what it does. If you want to upgrade and mess around with specs, you should probably look into the Mac Pro line.

I don't understand the mentality of complaining about a product, when the very same company offers the answer to your complaints.
 
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The Hockaday.

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Original poster
Aug 14, 2010
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Wasn't really complaining, just asking some questions. Rather a novice to the more in depth specs so was looking to get the answers ( which I have ).

Note, a 2010 iMac shouldn't be that old I would think.

I'll probably end up building a mac or looking to get a pc that I can install osx on through the ox86 project ( or something similar ).
 
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Drewbie

macrumors member
Aug 27, 2010
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try over clocking your video card. i tried it and i was able to squeeze an easy 5-10 fps outa my video card. and that was just minor increase
 
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Drewbie

macrumors member
Aug 27, 2010
59
0
you just need to up the fans a little bit. you can do this with software these days.

get smcfancontrol and you can manually set up the fan speeds with that

and MSI afterburner will allow you to overclock your video card.
 
MythicFrost

MythicFrost

macrumors 68040
Mar 11, 2009
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Australia
I find my iMac runs games quite well, even in Crysis: Warhead I can get 40 FPS on low at 2560x1440. Crysis 2 I can get 45-70 FPS on lowest settings at 1280x720. I've got the 09 27" iMac w/ an i7 @ 2.8GHz, 2TB HD, and 12GB 1066MHz RAM, I'm running Windows Ultimate 64-bit w/ page file turned off.

How much RAM do you have? If you've got plenty of RAM then adding more won't help, but lack of RAM could bottleneck your system. I'd think it to be more likely your CPU though. I'm happy to run a few benchmarks to compare against your machine if you want?
 
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The Hockaday.

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 14, 2010
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I'd love that, I have 4gb 1067 mhz ddr3.

Is there a program i need to get to run benchmarks on windows? Or somehow to export a built in performance monitor readings?

I also notice that the games run faster in windowed mode rather then full screen.
 
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Drewbie

macrumors member
Aug 27, 2010
59
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i dont think cpu speed is the bottleneck here but i could be wrong.
im guessing its the GPU that can only render so many polygons per second.

download geekbench and run that, show us your results
 
MythicFrost

MythicFrost

macrumors 68040
Mar 11, 2009
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38
Australia
The Hockaday. said:
I'd love that, I have 4gb 1067 mhz ddr3.

Is there a program i need to get to run benchmarks on windows? Or somehow to export a built in performance monitor readings?

I also notice that the games run faster in windowed mode rather then full screen.
Click to expand...
They're are plenty of benchmarks out there, you can just download (a safe and genuine) one and run it. Not sure about your second question about performance monitor readings.

They'll run faster if you use a lower resolution.

I'll download the Unigine Heaven 2.5 DX11 benchmark and run that at 2560x1440 and you should do the same too, and then we'll see the difference. I can't think of any other benchmarks right now, unless you've got any games with built in benchmarks? Like Just Cause 2 maybe?
 
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