iMac 20" with 256MB X1600

[iancapable]

Would the above (title) pc be good enough for the majority of games available to mac users?

I'm planning on buying a mac soon enough and this seems to be the cheapest and best option short of buying a 24" iMac or a Mac Pro (which I don't want to have to spend a lot of money on).

My mac spec comes to £1208 and has all the necessary bells and whistles (I don't need more than 250GB storage hehe I have a lot of storage boxes).

2GB Ram
256MB ATI X1600
250GB SATA

waddya think?

If you think that it's not good enough, why should I fork out for a mac pro (noting I do have displays available but want the iMac because it's small and has a display so I can use my 19" wide with it, because I'm greedy).

[DavidLeblond]

Originally Posted by iancapable

Would the above (title) pc be good enough for the majority of games available to mac users?

I'm planning on buying a mac soon enough and this seems to be the cheapest and best option short of buying a 24" iMac or a Mac Pro (which I don't want to have to spend a lot of money on).

My mac spec comes to £1208 and has all the necessary bells and whistles (I don't need more than 250GB storage hehe I have a lot of storage boxes).

2GB Ram
256MB ATI X1600
250GB SATA

waddya think?

If you think that it's not good enough, why should I fork out for a mac pro (noting I do have displays available but want the iMac because it's small and has a display so I can use my 19" wide with it, because I'm greedy).

I guess it depends on the graphic settings you like on your games. I have that exact same configuration of iMac and so far I have tried:
Quake 4 Mac
Half-Life 2 Demo PC
Dreamfall PC

all three of those look/play perfectly at relatively decent detail levels. I've also tried Doom 3 for the Mac which for some reason looked far worse than Quake 4 and played worse too. Not sure what THATS all about.

[iancapable]

Originally Posted by DavidLeblond

I guess it depends on the graphic settings you like on your games. I have that exact same configuration of iMac and so far I have tried:
Quake 4 Mac
Half-Life 2 Demo PC
Dreamfall PC

all three of those look/play perfectly at relatively decent detail levels. I've also tried Doom 3 for the Mac which for some reason looked far worse than Quake 4 and played worse too. Not sure what THATS all about.

hahahaha doom3 is buggy to hell anyway in my experience...

IF all of the above games work nicely then I'm all for it

I don't get to play many games these days, because I mostly work and of course I run linux, so games are scarce... But an iMac should do everything I need... What worries me is buying a mac pro and then in less than a year I will want a new pc, where as an iMac I think is a good buy considering it's only a grand...

[Haoshiro]

I haven't had much problems and those are my exact specs. WoW runs fine, and I even get 100+ fps in UT2K4 at 1680x1050 (native resolution) with setting at highest.

It should play pretty much everything out, but you won't get to max settings on everything.

If you can go for it, though, the 7600 in the 24" iMac is vastly superior.

[miniConvert]

I find on the previous top-end top-spec Core Duo 20" iMac that WoW plays pretty badly. Most settings need to be reduced substantially in order to secure a dependable frame rate of 25fps and above at the monitors native resolution. It's certainly not as good as I thought it would be.

[iancapable]

Originally Posted by Haoshiro

I haven't had much problems and those are my exact specs. WoW runs fine, and I even get 100+ fps in UT2K4 at 1680x1050 (native resolution) with setting at highest.

It should play pretty much everything out, but you won't get to max settings on everything.

If you can go for it, though, the 7600 in the 24" iMac is vastly superior.

I might spec up the 24" one! And see how much it will cost...

[QCassidy352]

Originally Posted by miniConvert

I find on the previous top-end top-spec Core Duo 20" iMac that WoW plays pretty badly. Most settings need to be reduced substantially in order to secure a dependable frame rate of 25fps and above at the monitors native resolution. It's certainly not as good as I thought it would be.

really?? that's too bad, and not what I'd heard. I heard that the core duo imacs played WoW very well. I'm getting a core duo 17" imac today, and although I don't play WoW anymore, I'm hoping for pretty good graphics performance for other things.

[iancapable]

Originally Posted by miniConvert

I find on the previous top-end top-spec Core Duo 20" iMac that WoW plays pretty badly. Most settings need to be reduced substantially in order to secure a dependable frame rate of 25fps and above at the monitors native resolution. It's certainly not as good as I thought it would be.

Hmmmm sounds odd considering I was getting decent frame rates on an athlon 2600XP running under wine in linux...

Surely it would run ok on a machine as highly spec'ed as an iMac...

[Haoshiro]

I haven't really had problems with WoW, although the last time I played was before several intel mac fixes were complete.

Plus there is multi-threaded opengl which should double the fps in WoW, not sure when they will release that update though.

Anyway, when I last played I needed to play WoW in windowed mode with setting at about medium. It didn't run as good as my PC with a 6600 did, but it was certainly playable.

Since then a bunch of performance updates have been released for intel macs and I haven't had time to try it since then.

[iancapable]

Originally Posted by Haoshiro

I haven't really had problems with WoW, although the last time I played was before several intel mac fixes were complete.

Plus there is multi-threaded opengl which should double the fps in WoW, not sure when they will release that update though.

Anyway, when I last played I needed to play WoW in windowed mode with setting at about medium. It didn't run as good as my PC with a 6600 did, but it was certainly playable.

Since then a bunch of performance updates have been released for intel macs and I haven't had time to try it since then.

could you possibly give it a go soon? I would be eternally grateful!

[Josh396]

Originally Posted by Haoshiro

I haven't really had problems with WoW, although the last time I played was before several intel mac fixes were complete.

Plus there is multi-threaded opengl which should double the fps in WoW, not sure when they will release that update though.

Anyway, when I last played I needed to play WoW in windowed mode with setting at about medium. It didn't run as good as my PC with a 6600 did, but it was certainly playable.

Since then a bunch of performance updates have been released for intel macs and I haven't had time to try it since then.

That just about shocks me. I have the same computer the OP speced out and I have no problems whatsoever playing WoW. I run at full screen, full resolution, with all settings on Medium-Max and I get from 30-50 FPS no problem. The only time I've ever had to turn my settings down was at an AOE mob in AQ40. Maybe I'm just lucky.

Also, it is my understanding that the new OpenGL won't double the FPS. Again, from what I have been told, it basically allows the game to run on both processors. While that's great news, the X1600 would be more of a bottleneck on his setup then his processor. It will obviously increase the FPS, but from what I've heard it's 5-10 FPS.

Iancapable, as someone else posted, if you can, I'd really shoot for a 24" iMac with the 7600, I saw a post on here that some was getting over 100 FPS with every setting on Max.

EDIT: And this isn't just recently. I've played on the same settings since the first Intel patch was released back in February I believe. Even running under Rosetta I got about 15-20 FPS with settings near Max.

[iancapable]

Originally Posted by Josh396

That just about shocks me. I have the same computer the OP speced out and I have no problems whatsoever playing WoW. I run at full screen, full resolution, with all settings on Medium-Max and I get from 30-50 FPS no problem. The only time I've ever had to turn my settings down was at an AOE mob in AQ40. Maybe I'm just lucky.

Also, it is my understanding that the new OpenGL won't double the FPS. Again, from what I have been told, it basically allows the game to run on both processors. While that's great news, the X1600 would be more of a bottleneck on his setup then his processor. It will obviously increase the FPS, but from what I've heard it's 5-10 FPS.

Iancapable, as someone else posted, if you can, I'd really shoot for a 24" iMac with the 7600, I saw a post on here that some was getting over 100 FPS with every setting on Max.

EDIT: And this isn't just recently. I've played on the same settings since the first Intel patch was released back in February I believe. Even running under Rosetta I got about 15-20 FPS with settings near Max.

I think I'll bite the bullet and get a 24" mac then. It's either that or a mac pro (which I would love, but one step at a time as this is my first mac).

I've heard that supposedly the 24" has removable video cards? Has anyone actually checked?