2009 vs 2008 iMac 24" -- 3D Games

Sweet keep up the good work Barefeats!!!!

Very much looking forward to what the benchmarks look like with the Radeon card.

Was the testing done under XP Boot Camp?

my 2009 in WoW averages over 80FPS and i have the GT130.

brenden said:

my 2009 in WoW averages over 80FPS and i have the GT130.

Click to expand...

Well I for one am eceptionally disappointed with my GT130. I'm on High settings on WoW with 24bit color and just 1x multisampling and am getting only 43fps. Waste of money if you ask me, buy the 8800GS refurb or the GT120 I think, too late to return mine without a 15% restock fee (Amazon) so it doesn't make sense for me to switch.

EDIT: So I've had to take the settings down to Med to get 60fps!! On a slow server in a barren area (tirisfal). This video card STINKS! I might even suffer the restock fee to get my money back and buy a PC instead. This is nuts.

Does anyone know how WoW performs on the 24" with the 9400m?

Its about the only game ill play on the Mac as i have all three games consoles?

ucla95 said:

Well I for one am quite disappointed with my GT130. I'm on High settings on WoW with 24bit color and just 1x multisampling and am getting only 43fps. .

Click to expand...

Sorry but forgive me if im wrong but isnt anything over 24Fps just a bouns?

barefeats said:

I started yesterday testing the 2009 iMac 24" 3.06 with GeForce 130 GT. I've also got the 2008 iMac 24" 3.06 with GeForce 8800 GS in the lab.

Click to expand...

Hey Rob,

Did you happen to test WOW?

nusynergy said:

Sorry but forgive me if im wrong but isnt anything over 24Fps just a bouns?

Click to expand...

No, actually for many players in any kind of first person game, anything under about 60fps is painful, since there is lots of motion jerk, tearing, etc, that occurs on-screen.

Ah righto, Sorry, i only play FPS on the consoles so dont notice any issues.

That and the human eye only see's at 24fps

nusynergy said:

Ah righto, Sorry, i only play FPS on the consoles so dont notice any issues.

That and the human eye only see's at 24fps

Click to expand...

The human eye sees at closer to 10fps. But, it's not all at once like the computer screen, it's more of a continuous thing: The eye can notice isolated blips as fast as 1/500 s, so that's probably the "ultimate" target rate.

The computer screen, however, does not know which part of it your eye is focusing on, so it can't cheat and update those parts quickly at the expense of the rest. It has to update the whole thing every time, even though only a small part is ever being looked at at a time.

Your console fps is (if in the US), either 60 or 30 fps depending on the console, and somewhat of a pain to control...

nusynergy said:

Does anyone know how WoW performs on the 24" with the 9400m?

Its about the only game ill play on the Mac as i have all three games consoles?

Click to expand...

I have the 9400M in my current gen Macbook and I play WoW at medium-high settings (some med some high) and get about 60fps. Now of course that's a 13" screen not a 24", so I'd bet that would translate to 20-30fps on the big screen. So I think you could play fine on medium settings.

If I had to do it over again I'd get the 3.06 refurb for $1599 and a $60 memory upgrade from newegg or whoever. But can't live in the past, at least I was helping the economy I guess.

nusynergy said:

Does anyone know how WoW performs on the 24" with the 9400m?

Its about the only game ill play on the Mac as i have all three games consoles?

Click to expand...

Well the only game i play is guild wars. Always ran it on a pc with an x1650 pro till i got my 20" 09 imac. I have to say the 9400m is an improvement.

I am getting up to 50fps on max settings running fullscreen at native res. The fps rate jumps significantly as i lower the settings. This is also running through crossover as there is no mac version of gw and i have not set up bootcamp.

So i would say the 9400m would have no problems with wow at all.

WOW benchies would nice

Shivetya said:

WOW benchies would nice

Click to expand...

Seconded, Rob! I know WoW doesn't push the system as hard as something like CoD4, but *lots* of people playing that would benefit.

Thanks much for the data you posted - really helped me decide which unit to buy! (Ordered a 3Ghz 8800GS refurb and saved a bundle.)

Shivetya said:

WOW benchies would nice

Click to expand...

Blizzard has provided a new performance benchmark thread for WoW with all of the early 2009 iMac models, including those equipped with the Radeon 4850 video card option which will be out in a month.

jmpage2 said:

Blizzard has provided a new performance benchmark thread for WoW with all of the early 2009 iMac models, including those equipped with the Radeon 4850 video card option which will be out in a month.

Click to expand...

and I can BS unless they can lay claim to having actual hardware.

Shivetya said:

and I can BS unless they can lay claim to having actual hardware.

Click to expand...

They provided very specific settings and FPS performance. It would not surprise me if they were able to get the new hardware a month before the general public.

It's pretty typical in the PC world for game developers to have easy access to beta hardware and drivers to tune their game performance.

jmpage2 said:

Blizzard has provided a new performance benchmark thread for WoW with all of the early 2009 iMac models, including those equipped with the Radeon 4850 video card option which will be out in a month.

Click to expand...

IIRC, the thread I think you're referring to (a sticky in the Mac Support forum) is authored by a community member. His name is Stone something-or-other. Sorry I can't link to the post - that forum blocked at work.

The 4850 frame rate numbers he's citing are projected. If you read further down in the thread, he hasn't gotten his hands on a 4850 iMac yet.

The thread is definitely useful, but it's not the same as a true benchmark. The frame rates he posts are kind of open-ended and aren't based on apples-and-apples (pun intended) testing in a specific location and path, such as what Bare Feats is doing. (The WoW equivalent of a timedemo).

The fps numbers also weren't very specific. For instance, they listed a range for the 8800GS of like 60-90 fps. I understand what the guy is trying to do - old world Azeroth areas will test at ~90 and the more-demanding Northrend areas will be ~60.

I'd still love to see true benchmarks with the settings maxed-out at native monitor res.

ucla95 said:

Well I for one am eceptionally disappointed with my GT130. I'm on High settings on WoW with 24bit color and just 1x multisampling and am getting only 43fps. Waste of money if you ask me, buy the 8800GS refurb or the GT120 I think, too late to return mine without a 15% restock fee (Amazon) so it doesn't make sense for me to switch.

EDIT: So I've had to take the settings down to Med to get 60fps!! On a slow server in a barren area (tirisfal). This video card STINKS! I might even suffer the restock fee to get my money back and buy a PC instead. This is nuts.

Click to expand...

Hmmm lemon of a card / RAM / iMac? The main game I play is WoW and this 2009 3.06 GHz iMac laughs at it - vertical sync, max res and max settings except AA which I always keep at 2x in WoW. I cap my FPS at 60 and it is always right around 40 - 60 FPS anywhere and everywhere (ok not in Dalaran no rig can handle all that bottleneck lag).

In short WoW looks like I've never seen it before and that is comparing it from my "last years" 3.06 GHz iMac with the 8800 GS as well as vs. a custom self built PC with 6 GBs of DDR2, Intel Quad Core, and the XFX 8800 GTO Alpha Dog Edition GPU.

Barefeats thanks for the hard #'s. It's clear that this new 3.06 GHz iMac is indeed a step up from the earlier model from the DDR3 to the GT130.

itommyboy,

How did your old 3.06 w/ 8800GS do with WoW. Is there really a big difference in the look and playability of WoW on your new iMac?

Thanks!

itommyboy said:

Hmmm lemon of a card / RAM / iMac? The main game I play is WoW and this 2009 3.06 GHz iMac laughs at it - vertical sync, max res and max settings except AA which I always keep at 2x in WoW. I cap my FPS at 60 and it is always right around 40 - 60 FPS anywhere and everywhere (ok not in Dalaran no rig can handle all that bottleneck lag).

In short WoW looks like I've never seen it before and that is comparing it from my "last years" 3.06 GHz iMac with the 8800 GS as well as vs. a custom self built PC with 6 GBs of DDR2, Intel Quad Core, and the XFX 8800 GTO Alpha Dog Edition GPU.

Barefeats thanks for the hard #'s. It's clear that this new 3.06 GHz iMac is indeed a step up from the earlier model from the DDR3 to the GT130.

Click to expand...

Woop! Thats what i wanted to hear... Iv just ordered my 2009 3.06Ghz with the GT130 Cant wait to get it too.

nusynergy said:

Woop! Thats what i wanted to hear... Iv just ordered my 2009 3.06Ghz with the GT130 Cant wait to get it too.

Click to expand...

I'd be really curious about WOW benchmarks from last year's 3.06 + nvidia 8800 to this year's 3.06 + ATI 4850... anyone?

hi

i take it they both had 4gb of RAM?

some results are close maybe the new ddr3 ram is a factor as well..

cheers Paul....