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27" iMac for gaming?

leman said:
Well, it has been over half a year that I sold my iMac so I can't give you the precise settings... are you sure you have the high-end version (with the 6970M)? Obviously you should disable anti-aliasing. Also, you can play around with shadow settings. I am rather sure though that I left everything on max (with AA disabled). Most benchmarks show AMD 6850 (basically the same card, slightly faster) getting around 70 fps on high settings in Skyrim at 1920x1200 with 4xAA.
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Yeah, I have the 6970M with 1 GB ram on the card.

I have tried different drivers as well, but it could be Windows 8 or the installation of Skyrim itself that is messing things up. OK, thanks for you help anyway. I actually had to put everything on low and set the resolution really low (720p) to be able to play.
 
Windows 8 could be a problem, also you need to update your graphic card drivers--which is not as easy as it sounds. Amd catalyst 12.7 should be your go to driver. Amd is up to 12.10 right now, but I haven't been able to find an iMac comparable download for them. 12.7 is great though as long as you are in windows 7 which skyrim was designed for!

You said you tried different drivers, but are you familiar with how they work with a bootcamp iMac? Maybe you haven't actually downloaded them.

I have a 2011 21.5" and play skyrim on all high setting at 1080p. Make sure to turn antialiasing off as it is a fpS killer for no real gain at native resolution.
 
Bargle said:
Windows 8 could be a problem, also you need to update your graphic card drivers--which is not as easy as it sounds. Amd catalyst 12.7 should be your go to driver. Amd is up to 12.10 right now, but I haven't been able to find an iMac comparable download for them. 12.7 is great though as long as you are in windows 7 which skyrim was designed for!

You said you tried different drivers, but are you familiar with how they work with a bootcamp iMac? Maybe you haven't actually downloaded them.
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No, I've tried some catalyst beta drivers. 12.09 and 12.11. They are not designed for iMac, but they are normal windows drivers that support the card. I'm not in Windows now, but i think 12.11 was the last one i tried.

And I mean checking in device manager, so I'm pretty sure they are downloaded. :)
 
If you buy a new iMac and use bootcamp to install windows 7 does bootcamp install the windows drivers for the 680MX? :S
 
But an iMac. Maybe you'll discover how to do something useful and creative with it also. Life is short, why spend a large part of it playing games?

Just my opinion. ;)
 
My iMac will be used to dub freelance movies outside of work.

But you do realise in their free time, some humans like to play games with friends!
 
Bargle said:
Windows 8 could be a problem, also you need to update your graphic card drivers--which is not as easy as it sounds. Amd catalyst 12.7 should be your go to driver.

I have a 2011 21.5" and play skyrim on all high setting at 1080p. Make sure to turn antialiasing off as it is a fpS killer for no real gain at native resolution.
Click to expand...

OK, I chose to scrap Windows 8 due to a blue screen. It happened when I used the screen brightness controls. Bad_pool_header.

I will try the AMD Catalyst 12.7 driver for windows 7 and keep the 12.11 in backhand.

Links:
AMD Catalyst 12.7 Beta download
AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta download
 
throAU said:
Another option:

Buy the iMac, and lower detail/screen resolution until performance is satisfactory.
Click to expand...

Well, you could game in a window (as opposed to gaming in full screen but lower resolution). I used to do that on my older white iMac. It's not perfect, but you get used to it for the sake of framerates.
 
Just installed the Windows 7 64bit AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta 4 drivers on my 2011 27" iMac over the 12.6...

I haven't gotten any issues as of now. I really can't say if the 6970m 2Gb performs *better*, but I can certainly say that it isn't *worse* than before.

Haven't played Skyrim or BF3 in a while... but the games were both VERY playable at 1920x1080 with the 12.6 drivers... I guess the i7 + SSD must also help :)

Edit: I think I ran Skyrim at 2440 rez... but it's been soooo long I don't even remember!
 
You will always hear to wait for better specs, that iMac that you selected would be more than capable. But I would just wait to get a 2012.
 
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