Amateur iMac Benchmarks

[iStrat]

I went into the Apple Store and tested the new 20" 2.4 GHz iMac with the ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO GPU with 256 MB memory and 1 GB of RAM. It was the standard $1,499 model. I downloaded Vendetta Online and tested how many fps I could get at maximum settings in different situations.

I compared the fps reading I took to what I can get using the same settings on my 4-5 year old 17" 1 GHz G4 eMac with the ATI Radeon 7500 GPU with 32 MB memory and 768 MB of RAM. These are approximate average fps readings that I gathered after playing for about 20 minutes. The results are as follows.

Quiet Situation With Not Much Going On
New iMac: 300 fps
Old eMac: 50 fps

Busy Situation With Lots Going On
New iMac: 50 fps
Old eMac: 8 fps

A more detailed report of my basic test can be found here. Overall, I was very impressed. For a casual gamer playing an average 3D game, it was more than adequate. The game isn't a huge GPU/CPU hog, but it was the only thing I had time to download while at the store. You can look at the screenshots on their website to see the quality of the graphics (or download the free trial). It runs on older machines fine at lower settings but requires fairly new hardware to run well at higher settings.

I'm hoping that other people can run similar tests and post them in this thread. Hopefully, we will soon have some official test results and benchmarks.

 

[Yateball]

Comparing it with an old eMac is, I'm sure, not what most people are interested in, because its very obviously going to blow an eMac out of the water.

Most people from what I can see wanna know how many more frames the new iMac's get vs. their predecessors

 

[c.joe.go]

good effort. interesting comparison. though i must too say, not the test needed.

i did my own test between my old mini ppc 1.4 and my new 2.4 24 iMac. geekbench: 650~ mini; 3372 iMac. again this is meaningless and expected.

i really need to see a comparison between the previous 24 and my new 24. standard configurations.

 

[iStrat]

I realize that it was not the ideal comparison. It is all that I had available to me. My intent was simply to get some fps readings for the new iMac and let other people who own the old iMacs with either the x1600 or the 7600GT test playing Vendetta Online with same settings so we would have a basic comparison of their gaming capabilities.

If someone can do this, make sure all the settings are at max, including "Full Scene Glow", which is not supported on my old eMac. This provides a fairly GPU intensive situation and would provide a useful comparison. You can use the results I posted here, which include the results of the new iMac using Full Scene Glow, to make a detailed and helpful comparison.

The experience has eased my concerns quite a bit about the new iMac's gaming abilities. For a casual gamer, this system will work fine. Newer and more complex games will certainly have to be run at lower settings, but that isn't a huge deal to me. The overwhelming concerns (justified concerns) of the hardcore gamers on these boards is making the rest of us more nervous than we need to be in my opinion.

 

[cmvsm]

I appreciate the effort, but comparing to an emac, the data is really of no use. We should get some nice 'clinical' comparisons on Monday or Tuesday of next week from Rob at Barefeats.

 

[l33r0y]

I went into the Apple Store and tested the new 20" 2.4 GHz iMac with the ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO GPU with 256 MB memory and 1 GB of RAM. It was the standard $1,499 model. I downloaded Vendetta Online and tested how many fps I could get at maximum settings in different situations.

I compared the fps reading I took to what I can get using the same settings on my 4-5 year old 17" 1 GHz G4 eMac with the ATI Radeon 7500 GPU with 32 MB memory and 768 MB of RAM. These are approximate average fps readings that I gathered after playing for about 20 minutes. The results are as follows.

Quiet Situation With Not Much Going On
New iMac: 300 fps
Old eMac: 50 fps

Busy Situation With Lots Going On
New iMac: 50 fps
Old eMac: 8 fps

A more detailed report of my basic test can be found here. Overall, I was very impressed. For a casual gamer playing an average 3D game, it was more than adequate. The game isn't a huge GPU/CPU hog, but it was the only thing I had time to download while at the store. You can look at the screenshots on their website to see the quality of the graphics (or download the free trial). It runs on older machines fine at lower settings but requires fairly new hardware to run well at higher settings.

I'm hoping that other people can run similar tests and post them in this thread. Hopefully, we will soon have some official test results and benchmarks.

Kudos for putting the work in for us 'mere mortals' as someone once said (lots)

 

[cmvsm]

By the way, how did you measure the fps when running Vendetta?

 

[iStrat]

By the way, how did you measure the fps when running Vendetta?

You can access the LUA console in-game and can set it to display your framerate in real-time.

It was quite a challenge to keep the salesmen off my back for 2 hours while I downloaded, installed, configured, and played this game while about 10 other people were trying to get their hands on the computer. It was fun though.