A caution to people viewing the 2010 27" iMac as a Boot Camp gaming platform...

[Tonsko]

WRT hardware, the tech specs on Apple site are a little misleading then!

# 27-inch model with dual-core processor:

* ATI Radeon HD 5670 graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR3 memory

# 27-inch model with quad-core processor:

* ATI Radeon HD 5750 graphics processor with 1GB of GDDR5 memory

 

[dh2005]

Yes, they are.

 

[dh2005]

Actually, as a related point to all this crap:

Do any of you guys know how to disable the Steam client when running Steam games? By which I don't mean selecting the offline mode.

Quake III, in particular, screws up as soon as the Steam Client opens.

 

[TMRaven]

While on the steam client, right click your game and create a shortcut of it on the desktop.

I had to do it for fallout new vegas to bypass the steam startup page, because steam kept refusing to make my graphic settings stay with what I changed them to.

 

[Tonsko]

As an aside, you might be able to specify '-novideo' or some such on the shortcut command line so it drops straight into the game, missing out all those annoying nvidia peen-stroking screens. YMMV.

 

[dh2005]

While on the steam client, right click your game and create a shortcut of it on the desktop.

I had to do it for fallout new vegas to bypass the steam startup page, because steam kept refusing to make my graphic settings stay with what I changed them to.

Hm. That's not doing it for me, mate.

When I run the game, the graphics are fine at first. Then, when the 'Steam Community' box pops up (the one in the bottom-right corner), the graphics go haywire. I think I need to run this game with Steam having no knowledge of it. Is this possible?


If not, I shall be pressed into the ridiculous position of having to download an illegal torrent copy of game that I've paid for.

 

[dh2005]

Okay. AMD have gone some way to rescuing themselves by telling me that, unofficially, I can continue to download Windows drivers from their website. It doesn't get me any further than I was able to get myself, but at least they've now tried to help me.

Why do I suspect so strongly that Steam are not going to stage any kind of recovery, whatsoever...?

 

[dh2005]

Well, Steam have completely ignored me, so far...

 

[MythicFrost]

I'd complain to them and say something along these lines:

I bought these games from you and they don't work, I need you to either help me resolve them (preferable) or give me a refund; Windows is Windows, regardless of whether its on a Mac or a PC.

I regularly use my 27" 09 i7 iMac to game and it performs very well and I've had not one problem with any game bought from Steam and none that I can think of that are physical media, I have Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, and I've got the latest ATI drivers (through Steam), actually, I may still be on 10.9 I'll check again later.

 

[aki]

I may still be on 10.9 I'll check again later.

You are on the ATI 4850 with the ATI Mobility Catalyst drivers 10.9? I'm still on an earlier version (10.7 maybe?) because I know that earlier versions of the drivers didn't like mac hardware/bootcamp, and I figured if it's not broke I should leave it alone. But if you can confirm for a fact that 10.9 or 10.10 work well with no issues on that card, I'll upgrade. ?

EDIT: @MythicFrost - Thanks, much appreciated!

 

[MythicFrost]

You are on the ATI 4850 with the ATI Mobility Catalyst drivers 10.9? I'm still on an earlier version (10.7 maybe?) because I know that earlier versions of the drivers didn't like mac hardware/bootcamp, and I figured if it's not broke I should leave it alone. But if you can confirm for a fact that 10.9 or 10.10 work well with no issues on that card, I'll upgrade. ?

I'll double check for you later, I used the updater via steam, I'll double check again.

 

[MythicFrost]

You are on the ATI 4850 with the ATI Mobility Catalyst drivers 10.9? I'm still on an earlier version (10.7 maybe?) because I know that earlier versions of the drivers didn't like mac hardware/bootcamp, and I figured if it's not broke I should leave it alone. But if you can confirm for a fact that 10.9 or 10.10 work well with no issues on that card, I'll upgrade. ?

EDIT: @MythicFrost - Thanks, much appreciated!

Hi, sorry for the long reply; I forgot, remembered, forgot, remembered, forgot, and remembered again this morning haha lol!

I've downloaded the latest drivers from Steam (as of about 2 days ago) and I've played Metro 2033 which runs great, League of Legends, Crysis Wars (artifacts, but had that for ages), etc., so it seems to all be working well (for me, at least).

 

[aki]

Thanks for the update. Oh well I guess I'll make a winclone backup and then give it a try. Thanks for the help!

UPDATE: Ok so just a summation for any interested parties. This is on an i7 iMac with the ATI 4850. I backuped my partition with WinClone and then installed the latest ATI Radeon Mobility Catalyst Center package from the ATI website (v 10.10) over my current version (10.6). As part of that process, the video card drivers were also (it seems) updated. All worked perfectly, no issues to date.

Note - I did try upgrading the video card drivers using an update that appeared in Windows Update. This update seems to install but is rejected by Catayst, ie. after install when you try to run Catalyst it fails, saying no supported graphics hardware can be found. So, ignore anything in Windows Update, do it manually yourself.

Thanks again for the advice in this thread!