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Buying a Mac for gaming (wow)
- Thread starter Willstone525
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My baseline late 2011 21.5" iMac has no issues playing games - though I did throw 12 GB of RAM in it.
Play SWTOR on it at max graphics settings with perfect gameplay. And Macs will last you plenty - I had my lMacBook for 7 years and after replacing the battery, it still ran well. I figure I'll get close to 10 years out of the iMac - plenty of time to watch MMOs like SWTOR and WoW come and then die
My baseline late 2011 21.5" iMac has no issues playing games - though I did throw 12 GB of RAM in it.
Play SWTOR on it at max graphics settings with perfect gameplay. And Macs will last you plenty - I had my lMacBook for 7 years and after replacing the battery, it still ran well. I figure I'll get close to 10 years out of the iMac - plenty of time to watch MMOs like SWTOR and WoW come and then die
Maybe its not the base model, because my radeon6750 was able to run SWTOR on lower-med settings smoothly. Wow can't run maxed too - just medium and having to lower that in 25m raids.
Also need to not forget that mmos evolve with time, so what computer might be ok for now, will struggle with it an expansion or two later. When I got this iMac back in summer 2011 it ran WoW at Max no problem (Firelands content patch)
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For your games...the 21.5" with 650M plays on high 1080p WOW on MACOS no problem.
For the 27" with 1440p you should take the 675MX, the 680MX i think is more for games like Farcry Crysis etc
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But if you can wait a little bit more i guess an upgrade will come with 780M or even 780MX specially for the iMac, and for the 21.5" you will have 1GB vRam
For the 27" with 1440p you should take the 675MX, the 680MX i think is more for games like Farcry Crysis etc
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But if you can wait a little bit more i guess an upgrade will come with 780M or even 780MX specially for the iMac, and for the 21.5" you will have 1GB vRam
You keep saying this, but we don't know this. At least it's likely the next iMac will have something better than the 780M, because there's little to no point in using the 780M over the 680MX.
But on the lower-model VRAM issue.. the 650M didn't come in 512MB VRAM until it showed up that way in the iMac. I have every reason to think Apple would give the same treatment to the 750M.
I posted this in June ... love it even more today. However, I can't comment on performance in raids as I no longer raid
"I truly love my week old 21.5. I was stunned how easy it was to make the switch from years of Windows use to OS X. I'm still in the process of setting it up but it is so fast and responsive. Haven't decided whether to bootcamp Windows.
Am playing WoW native, and have settings at all High except sun shafts at low, and VSync off. Am getting 83fps in the middle of Stormwind, and the game looks gorgeous. This is with the 1TB 5400 hdd, and 650m graphics card.
I didn't have room for the 27 iMac but can honestly say I am so happy with what I got!"
"I truly love my week old 21.5. I was stunned how easy it was to make the switch from years of Windows use to OS X. I'm still in the process of setting it up but it is so fast and responsive. Haven't decided whether to bootcamp Windows.
Am playing WoW native, and have settings at all High except sun shafts at low, and VSync off. Am getting 83fps in the middle of Stormwind, and the game looks gorgeous. This is with the 1TB 5400 hdd, and 650m graphics card.
I didn't have room for the 27 iMac but can honestly say I am so happy with what I got!"
What brand is that case? I like the design, but maybe not the color
It's a BitFenix Prodigy. Yeah, don't get the orange one. It's a lot more fluorescent than you think items going to be.
A small PC shop in Scotland called Kustom PCs. I get a lot of stuff from there, I recommend them.
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Starting from the 750M the geforce put only the 1G vRam and 2G vRam options...there is no 512 vRAM chip available like it was back in 2012. I think for 2013 Geforce is thinking ahead for mobile video cards and thats the way. The base 750M has a little more core speed and double the vRam
I regret to inform.. that you have no idea what you're talking about.
There's zero VRAM INSIDE the 650M or 750M chips. What's available for it to use is whatever the OEM (in this case, Apple) decided to give it.
Look at Step 22 here: http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac+Intel+21.5-Inch+EMC+2544+Teardown/11936/3
The chip outlined in Red is provided by Nvidia and contains the GPU, and the chips outlined in Cyan are provided by Hynix and comprise the VRAM.
See, if I look somewhere like here, I can see the supported memory types and speeds and the maximum amount. There's nothing about minimum amount.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-750M.90245.0.html
Nvidia's site contains even less detail.
A site like game-debate.com will have references to examples of cards it's seen in the wild, but also state "However, ultimately, laptop manufacturer's may change these values to their liking.".
I've seen suggestions that the 750M is nothing more than a rebranded 660M. We know for certain that is a Kepler GK107 chip (same as 660M and 650M) with clocks and cores configured a certain way.
Everything I'm reading suggests that the OEM is 100% in control of the amount of VRAM provided, and the GPU will use whatever it has. I'm seeing exactly as many examples of a 750M with 512MB as I did 650M with 512MB prior to the 2012 iMac - zero. That doesn't do anything to suggest it isn't possible.
Could a 680MX support 512MB? It would be pointless, unless you wanted awesome SVGA graphics, but I see no reason why it couldn't.