I first bought the late 2013 Imac 27 inch with the GT 755m video this december and it wasnt fast enough to my taste for BF4. So I changed it for the fastest model with the GTX 780m and its much better for games. I have 70-80 fps on high seetings on 1080p with BF4 (I keep it 1080p since its basicly a laptop video card) compared to the GT755m which onliy had like 30-40 fps. Only drawback to my new Imac is the fact that the fan noise is MUCH MORE present... so I think it tends to heath up pretty fast.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Gaming on iMac with 780m?
- Thread starter abluehaze
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
dollystereo
macrumors 6502a
Believe me, I am completely MAC for everything, but this is a really good choice. It's cheap, and you are only going to use Windows to launch your games, not doing any other thing.
Good GPUs are really cheap right now, and in 2 years, you can upgrade to the latest GPU and play the latest games.
I was a hardcore Heroic WOW player, getting realm 1st, but my mac in that moment (2008 MBP) was really slow for 25-man raiding.
Now I just see my PC as a Playstation, just with keyboard and mouse.
At the end of the day the best (and cheapest) way to game is to just build a dedicated gaming pc. You can build a Gaming Rig that will destroy the iMac for about 1000 bucks and you will be able to upgrade the graphics card down the track. I use my iMac and MBA for everything else. I built a HTPC/gaming rig hybrid, it is in a HTPC mATX case that sits in my entertainment unit with my amp and is hooked up to my big screen tv. I can sit back on the couch and play games with a gamepad like that aswell as run XBMC on it to watch all my movies ect.
Last edited:
dollystereo
macrumors 6502a
PC are made for gaming.
"Windows the best console ever"
..for work, a Mac.
(I work in a PC at work, but in Ubuntu 😀)
My final comment:
I am not saying that the imac is a bad computer for gaming, I am just saying that it is really expensive. You can get way better performance from a $1000 PC than the $3100 imac.
"Windows the best console ever"
..for work, a Mac.
(I work in a PC at work, but in Ubuntu 😀)
My final comment:
I am not saying that the imac is a bad computer for gaming, I am just saying that it is really expensive. You can get way better performance from a $1000 PC than the $3100 imac.
Thought I'd chip in as someone who has gone the opposite direction ...
Im a "big gamer" and have been for years. Always built my own rigs and had powerful GPUs. I've gone through several self built Tower PCs that I thought I'd "will last me forever" just by upgrading the CPU etc.
But I soon realised what a myth that is. Sure, you might get a 5 or 6 years out of a rig but there's always a cieling. Either the socket changes for the CPU or the latest graphics cards rely on a newer MoBo etc etc. Frankly too I got sick of looking at these huge dust magnets (my PC) and having several plugs and a rats nest of wires behind my desk.
So having used Macs professionaly for the past X years I got an iMac yesterday. First thing I did was fire up Windows 8 in BootCamp and transfer Battlefield 4 from my self-build. It really runs beautifully at max screen sizes on full resultion on the 780M GPU.
I'll probably turn down some settings and go windowed mode hereafter as I dont want to stress out the card too much but it's suprisingly zippy.
So thats just my input from someone who has gone from gaming PC to iMac. I know this iMac won't play every future game I want but some of my very favourite games are several years old
- Hidden and Dangerous
- Men of War - Allied Assault
so it's not an issue for me.
And fankly I like having less clutter and only having to maintain a single machine.
If you are thinking of building your own rig and having an exlusively gaming rig, and want somthing small, I'd recommend having a look at this
http://www.bitfenix.com/global/en/products/chassis/phenom-micro-atx/
Im a "big gamer" and have been for years. Always built my own rigs and had powerful GPUs. I've gone through several self built Tower PCs that I thought I'd "will last me forever" just by upgrading the CPU etc.
But I soon realised what a myth that is. Sure, you might get a 5 or 6 years out of a rig but there's always a cieling. Either the socket changes for the CPU or the latest graphics cards rely on a newer MoBo etc etc. Frankly too I got sick of looking at these huge dust magnets (my PC) and having several plugs and a rats nest of wires behind my desk.
So having used Macs professionaly for the past X years I got an iMac yesterday. First thing I did was fire up Windows 8 in BootCamp and transfer Battlefield 4 from my self-build. It really runs beautifully at max screen sizes on full resultion on the 780M GPU.
I'll probably turn down some settings and go windowed mode hereafter as I dont want to stress out the card too much but it's suprisingly zippy.
So thats just my input from someone who has gone from gaming PC to iMac. I know this iMac won't play every future game I want but some of my very favourite games are several years old
- Hidden and Dangerous
- Men of War - Allied Assault
so it's not an issue for me.
And fankly I like having less clutter and only having to maintain a single machine.
If you are thinking of building your own rig and having an exlusively gaming rig, and want somthing small, I'd recommend having a look at this
http://www.bitfenix.com/global/en/products/chassis/phenom-micro-atx/
kilon
macrumors newbie
Hello
I bought my new iMac 27'' 3.2Ghz 8 gb RAM with GT 755m.
I am not a big gamer but I do 3d graphics. In short , no graphic card out there stands a chance however powerful in my hands. I am using the open source 3d app Blender. Blender has a real time render engine that maxes my GPU in a few seconds.
One thing to note here, is that m , that indicated that the version of the GPU is the mobile version, meaning less power consumed (around 50%) but also less performance to the equivalent desktop model (around 2 times).
So if you want to get a computer that will have a very powerful GPU iMacs are definitely not it! A pc will serve you much better. To give you a precise picture , my GPU on this iMAC performs around the same with my pc's at work GTX 650 and that pc is 1 year old.
iMac GPUs are just powerful enough. Another thing to note here is that GPUs has a life of 1 year. 2 -3 years I hear here is very much optimistic even for the most powerful GPUs. But it all depends on the game.
Personally I dont care so much because I know there are people that still play games on Amigas, are those not gamers ? So the whole "Macs are not for games" leaves me rolling my eyes 😀 Sure if we exclude macpro every other mac out there comes with gpus too weak to keep you on the cutting edge of games for more than 1 year. But then there like tons of games out there that are way more forgiving.
I chose iMac because my previous computer was also an iMac and I was very happy with it. The way I see it my new iMac is 8 to 16 times faster than my 7 year old iMac and thats enough for me. I know that if I wanted the best performance at 2000 euros I would have bought a PC. But I love the 27'' screen and I can live with less performance.
An example of comparing the desktop version with the mobile version of 780 can be found here
http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce-GTX-780M-Mac-vs-GeForce-GTX-780
I bought my new iMac 27'' 3.2Ghz 8 gb RAM with GT 755m.
I am not a big gamer but I do 3d graphics. In short , no graphic card out there stands a chance however powerful in my hands. I am using the open source 3d app Blender. Blender has a real time render engine that maxes my GPU in a few seconds.
One thing to note here, is that m , that indicated that the version of the GPU is the mobile version, meaning less power consumed (around 50%) but also less performance to the equivalent desktop model (around 2 times).
So if you want to get a computer that will have a very powerful GPU iMacs are definitely not it! A pc will serve you much better. To give you a precise picture , my GPU on this iMAC performs around the same with my pc's at work GTX 650 and that pc is 1 year old.
iMac GPUs are just powerful enough. Another thing to note here is that GPUs has a life of 1 year. 2 -3 years I hear here is very much optimistic even for the most powerful GPUs. But it all depends on the game.
Personally I dont care so much because I know there are people that still play games on Amigas, are those not gamers ? So the whole "Macs are not for games" leaves me rolling my eyes 😀 Sure if we exclude macpro every other mac out there comes with gpus too weak to keep you on the cutting edge of games for more than 1 year. But then there like tons of games out there that are way more forgiving.
I chose iMac because my previous computer was also an iMac and I was very happy with it. The way I see it my new iMac is 8 to 16 times faster than my 7 year old iMac and thats enough for me. I know that if I wanted the best performance at 2000 euros I would have bought a PC. But I love the 27'' screen and I can live with less performance.
An example of comparing the desktop version with the mobile version of 780 can be found here
http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce-GTX-780M-Mac-vs-GeForce-GTX-780
Last edited:
luminouslight
macrumors 6502
Hello, just wanted to chip in and give my 2 cents on this issue as I'm facing a similar dilemma.
I am a fan of Apple and Mac computers for a while now and I'm also very accustomed to building my own windows rigs for gaming. I have loved having my gaming pc for a few weeks now with a rig I built and I noticed myself gaming more than anything which can be bad lol.
I decided to turn back the parts from the pc I ordered because I've been looking to get back into the apple ecosystem. I think the best solution really is to get a Mac but not for gaming and maybe buying a console like the ps4 or the Xbox one and do your gaming on that. Or maybe one of the many steam machines coming out. It's the route I plan to take and I hope I don't regret it down the line.
First world problems. 🙄
I am a fan of Apple and Mac computers for a while now and I'm also very accustomed to building my own windows rigs for gaming. I have loved having my gaming pc for a few weeks now with a rig I built and I noticed myself gaming more than anything which can be bad lol.
I decided to turn back the parts from the pc I ordered because I've been looking to get back into the apple ecosystem. I think the best solution really is to get a Mac but not for gaming and maybe buying a console like the ps4 or the Xbox one and do your gaming on that. Or maybe one of the many steam machines coming out. It's the route I plan to take and I hope I don't regret it down the line.
First world problems. 🙄
I agree with you. I'll always buy Macs unless Tim steers the ship right into the rocks or something. I love my Blizz games and mmo's and that's primarily what I play on my Mac. FPS games in general are better with mouse and keyboard as well although I don't play many of them on the computer. Most of those I end up playing on console.
I do have a PS4 and Xbox One and am really hoping that the Steam Box pans out well. It could be the perfect answer for us Mac gamers. It's highly probable that if Steam Box takes off OSX could benefit as well just by developers focusing more on Open GL development.
I'll probably be going with another iMac because it does allow me to play my Blizz titles and Guild Wars 2, ESO etc with decent framerates. Since the new Mac Pro doesn't seem to be running any of those games under OSX any better than the iMac then it's a wash between the two.
Last edited:
quagmire
macrumors 604
I'm loving the 780M in my iMac. The only gaming I do is X-Plane 10. I used to play X-Plane on my parents Late 2009 27" iMac i7( my Early 2008 MBP wasn't powerful enough to run it). I had to turn the resolution down to 1920x1080 and had most of the eye candy turned off just to get 29 FPS with a FlyJSim's 727 and Flightfactors 777( which are really demanding aircraft).
With these settings below, I can get 30-60 FPS( depending on where I am if I am on the ground, air, etc) which is plenty for X-Plane. And I can keep it at the iMac's native resolution of 2560x1440. Is it the best machine for X-Plane? Not by a long shot. A desktop with the 780 or Titan would be better. But for me, the 780M gives me the settings I really wanted to use in X-Plane.
The only complaint I have with the computer is the fact Apple really doesn't want to increase the fan speed to keep things cool. Using Apple's stock fan logic, fans would vary between the idle 1200 RPM to 1500 RPM. With those speeds, CPU Proximity temp was 158 F and GPU die was 178 F. Using iStat Menu's and going to 1900 RPM, the CPU dropped to between 138-141 F and GPU dropped between 158-162 F.
With these settings below, I can get 30-60 FPS( depending on where I am if I am on the ground, air, etc) which is plenty for X-Plane. And I can keep it at the iMac's native resolution of 2560x1440. Is it the best machine for X-Plane? Not by a long shot. A desktop with the 780 or Titan would be better. But for me, the 780M gives me the settings I really wanted to use in X-Plane.
The only complaint I have with the computer is the fact Apple really doesn't want to increase the fan speed to keep things cool. Using Apple's stock fan logic, fans would vary between the idle 1200 RPM to 1500 RPM. With those speeds, CPU Proximity temp was 158 F and GPU die was 178 F. Using iStat Menu's and going to 1900 RPM, the CPU dropped to between 138-141 F and GPU dropped between 158-162 F.
Attachments
Last edited: