I agree with you on that but not all of us have $2000+ to put down on a computer.
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GeForce GT 640M vs. 650M
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I agree with you on that but not all of us have $2000+ to put down on a computer.
Yes i understand that, but it's good to let people know, so that they are not dissapointed with their 21". I'd rather go with a macbook pro and an external monitor. Do all the "basic stuff" on a bigger external screen and play on that smaller resolution. Plus you get the portability. I'm probably going this route myself.
I had the MBP 2012 with nVidia 650m, and even on 1440x900 resolution CIV 5 was struggling. I'm not impressed with the 650 at all, which is why I sold that mac.
Apple should have made the 675x available on the 21.5". The 27" is just way too big.
I agree, I spent over $3,000 on my Alienware gaming laptop, and I'm not doing that again. I'm not gonna spend a ridiculous amount of money "just to game."
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Does visual quality really take a hit if you scale down the resolutions? Can't you up the details to make up for the lower resolutions?
You're assuming that the GT 650M is using the same DDR3 memory in that link, which seems highly unlikely given that Apple hasn't shipped a DDR3 GPU in many years. I'd expect it's much more likely to be a similar config to the 650M found in the 15" MBPs (either Retina or non-Retina), both of which use GDDR5 memory at ~2500MHz.
Edit: And yes, if you want to play games on your new 21.5" iMac, spend the extra $200 and get the 650M and faster CPU. No question it's worth it.
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You do realize that Civ 5 is pretty heavily CPU limited, i.e. not bound by GPU performance at all? If we were able to use the DX11 equivalent game engine then yeah the GPU would matter, but since Apple only exports DX9-level functionality, games like this with tons of units are almost entirely limited on the CPU side of things (i.e. the game engine can't feed work to the GPU fast enough, due to inefficiencies in the DX9-equivalent API). I've played Civ 5 on my 2010 Mac Pro with a GTX 680, and the GPU is nearly idle while playing the game. You can confirm this with the OpenGL Driver Monitor from the Apple developer tools, for reference.
I almost went this route, but I don't need the portability, keeping the rMBP in clam-shell mode kinda defeats the purpose of buying the laptop. I'd rather have an iMac, as the less desktop clutter is what attracts me to the all-in-one. I don't find all the wiring and clutter too enticing, hence, my avoidance of going down the rMBP and external monitor route.
I just wanted to mention, the 650M is in this category as per Notebook Check:
"High-End Graphics Cards: These graphics cards are able to play the latest and most demanding games in high resolutions and full detail settings with enabled Anti-Aliasing."
Where as the 640M is listed under this category:
"With these GPUs you are able to play modern and demanding games fluently at medium detail settings and HD resolution."
Seems pretty accurate to me. Anyone remotely interested in gaming, opting for the 21.5", should definitely get the model with the 650M.
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Good point! At first I was pretty bummed out about the GPU options in the 21.5" model, as I felt like I was forced to consider the 27" for gaming (always wanted the 21.5"). But after some review, I looked at it from the perspective that the GPUs this year are better than those last year. I was very close to pulling the trigger on a 2011 iMac, and I'm glad I didn't. Either way, with the 21.5" or 27", you still get increased performance, which is a win for us all. Sometimes you just have to be happy with what you are provided.
"High-End Graphics Cards: These graphics cards are able to play the latest and most demanding games in high resolutions and full detail settings with enabled Anti-Aliasing."
Where as the 640M is listed under this category:
"With these GPUs you are able to play modern and demanding games fluently at medium detail settings and HD resolution."
Seems pretty accurate to me. Anyone remotely interested in gaming, opting for the 21.5", should definitely get the model with the 650M.
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Good point! At first I was pretty bummed out about the GPU options in the 21.5" model, as I felt like I was forced to consider the 27" for gaming (always wanted the 21.5"). But after some review, I looked at it from the perspective that the GPUs this year are better than those last year. I was very close to pulling the trigger on a 2011 iMac, and I'm glad I didn't. Either way, with the 21.5" or 27", you still get increased performance, which is a win for us all. Sometimes you just have to be happy with what you are provided.
If you get a 27" iMac, how much does the increase in screen resolution tax your games? I guess what I'm trying to say is, wouldn't a 21" and a 27" both running at their native resolutions even out in the end, because the 27" has a better graphics card to compensate for the increased screen space? Or is this not the case?
I did not realize that no. In which case I assume the 650M is a better card than my first impressions showed me.
Granted, it was running on a 2.3Ghz i7 with turboost and 8GB 1600Mhz ram.
You'd think a game form 2008/2009 would run smoothly on a processor like that.
As a long time PC gamer I can give some inputs regarding screen resolution, video ram, and stuff.
First off, screen resolution gives one of the biggest impact on performance AND graphics quality. Playing on anything less than the native screen resolution (1920*1080 for the 21.5 inch, 2560*1440 for the 27 inch) - especially on glossy, high quality displays like the iMac - will make everything look blurry. Well, not mosaic-like blurry of course, but try turning to the native resolution for just a few seconds to compare and you'll find on native resolution it's looking MUCH more crispier.
That's one of the reason why I would prefer the 21.5 inch over the 27 inch - 650m running with 1920*1080 can have a much better performance than 660m running with 2560*1440. In order to run on 2560*1440 smoothly you need to have a 675m at least, which is completely out of my budget.
Some may say isn't 650m too weak or something? Well, don't forget that on High settings of most games (including Arkham City and Skyrim), 650m can get a consistent 40-50 FPS which is very nice. And even more importantly, with a couple of slight tweaks with the default High settings - turning off AA and turning down shadows, both of which are huge fps killers, for instance - will instantly provide 10-15 FPS boost, while reducing the graphics quality only very little.
Concerning video ram, I think 512 might not be enough to handle 2560*1440 at all - yet another reason why 660m sucks for the 27 inch - but should handle 1920*1080 adequately. Note it's JUST adequately! When your VRAM isn't enough, you may see textures in the farther places popping up, or you may get some slight stuttering when you're let's say moving from one major area into another (as the video card needs to load a lot of new textures). I've also read that Kepler cards can use system RAM when the VRAM is used up, although the speed is still much worse (but at least it's much better than using your HDD caching): http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/342932-15-kepler-cards-pulling-system-vram-runs
Finally, I'm not saying that the 650m is oh-so-powerful or something, but at least it's the most cost-effective if you want to game on the iMac. 640m is too weak, 660m is too weak FOR THE 27 INCH (and I don't need the 27 inch anyway), 675m/680mx are too expensive.
Man I miss my gtx 560 on my older PC ;(
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It also may have to do with optimization. A lot of games' CPU handling, or graphics like shadows eat up way too much resource for too little extra effect for instance. NWN2 for example was notorious for not supporting multithreading, and a lot of Russian games are infamous for their ruggedness (i.e. bad performance on high specs).
First off, screen resolution gives one of the biggest impact on performance AND graphics quality. Playing on anything less than the native screen resolution (1920*1080 for the 21.5 inch, 2560*1440 for the 27 inch) - especially on glossy, high quality displays like the iMac - will make everything look blurry. Well, not mosaic-like blurry of course, but try turning to the native resolution for just a few seconds to compare and you'll find on native resolution it's looking MUCH more crispier.
That's one of the reason why I would prefer the 21.5 inch over the 27 inch - 650m running with 1920*1080 can have a much better performance than 660m running with 2560*1440. In order to run on 2560*1440 smoothly you need to have a 675m at least, which is completely out of my budget.
Some may say isn't 650m too weak or something? Well, don't forget that on High settings of most games (including Arkham City and Skyrim), 650m can get a consistent 40-50 FPS which is very nice. And even more importantly, with a couple of slight tweaks with the default High settings - turning off AA and turning down shadows, both of which are huge fps killers, for instance - will instantly provide 10-15 FPS boost, while reducing the graphics quality only very little.
Concerning video ram, I think 512 might not be enough to handle 2560*1440 at all - yet another reason why 660m sucks for the 27 inch - but should handle 1920*1080 adequately. Note it's JUST adequately! When your VRAM isn't enough, you may see textures in the farther places popping up, or you may get some slight stuttering when you're let's say moving from one major area into another (as the video card needs to load a lot of new textures). I've also read that Kepler cards can use system RAM when the VRAM is used up, although the speed is still much worse (but at least it's much better than using your HDD caching): http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/342932-15-kepler-cards-pulling-system-vram-runs
Finally, I'm not saying that the 650m is oh-so-powerful or something, but at least it's the most cost-effective if you want to game on the iMac. 640m is too weak, 660m is too weak FOR THE 27 INCH (and I don't need the 27 inch anyway), 675m/680mx are too expensive.
Man I miss my gtx 560 on my older PC ;(
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It also may have to do with optimization. A lot of games' CPU handling, or graphics like shadows eat up way too much resource for too little extra effect for instance. NWN2 for example was notorious for not supporting multithreading, and a lot of Russian games are infamous for their ruggedness (i.e. bad performance on high specs).
Anyone talking about 30% performance difference between 640m and 650m doesn't consider the fact that DDR3 vs GDDR5 is what makes 20-25% of that difference. Since Apple uses both 640m and 650m with GDDR5 (which I'm sure even have the same memory chips with identical working freqs), both will OC to the same point. If you use Bootcamp for gaming (and I don't know anyone who doesn't), the difference between these two GPUs can be easily eliminated.
What bothers me is vRAM volume which is ridiculous for 2012. 512mb was mediocre at best in 2010-2011, today it's not even funny. Heresiarch isn't right, there were several tests revealing most games of 2011(!!) need 600-1000 MB for 1080p. So be prepared to lower the texture quality in your favorite games - the only setting that almost doesn't decrease the FPS but which is extremely limited by Apple's greed. And yes, I blame Apple because another 512MB would cost them something about NOTHING. In terms of price it would be <5$ more, in terms of internal space for additional memory chips - I highly doubt they couldn't find it since rMBP with much less volume has the full 1GB of vRAM.
What bothers me is vRAM volume which is ridiculous for 2012. 512mb was mediocre at best in 2010-2011, today it's not even funny. Heresiarch isn't right, there were several tests revealing most games of 2011(!!) need 600-1000 MB for 1080p. So be prepared to lower the texture quality in your favorite games - the only setting that almost doesn't decrease the FPS but which is extremely limited by Apple's greed. And yes, I blame Apple because another 512MB would cost them something about NOTHING. In terms of price it would be <5$ more, in terms of internal space for additional memory chips - I highly doubt they couldn't find it since rMBP with much less volume has the full 1GB of vRAM.
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Do you know what clock speeds Apple is using for both the 640M and 650M? If not, then there's no way you can back up a statement like that.
I do know that 650m used in non-retina 15 pros have pretty standard frequencies of 725/2000 for GPU/vRAM. So I trully believe iMac's 640m and 650m will either use their standard freqs or be equally OC'd.
So is it better to lower the resolution and increase detail settings (texture, AA, etc.), or keep the resolution up but lower the detail settings?
In general I would keep the resolution but lower detail settings. However it also depends on the actual game:
- Some games if you lower the textures and shadows will absolutely ruin the whole atmosphere. For example if you can't read the posters (these things are what games have high priority in lowering the texture) in a game like Deus Ex: HR, or if you're removing shadows in a game like Dishonored or Crysis, it'll make the whole game look so bland you'd rather not play it.
- Some games can only get a decent frame rate if and only if you reduce the resolution, while shadows and stuff actually won't hurt the frame rate too much. In such case you know what to do.
Finally, googling "game name tweakguide" will almost always come up with some nice guides about making the game playable. Nvidia for example is always giving the newest tweakguides for the newest games.
Playing HD movies will be fine.
Photo editing, if it is truly a "little", will also be fine. If you start getting complex with it, don't expect it to perform all that well - though photo editing generally uses CPU more than GPU anyway.
I'm not sure i completely understand this, but nonetheless it scares the **** out of me. Are you saying Macs don't support DirectX 11, even if the GPUs do?
OS X doesn't support DirectX. At all. It's a Windows proprietary API set. Macs support DX11 in Bootcamp if your Windows version is high enough.
The OpenGL port of Civ V for OS X is based on the DX9 code. Easy OpenGL equivalents for some DX11 calls aren't available in OS X, especially older versions.