How much difference?

[sheareb]

Hi all, im a great lover of the mac and apple products and my 2010 iMac was amazing, unfortunately no longer have it but use a MacBook pro retina 13 for day to day.

However, looking for a new machine as a general computer but with a focus on playing X-plane and some PC games (BF1, player unknown). I think i have 2 choices - either purchase the base 27 inch mac or build a PC.

PC specs below:
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/zNFrQV

PC costs abt £1100 and the screen is nowhere near iMac but.. (and i know its a guess) but would this be significantly faster than the base 27 (bootcamp) when playing games? would any iMac i5 come anywhere close? I can get the mac student discount

Any knowledge sharing appreciated

 

[CWallace]

For playing Windows games, you are better off with a Windows PC - better performance value.

The Radeon Pro 580 in the top end iMac is between a 1060GTX and 1070GTX in performance based on the early benchmarks.

 

[sheareb]

Not having looked at components for a few years - is the pro 480 the same as the card you would buy for a PC cos its pretty large or has it been under clocked? realise its early days for these macs

 

[Glideslope]

For playing Windows games, you are better off with a Windows PC - better performance value.

The Radeon Pro 580 in the top end iMac is between a 1060GTX and 1070GTX in performance based on the early benchmarks.

Agree 100%. Boot Camp can be a PITA. You really need a dedicated Win Machine for optimal performance. Boot Camp is ok, but Apple puts quite a bit of code on your Win Partition to makes everything work. Not everything plays nice. Especially GPU Drivers.
[doublepost=1497729938][/doublepost]

Not having looked at components for a few years - is the pro 480 the same as the card you would buy for a PC cos its pretty large or has it been under clocked? realise its early days for these macs

The 580 is nothing but a VERY overclocked 480. I have a 480 8g in my Win box with a 256g SSD 16g DDR3 and a Skylake i7 (1.7.1). I get 70fps in World of Warships and a solid 30fps in X-Plane 11 on high settings. I used to run X-Plane on a Mac, but I became so addicted to World of Warships I needed to go to a Win box. However, those are more Sims than Games. Some "games" run well on a new Mac with BootCamp. Anything seriously heat generating get a Win Box.

Just MO.

 

[casperes1996]

Hi all, im a great lover of the mac and apple products and my 2010 iMac was amazing, unfortunately no longer have it but use a MacBook pro retina 13 for day to day.

However, looking for a new machine as a general computer but with a focus on playing X-plane and some PC games (BF1, player unknown). I think i have 2 choices - either purchase the base 27 inch mac or build a PC.

PC specs below:
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/zNFrQV

PC costs abt £1100 and the screen is nowhere near iMac but.. (and i know its a guess) but would this be significantly faster than the base 27 (bootcamp) when playing games? would any iMac i5 come anywhere close? I can get the mac student discount

Any knowledge sharing appreciated

If it's just for games, as someone else said, just get the PC. If you'll do more than games, I personally recommend the iMac. The screen is lush, and the performance difference won't actually be that big in the end.
The PC wins in storage speed per the pure SSD compared to Fusion, more RAM (Though upgradeable also on the iMac), and very slightly on GPU and CPU. If you can bump up the GPU, your gaming needs will be taken care of for sure. CPU won't really matter so much to 99% of games and an i5 from the Kaby Lake family is already rather powerful.

The Radeon Pro cards in Macs are not entirely identical to RX cards, no. A lot of the time you can compare them without worrying too much about the small differences though.
With the amazing screen you get with the iMac, I'd say it's almost a bargain honestly.

 

[sheareb]

thanks, my 2010 iMac was an amazing machine and i really kinda struggle to drop a lot of $$$ on a pc really just because i have memories or driver issues/ rebuilding etc but maybe win 10 is much better. the iMacs are just simply stunning machines... need to have a think, not forgetting the resae value - my 2010 iMac is probs still worth £400-500

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

Hate to tell you this but you are in for a shock if you believe bit is worth that much, To you, yes, but anyone else no. Even £200 will be good going. Each new release all our Macs slide backwards due to slow CPU's, slower graphics and memory.

 

[sheareb]

Hate to tell you this but you are in for a shock if you believe bit is worth that much, To you, yes, but anyone else no. Even £200 will be good going. Each new release all our Macs slide backwards due to slow CPU's, slower graphics and memory.

haha, no I'm not planning on selling it so i don't really care and you may be right, theres one on eBay at £300 bids so fr and its an i5 with less memory tho.

 

[casperes1996]

haha, no I'm not planning on selling it so i don't really care and you may be right, theres one on eBay at £300 bids so fr and its an i5 with less memory tho.

If it's in good condition, I for one do think you could get about £400 for it if you were to sell it.

Windows 10 is way better than older versions of Windows in my opinion (spying on you aside). But it's still nowhere near macOS or a good BSD or Linux distro in my opinion. Depending on the use case anyway. And I have still had a fair share of issues with Windows 10. Bluetooth breaking with updates, apps breaking with updates, updates breaking boot-up, updates happening without permission while the system is asleep such that I'm not ready to start when the exam starts, scaling issues on hi-dpi displays, wrong colours on non-sRGB displays, and it just goes on and on. To make matters worse, the older picture viewer in Windows was color managed, and could show proper colours. The new photos app is not... It's a mess.
And as I said, between the iMac and the PC configuration you posted, the iMac won't be significantly slower, in all but storage scenarios. (which granted, can be quite important to how the system feels. A 24GB SSD in the small Fusion Drives or whatever it is, really isn't much)