iMac 20" 3Gb RAM Ati X1600 vs 24" 2Gb Ram Nvidia 7600 GT

[thomasandgil]

Have decided to purchase an iMac. Am a very keen user of Microsoft Flight Sim, but don't want to enter in a discussion about whether I should get a windows pc....i have decided on iMac and that is it. My question is whether I should get 20" with 3gb Ram and ATI x1600 256mb vs 24" with 2gb Ram and Nvidia 7600GT 256mb. Which will give me better performance i.e frame rates? I have heard that possibly because of the 24" larger screen there are more pixels to process, therefore performance would be affected. On the other hand I have heard the Nvidia card is far superior to the ATI? I know I could get the 24" with 3Gb Ram and that would solve my problem but do have a bit of a budget to adhere to hence above comparison I am interested in.

Cheers

Thomas

 

[dmw007]

Neither machine is going to be a slouch, but the video card in the 24" iMac is going to more than make up the RAM difference between it and the 20" iMac. For gaming, I think that the 24" iMac is your best choice besides getting a Mac Pro and the Radeon X1900XT graphic card.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

X1600 isnt all that anymore, its a shame that you have to play the move up game with Apple but thats the game they play. I would go with the 2 footer since both cards in it are more powerful then the x1600. Plus a big wide screen is nicer for flying. 7600GT is is in another league when comparing to the x1600 and even the 7300GT base card is better then the x1600. I have Dell coming and im going to use a silent 7600GT or GS in it. Toms hardware has its VGA charts which is a good place to look at cards performance. X1600 isnt keeping up with the newer CPu's in my view.

ps, also if your into flight sims you should check out the IL2 & Pacific Fighters though you will need to run them in boot camp. Great realistic WWII Simulator.

 

[thomasandgil]

Thanks for your advice, looks like it is the 24" iMac with the 7600GT. Thanks also 'don't hurt me', although I am more into commercial aviation will definately check out IL2 and Pacific Fighters.

 

[topgunn]

I have the 24" myself. I didn't really need or want the bigger screen but rather I wanted the 7600GT. Now that I have it, I LOVE the big screen and I don't think I could go back to the tiny 20".

But back on point, if you don't mind the quality, you can run the flight sim at a resolution other than the panels native resolution. When playing Elder Scrolls Oblivion on the iMac, I run it at 1680x1050 intead of the native 1920x1200 and it still looks great.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

Thanks for your advice, looks like it is the 24" iMac with the 7600GT. Thanks also 'don't hurt me', although I am more into commercial aviation will definately check out IL2 and Pacific Fighters.

Thats a good choice, 1 more thing I must mention about IL2/Pacific Fighters is that they use real flight models,real cockpits and you can take the realism as far as you want meaning you want to mess with fuel mixtures, bomb sites,different engines etc you can so you can play in full realism or you can dumb down the game to make it more arcade like. They are very underated in the Mac World because the Mac world has never been able to play them until now with the Intel thingy 9 out of 10 stars.