iMac Graphics - For Gaming

[EnderBeta]

Sad to hear your troubles, But I was not responding to your post .

It was example how scaling looks. BTW, do you see improvement in WoW with Metal over OpenGL? In performance, for example.

The performance of WOW seems to be comparable at first glance. However the image clarity is much sharper now at 5K with a frame buffer of 50% in Metal compared to it was in OpenGL before Metal was available.

The frame rate is all over the place. The old zones and in doors will get into the 70 to 100 FPS range. New zones are around 45 to 50 FPS.

Due to the in house connector used to get around the lack of any motherboards that would connect a 5k screen when it was developed an external GPU on an iMac will only run another external screen making it a bit pointless when you have that lovely 5k beast in front of you.....

There is no doubt the 5K screen is gorgeous but sadly the graphics chip is still not strong enough to do it justice in games. There is much compromise to get the frame rates up.

Maybe if I'm lucky Apple will release a 5K monitor even if it takes two thunderbolt 2 ports to drive and I can upgrade to a Mac Pro. Although even that probably can't drive a 5K screen in games without making Crossfire or dare I wish SLI work in OS X in a new hardware update.

 

[inhalexhale1]

On the left game rendered in 4K resolution but scaled down to 1080p monitor resolution - retina effect.
On the right game rendered in 960x540 and scaled to 1920x1080 monitor resolution.

This is the difference of image quality you see on your monitor.

That isn't the same thing as running a game at native 5k versus scaled down to 1440p. Whether you guys want to admit it or not, scaling down 1440p is not going to look as good as in a 1440p native monitor. Now if the difference isn't a big deal to you, then cool. But the difference is there.
[doublepost=1470792341][/doublepost]

Overwatch is a PC only game. Windows handles scaling differently. I was strictly talking about OS X only. I have not been able to get bootcamp to work on my machine. I can't get past the installer which refuses to install because of the partition. It makes no sense. I stopped trying after Windows Setup managed to fubar my entire drive and I had to go into recovery reformat my entire drive and reload OS X from a time machine backup.

Does scaling in Windows look better than when done in OSX? (1440p down from 5k?)

 

[Boost3devo]

I tried to play on my iMac 5k, but windows drivers on m3xx are old, the unofficials dont work, tried a few ones with no luck. Dirt rally worked good, but forza apex keeps giving me low video memory error.

I would love to play forza horizon 3 on 4k, but building an expensive gaming pc just for one game is too much $$$.

 

[IngerMan]

Ok I'm not a big gammer now but I have been playing tumb raider from the App Store. And playing at full res I have not had any issues. Are these complaints running from Windows

 

[Boost3devo]

Ok I'm not a big gammer now but I have been playing tumb raider from the App Store. And playing at full res I have not had any issues. Are these complaints running from Windows

At least mine is.

 

[EnderBeta]

That isn't the same thing as running a game at native 5k versus scaled down to 1440p. Whether you guys want to admit it or not, scaling down 1440p is not going to look as good as in a 1440p native monitor. Now if the difference isn't a big deal to you, then cool. But the difference is there.

I think you are overblowing the difference. Considering the iMac can't keep the frame rate above 60 FPS in most situations you ave the choice of a native resolution slide show or a scaled image that looks very close to native resolution and is playable.

Does scaling in Windows look better than when done in OSX? (1440p down from 5k?)

I can't really go into how Windows 10 scales down because my machine is fast enough that I don't lower my resolution below 4K during games.

However in terms of how Windows handles desktop elements on a 4K desktop, it does a ghastly job.

On the desktop some elements end up huge while other elements are still too small. Even when you do manage to get the size of things feeling right text while readable is still not sharp like the retina. Overall the Windows experience is still cumbersome and I would drop it entirely if I didn't need it for programs I use on the job and because Apple for inexplicable reasons refuses to sell and implement SLI base solutions.

Seriously I don't know why the refuse to make a gaming machine. They could call it the Power Mac and make it in the old Mac Pro case. Give it a i7 and two GTX 1080 cards in SLI with a PCIe SSD and space for additional SATA drives and support raid. If they did that and continued to improve Metal I would buy it in a heartbeat even if it cost $4500 plus the cost of the monitor, keyboard and mouse.

 

[inhalexhale1]

I think you are overblowing the difference. Considering the iMac can't keep the frame rate above 60 FPS in most situations you ave the choice of a native resolution slide show or a scaled image that looks very close to native resolution and is playable.



I can't really go into how Windows 10 scales down because my machine is fast enough that I don't lower my resolution below 4K during games.

However in terms of how Windows handles desktop elements on a 4K desktop, it does a ghastly job.

On the desktop some elements end up huge while other elements are still too small. Even when you do manage to get the size of things feeling right text while readable is still not sharp like the retina. Overall the Windows experience is still cumbersome and I would drop it entirely if I didn't need it for programs I use on the job and because Apple for inexplicable reasons refuses to sell and implement SLI base solutions.

Seriously I don't know why the refuse to make a gaming machine. They could call it the Power Mac and make it in the old Mac Pro case. Give it a i7 and two GTX 1080 cards in SLI with a PCIe SSD and space for additional SATA drives and support raid. If they did that and continued to improve Metal I would buy it in a heartbeat even if it cost $4500 plus the cost of the monitor, keyboard and mouse.

To you first point, this is a subjective thing. I personally find lowering the resolution dulls the color and sharpness, to where it doesn't matter if other settings can be turned up or not. This isn't to say I find fault with the Mac for not gaming at 5K. That's an unrealistic expectation. My point was if you're buying a Mac for gaming, understand that you have to drop the resolution to 1440p, which will cause a reduction in image quality.

To your second point, I think it would be more likely for them to just eliminate more dGPU options and develop a plug and play eGPU over TB3 in new models. I've seen many already do it with some work, so why not just add the feature in OS X officially and sell their own enclosure (that costs 10x as much!). Before switching to AMD, they were already using the best mGPU's available. While the 295/395 aren't as good as NVIDIA's top tier options, they are still very good cards also.

 

[EnderBeta]

To you first point, this is a subjective thing. I personally find lowering the resolution dulls the color and sharpness, to where it doesn't matter if other settings can be turned up or not. This isn't to say I find fault with the Mac for not gaming at 5K. That's an unrealistic expectation. My point was if you're buying a Mac for gaming, understand that you have to drop the resolution to 1440p, which will cause a reduction in image quality.

To your second point, I think it would be more likely for them to just eliminate more dGPU options and develop a plug and play eGPU over TB3 in new models. I've seen many already do it with some work, so why not just add the feature in OS X officially and sell their own enclosure (that costs 10x as much!). Before switching to AMD, they were already using the best mGPU's available. While the 295/395 aren't as good as NVIDIA's top tier options, they are still very good cards also.

I understand where you are coming from. Something has to be lost in the process of taking a higher resolution image and shrinking it down. Some games do better then others.

XCom2 runs horribly on my iMac and handles the scaling the worst.

Witcher 2 runs poorly above 1080P but at 1080P it actually manages to look decent and play well.

WOW effectively plays at 1440P but looks better in WOW in the scaling conversion with Metal then it did with OpenGL.

I agree as well as the iMac does in games it cost $500 more then my gaming X99 based gaming PC with a 5930K and two GTX 1080 cards.

That said the Mac does better in games then I expected and dare I hope, one way or another the Mac platform becomes just a little more viable in games.

Regardless of the means in which it is done. I would love a way to play games at native 5K resolutions with max settings and 60+FPS.

I really do believe that if they make it the gamers will come.

I'm personally sick of Microsoft's forced updates and spying on me. I already use my iMac and MacBook for my job running Windows in a VM where it belongs. If games where all on the Mac platform I could throw out the gaming machine and go straight Apple all the way. Which would increase my budget for my flagship machine from $4000 to $8000 so I'm willing to drop some cash Tim (if he is listening out there in the interwebs).