Is that the top-model with Core i7 and GTX 780M? That's the one I'm thinking of buying instead.
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iMac Retina 5K disappointing: Heat and fan noise!
- Thread starter SmallDane
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Is that the top-model with Core i7 and GTX 780M? That's the one I'm thinking of buying instead.
I am still on the fence between the 2013 version and the Retina iMac. What resolution are you playing WoW in ? If you are not playing in 5k, is the text blurry at all. What is the FPS like in raids?
It looks like you are happy with the Retina iMacs performance for WoW and given the same decision again would you recommend the retina iMac ?
The only game I play is Wow and I am interested in the Retina for other reasons.
Thanks
Well, it's Nvidia's stream and us using AMD hardware... Could be the other way around of course!
Right on
I had come so close to returning mine because of issues. I realize it is shot in the dark. But much stranger things have happened.
Tried the fresh install. It changed nothing sadly.
Anyway, the machine is back in the box and ready to send back. I just have to call Apple tomorrow. Hopefully, they accept and I get all my money back.
3342x1880 is where I've been playing at. I tried 2560x1440 and for the most part it was ok...but I bumped it up two notches and I think it's a good spot for text and such. The only text that isn't sharp in my opinion is the built-in combat scrolling text when there is a critical hit...the edges of the numbers are jagged but they aren't blurry at all. Software issue I believe.
As far as where all the other settings are at...I took the slider to "high" and played it like that. The sole exception has been that I took texture filtering from 8x anisotropic to 16x instead. Otherwise I've left everything wherever moving the slider placed them. With these settings the game looks amazing. I also play with fullscreen-windowed mode. Set my resolution at whatever I want it at in fullscreen, hit apply, and then switch it to fullscreen-windowed mode. That way I can alt-tab out of the game and have a window on top of the game (like this one). Supposedly doing it this way will result in a small fps drop.
As far as fps goes, I always log out at my mission table and sitting right there I'm looking at 60-90 fps. As soon as I leave my town hall I usually see an fps drop to about 25-30 for a split second, but it quickly recovers and running around in my garrison I'm looking at 35-45 fps. Most outdoor places as well are around 45 or so.
The first thing I did after getting everything set up on Friday is queue up for level 100 MC just so I could see how this thing did in a 40 man raid. On my 2012 rMBP it did ok as long as I had everything on low...well until fighting started then it would drop to about 15 fps. Ugh... But with the new iMac, the fps stayed around 50-70 fps the entire time with one exception. I did catch that it dropped to 42 fps once when we were up against the wall fighting two molten giants right before Garr but it quickly recovered and I was seeing 50+ fps for the rest of the fight. I was nothing but impressed with how well it did. I was expecting some fps drops when spells and abilities started flying....but nope this thing held strong the entire time I was in there at 50-60 fps. So far 5 man heroics have been more of the same...actually better in most cases. I have not tried Highmaul yet. Yeah, I'm a casual.....but I have full confidence that if it can do so well in a 40 man raid that it'll do just fine in a 25 man raid as well. I might hit up Ashran later to see what some world pvp makes this drop down to as far as fps goes.
You had the i7/m95 version right?
And I believe you said that you could hear the fans, but that you didn't think they were "loud". Correct?
When gaming like the above description, how fast does the fan go?
(I am leaning more and more towards getting the riMac with i7/295, even though SmallDane had some issues)
Yes that is the one. I personally would rather have the i7 retina iMac but there's no question at 2,700 rpm my iMac is really loud. The good thing is it's almost never at that rpm. If somehow the retina iMac hit that a lot more often I wouldn't like it either.
The question is how rapidly does the fan on the retina iMac ramp up under a given stress level vs the non-retina iMac. Anecdotally there are reports that seem to indicate it happens earlier or at lower stress levels. Unfortunately I haven't seen any objective hard data.
If you have a reproducible test that causes certain CPU, GPU or fan behavior on your retina iMac I'll be happy to run it on my 2013 iMac for comparison.
Yes that is my configuration (1TB fusion and 16gb RAM as well). I'm in game right now in Stormshield and the fans are spinning at 2300 rpm with the cpu temp at 75C and gpu at 103C. I can hear the fan but it's not loud at all. Like I mentioned earlier...my rMBP was way louder.
Just to add, I play at same res and with a little tweaking [shadows, draw distance] you can add an extra 10-15 FPS easy [mine stays around 50-60 with occasional dips into the high 40s]
i5, M290x
I'm in the process of choosing between i5/m290x vs i7/m295x (or some combination).
What temperature/Fan speed you get during game play with the i5/m290x?
Also have you tried 25-40 men raids?
mainly because of "possible" heat issue.
I will probably buy the i7/m295x first, and see myself if this is a "issue" I can live with (otherwise I'll send it back and exchange for the base model)
I think that's what I'll do as well. Just really sucks to have to send it back if there is a problem
Ah well, at least you know you tried pretty much everything. It could as some have mentioned, be a "bad" fan.
I still have some trepidation as to how mine will be in the summer
Because now the ambient temp is all like Winter. Summer is different and I have no AC to speak of.Exciting times! Good luck with your next machine, whatever it may be.
I must say, if Apple had a separate retina monitor, I may very well have ended up with a Pro and that monitor. Because I know that the Pro is silent and cool
With my setup (i7 + m295x and Bootcamp), I find that on more demanding games the GPU tend to go straight to 100%, nothing to be unhappy about as the GPU is always working its arse off. Whether the temps exceeds c*100 or not depends if the CPU is working hard or not. No throttling from heat yet, R9 cards all run at these temps anyway.
Personally I've never had the fans go above 2,400 RMP yet and I've almost always had my headphones on while gaming. Also, the fans and temps wind down pretty quick once you've quit gaming.
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I'm in Thailand where it's winter which is probably hotter than your summer anyhow. My AC is running at c*26 and is way louder than my iMac!
Personally I've never had the fans go above 2,400 RMP yet and I've almost always had my headphones on while gaming. Also, the fans and temps wind down pretty quick once you've quit gaming.
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Ah well, at least you know you tried pretty much everything. It could as some have mentioned, be a "bad" fan.
I still have some trepidation as to how mine will be in the summer
Exciting times! Good luck with your next machine, whatever it may be.
I must say, if Apple had a separate retina monitor, I may very well have ended up with a Pro and that monitor. Because I know that the Pro is silent and cool
I'm in Thailand where it's winter which is probably hotter than your summer anyhow. My AC is running at c*26 and is way louder than my iMac!
This is the stream I was watching in the video I posted earlier in the thread:
http://www.twitch.tv/nvidia/b/602943987
Make sure you pick "Best" quality (not 720p but the one called "Best") and watch it in Chrome. This video alone causes my fan to run at max speed (2700 rpm) within a few minutes.
This is not the only thing that causes high temps. But it's easily reproducible.
Thanks for your reply. Very helpful. I wonder what performance in WoW is like with the i7, SSD but using the m290x instead of the 295. I guess not many take that combination though. Looking at all the threads it appears the 295 is the main cause of the heat and fan speed under load.
Took your advice and I'm seeing the same by turning both shadows and draw distance down a notch to "good" for both. Add 10-15 fps to everything I described earlier.
Side note...made it into Ashran for a bit today with my previous settings and the lowest I saw fps drop to was around 25 or so with however many people were there (it was in the horde camp....so there was A LOT of people).
Another side note...did the first two LFR's for Highmaul (with shadows and draw distance set to good) and I don't think my fps dropped below 50. On one fight I was surprised to look up and see my fps was 90 or so.
The 295 is a very capable gpu....it has restored my faith in AMD so far.
Your link is correct based on what evidence exactly? Your opinion?
Simply linking to some website making all sorts of statements is exactly the same as a post with statements in a thread like this. As you've shown us, the information the manufacturer gives tells us nothing about TDP's so where did the website you linked to get its information from and how reliable is their source?
The entire point is: you come barging in, posting a link to some random website listing some specs from GPU 1 and GPU 2 and expect us to believe you. What evidence do you have that this website is correct and on what information are they basing their article? Why should we believe you and your link?
Not if you actually read what it says ("CPU Max") and what it means:
This is completely useless information since we are talking about the GPU and NOT the CPU.
Now on the gpuboss website there are quotes for both GPUs. Both quotes are links to the original article where you can find that quote. If you click the link for the first quote you end up here: http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/6...90x-4gb-video-cards-in-crossfirex/index9.html Now let's click page 1 of that article shall we and lo and behold: it's about a full fledged PCIe GPU. No mobile GPU like the on in the iMac 5k. The second quote links to that very same article.
Also, it helps tremendously if you use a Watt meter on an actual iMac 5K with that M295x like I did. The amount of Watt mine is doing is not even near the CPU Max in the Apple article when I'm stressing both the CPU and GPU. On average mine is at 80~82W (i5, 16GB of mem, 512GB ssd, M295x, another ssd via TB and some USB peripherals). When stressed this rises to 250~260W with only a few spikes to 280W (and yes in that case the fan does rev up and I do hear it but not if I'm playing some music in the background).
So there we have it, evidence that the gpuboss link is incorrect when it comes to the GPU in the iMac 5K. Obviously an apology to both joema2 and me is in place here
From what I've seen it behaves the same as on other Macs. It takes a while before the fan will rev up but when it does it can go up quite quickly. Haven't measured it but I'm guessing it takes about 1 to 2 minutes before the fan is actually revving up. It looks like it is set to only rev up in case of long computations which looks like a good choice. If you have small computations there is no need to, temps rise quickly and lower quickly in those cases. It only adds noise which is something they are avoiding with this system. My MBA 2012 responds the same way. My Mac Pro 2010 did so too.
I did that for 10 minutes. Fan stayed at 1,200 rpm. Details: "Best" quality, full screen on my 2013 iMac 27 with i7@3.5Ghz, 32GB RAM, 3TB Fusion Drive, GTX-780m, Chrome 39.0.2171.95, OS X 10.10.1.
iStat Menus reports about 30% on each CPU core, 60 fps on the GPU, GPU activity level about 15%.
Don't know why the difference in behavior.
That sounds good. Thank you for testing. I will very much consider an iMac with those specs.
So are you set on the non-retina iMac as your replacement?
I don't game all the time, but when I do I have been using my 2011 iMac which also runs hot and "not quiet". My thinking is to go with a Mac Pro for my next desktop.
(Granted, I also use my computer for photo/video editing and software development.)
After being an iMac user since 2005 and I have gone through 3 of them, I just get the feeling deep down this machine was not made for me.
My first iMacs felt underpowered, and my later ones felt they were stressed. Maybe in about 5-10 years I'll come back to it.
Use something like those sealed cold packs. You just put it back in the freezer and take the other one out.