iMac used for gaming (my experience)

[Kjos]

I got my iMac Christmas of 2013, so it's the newest one with the Haswell i7.

I heard that iMac's would get seriously hot when under stress, so with the Haswell I was hoping for a better result then what I have heard in the older models.

It is now summer of 2014 and this is what I have discovered:

I own iMac 27 inch with i7, 2 gigs video memory, 16 gigs of RAM, and 3 TB Fusion. And I spent the small amount of less the 200 hundred dollars for AppleCare which gives me 3 years of warranty.

What I was worried about when I bought my iMac:

1) Too big of screen
2) Would get too hot
3) Would break in some way
4) DDR4 RAM would be released soon after

1) I was worried about the screen size because I play League of Legends a lot, and I thought a huge screen would effect my game play negatively in some way. I can say all you have to do is make your courser slightly bigger and then the whole experience is better in every way.

2) I was worried about the iMac getting too hot and it would affect the machine negatively. But as they said, the new Haswell is a lifesaver. My machine has only made a noise I could hear once. And that's when I had Netflix, Civilization 5 and Youtube running at the same time, this wasn't on purpose but after a few minutes the machine's fan was audible for a few moments. So I'm extremely happy with that performance.

3) Going from a PC XPS Dell I was worried about another machine breaking down on me constantly. After owning the machine for over 7 months I can say it has never done anything to make me think it was going to break in anyway. And with the cheap Applecare with three year warranty I seriously have peace of mind that I feel only Apple can give.

4) DDR4 RAM, I guess I should be more excited about this coming then nervous, but let's say I'm glad I didn't wait, never has my computer's performance lacked in any situation and I've video edited, intense gaming and all other things that you can think of that take a good computer to do.

Conclusion:

Don't buy the new low end iMacs that recently came out, pay more and get more! Fusion drive is so amazing! My computer starts up in seconds, extra ram and amazing CPU really show in the performance of the machine. If you are looking for a great gaming machine I would recommend the iMac to anyone who understands that their money is going toward quality that it will be kicking for years to come!

 

[joe-h2o]

To be fair to the design, the heat issue with the iMac was fixed with the late 2012 redesign - the first generation of slim iMacs.

I have a 27" late 2012 with the 680MX and it is similarly cool and silent even under heavy loads. It is a gentle whirr when playing things like Bioshock Infinite on ultra settings under windows, but you can only hear it when there's almost no in-game sound.

The Late 2012 features the Ivy Bridge generation of CPUs.

 

[Kjos]

Ohh, now that you mention it he has the non-slim version of the iMac. So that makes sense that they might have fixed the heat problem with the new design rather than the Haswell. Thanks for the reply.

 

[kupkakez]

I just picked up a 27" iMac tonight with the GTX 775M 2GB and so far it's smoking World of Warcraft everything set to Ultra and I'm getting 50+ FPS in the shrine/dungeons. Granted I know WoW can run on a low specced computer as I did play it on a 2011 MBA a couple of years ago when that was my main computer

Needless to say so far I'm happy since I typically only play WoW, The Sims 3 and dabble some in Diablo and Hearthstone.

I would not consider myself a hardcore computer gamer at all, but if using Bootcamp this configuration would probably run most games at a decent level.

 

[yjchua95]

I have an almost maxed-out 27" Haswell (3.5GHz i7, 32GB RAM, 512GB SSD and 4GB GTX 780M), and it plays every game smoothly at 1080p, max/ultra settings.

I couldn't be more happy with the performance.

 

[Nuttydev]

I picked up the 2013 27" with the i7 3.5GHz, 8GB ram (upgraded to 16GB straight out the box), GTX 780m 4GB and 3TB fusion on Saturday, and the first thing I noticed was how much cooler it runs compared to my old 2010 21.5". So far I have maxed out Civ V and (unmodded) Skyrim at 1440p at a solid 60+FPS no problem, running cooler than my old iMac would run when doing general tasks, but have yet to have a chance to try much else.

Also has anyone with the 780m noticed that games on OS X don't seem to detect it and the 'optimal settings' option defaults to 800x400 and low graphics?

 

[kitsunestudios]

Also has anyone with the 780m noticed that games on OS X don't seem to detect it and the 'optimal settings' option defaults to 800x400 and low graphics?

Not here, but I used the migration assist, so all my games started at the old 1080p medium settings. IIRC, Diablo3 and XCOM both picked the correct options when I chose the "default" values, while Civ V turned everything off.

 

[tomwvr]

With a lot of the games being IOS playable now - I deinstalled windows - I had only used it to play Skyrim. Now I play skyrim in IOS on an WIN Immulatior called crossover. No problems playing at top resolution . And its awesome not loading windows to play this.

No heat issues, no lag issues, not problems at all. - now I did get rid of my magic mouse and went to a two button logitech wirless mouse ...

Tom