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In the field for a new Mac

chrisrosemusic1

chrisrosemusic1

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 31, 2012
696
21
Northamptonshire, England
Have always had MacBooks since the old polycarbonate days but with working less and less out and about and being home more (with an iPad to do the 'couch surfing') I'm seriously pondering the iMac as an alternative this time around.

My question is that I've never paid much attention to them until now, so when was the last refresh? And how far off are we speculating until they get the newer i5's/i7's?

I also wondered if any of you have dual booted Windows? I've been thinking of getting into a bit of light PC gaming again, and granted the Nvdia 750M isn't great, but is it enough to get some medium settings out of the newer games?

Any advice/help would be great - I'm not factoring in the 765M 27" power as it's simply out of my price range.

Thanks
 
chrisrosemusic1 said:
Have always had MacBooks since the old polycarbonate days but with working less and less out and about and being home more (with an iPad to do the 'couch surfing') I'm seriously pondering the iMac as an alternative this time around.

My question is that I've never paid much attention to them until now, so when was the last refresh? And how far off are we speculating until they get the newer i5's/i7's?

I also wondered if any of you have dual booted Windows? I've been thinking of getting into a bit of light PC gaming again, and granted the Nvdia 750M isn't great, but is it enough to get some medium settings out of the newer games?

Any advice/help would be great - I'm not factoring in the 765M 27" power as it's simply out of my price range.

Thanks
Click to expand...


I bought the Late 2013 21.5" iMac with a quad core 2.9Ghz i5, 8GB of RAM, 1TB HDD, and Nvidia GeForce GT 750m. I have found the 750m to be a great card (note that some of the benchmarks, if not a lot of them, bench the GDDR3 version of the 750m, not the GDDR5 version used in the iMac). I haven't done a lot of gaming, but the games I have played it has been able to max out at 1080p with over 60fps. When I play Dirt 2 (in OSX), I get around 75-90fps maxed out.

The 750m will defiantly be enough to play every game at least on medium. I know that in Windows, the 750m iMac will get around 50fps when playing Borderlands 2 (1080p, ultra, no AA). As for Battlefield 4, you will be fine to run it at medium or high as long as you don't turn up AA. I have found it to be a great card. For the likes of Batman Arkham Origins, you will be able to play that at around 40fps on high to ultra at 1080p as long as you don't use AA.

As for the refresh, it is only a 100Mhz spec bump, and with it being the same architecture as the 2.9Ghz iMac out now (the one I have), it is only a 3.45% increase.
 
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chrisrosemusic1 said:
My question is that I've never paid much attention to them until now, so when was the last refresh? And how far off are we speculating until they get the newer i5's/i7's?
Click to expand...

Right here: https://buyersguide.macrumors.com//

chrisrosemusic1 said:
I also wondered if any of you have dual booted Windows? I've been thinking of getting into a bit of light PC gaming again, and granted the Nvdia 750M isn't great, but is it enough to get some medium settings out of the newer games?
Click to expand...
I got the Macbook retina Pro 15", dual booting Windows 8, for games, works great. on either Nvidia or the Iris Pro, it's almost the same.
I think i could've been ok with just the Iris Pro for normal use + gaming, but since I also do video editing etc. I opted for the dual gfx cards
 
Thanks, seems it could be quite a bit better for gaming than I expected.

Hoping to get into things like Arma 3, DayZ, etc.

Let's hope the eBay sale of my rMBP goes well ;)

Probably not going to be worth waiting for the next spec bump in 2-3 months then is it??
 
chrisrosemusic1 said:
Thanks, seems it could be quite a bit better for gaming than I expected.

Hoping to get into things like Arma 3, DayZ, etc.

Let's hope the eBay sale of my rMBP goes well ;)

Probably not going to be worth waiting for the next spec bump in 2-3 months then is it??
Click to expand...

I wouldn't wait if you are going to have to live without a mac for a few months. Normally, I would say to wait for a refresh, but in this case it is not worth it. As for the games, I see no problems with the 750m running those. Good luck selling you rMBP :)
 
Nyy8 said:
If you decide to dual boot windows (and I would it's very simple)

Here is how some of the games would stack up with a 750m:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-750M.90245.0.html
Click to expand...

That shows the GDDR3 version of the 750m, not the GDDR5 in the iMac. OP, expect around 10fps higher on the results. Also note the settings of the results (ultra is classed as ultra settings, 1080p and 8X AA, so by simply switching of AA you will se another increase in fps). With all of that turned on anyway, you will see nice fps throughout.
 
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Nyy8 said:
If you decide to dual boot windows (and I would it's very simple)

Here is how some of the games would stack up with a 750m:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-750M.90245.0.html
Click to expand...

This benchmark is very inaccurate as it's based on the DDR3 version of the GT750M. Apple uses the rare GDDR5 version of the GT750M, which outperforms the GTX660M in every aspect.

A better comparison would be with the GT755M (it's only available in the GDDR5 form), and the difference between this and the GDDR5 GT750M is around 5-10%.
 
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