NVIDIA 9400M gc is good for gaming

[Pur3 Macs]

I have a iMac 24inch early 09 so I installed boot camp with vista ultimate right and some games.....
boot camp:
Halo PC
Battlefield 2142

Mac:
Halo mac
Age of empire 3

All these games work extremely well, and believe it or not there is absolutely no lag when I record the games with ishowu!

I do like to examine PC's and then compare then to Mac's graphics to see what differences there are just for the sake of it. But anyway a good amount of ram will defiantly help out with your graphics processor.

I pushed halo and AOE to the maximum, by commanding as many troops as I could or versing a lot of aliens and firing non-stop.
There was a slight 0.02 of a second lag from AOE when moving the map around with a lot of troops moving at the one time.
Halo was mostly good but once you melee'd the aliens the blood used a lot of the graphic processor and slightly slowed down untill you looked away from it.

I give mac for games a big 9/10 for gaming!

 

[Leo72]

Interesting. Have you ever tested the frame rate of AOE III? (for instance by Fraps)

 

[iLog.Genius]

I don't think there is any doubt that the 9400M can handle games especially those that are already a few years old. The 9400M is severely underestimated but at the same time is by no means a high end card. The 9400M is very capable at many things but running games that are recent are not one of them.

 

[Hellhammer]

As iLog sain, 9400M runs almost any game at low/medium settings with OK FPS, but games like GTA IV and Crysis maybe too demanding for it. Moreover, you can get PC for less than 500$ and it'll outperform iMac in gaming.

 

[opeter]

Moreover, you can get PC for less than 500$ and it'll outperform every iMac (even the one with Radeon 4850) and Mac Pro in gaming, especially, if you dont have a gaming card in it.

Fixed.

Anyway, a good/relatively cheap PC gaming card is the Radeon 4770, that ouperforms the Radeon 4850 and is much less power hungry.

 

[Hellhammer]

Fixed.

Anyway, a good/relatively cheap PC gaming card is the Radeon 4770, that ouperforms the Radeon 4850 and is much less power hungry.

True. 4770 is quite equal to 4850 (depends on manufacturer) but at least here in Finland, it sold out from everywhere

 

[Pur3 Macs]

Thanks for your opions. I just hve been seeing some people saying these cards are crap and I just want to prove them wrong. I know ATI Radeon cards are better but because I bought my mac from a retail store(not online) I couldn't get a radeon card

 

[opeter]

Thanks for your opions. I just hve been seeing some people saying these cards are crap and I just want to prove them wrong. I know ATI Radeon cards are better but because I bought my mac from a retail store(not online) I couldn't get a radeon card

No problem with that. I am quite happy with the Geforce 9400 as well. It works superb with games I like to play (C&C: Generals, Blitzkrieg etc.).

 

[Flybye]

Thanks for your opions. I just have been seeing some people saying these cards are crap....

It depends on "who" those people are. Mind you, there are different levels of gamers.

IMHO:

Casual gamer: Doesn't care about image quality or frame rates. Just wants to play the game.

Hardcore gamer: Every video quality option needs to be turned on to maximum. AA at 16x, AS at 16x, and both at 1920x1200 or higher. God forbid you get anything below 60fps in a gun fight. Otherwise, gg. And in any first person shooter, you NEVER want to get anything below 60fps in a major gun fight. The Hardcore gamer will demand maximum performance at maximum quality for all the newest of games.

Then again, there are plenty of games that fps is not important at all. It is all the first person shooters that FPS is of up most importance. And a $500 PC would never even be able to cut it for a serious gamer. A serious PC gaming machine alone costs $1500+. High end video cards still cost $400-$500. Quad core high end CPUs still cost $500+. A high end motherboard still costs $200+, etc.

If you are happy with the video in your iMac, then that is what counts! But keep in mind that there some crazy gamer folks (like me ) who even have their PC watercooled just to get maximum performance out of it. But my Mini with its integrated graphics does fine with work stuff and everything else I throw at it.

 

[Pur3 Macs]

Mac has most of those things ready but I'm not the extreme pc gamer I mean I've got an xbox 360 for that kind of thing with hdmi for games like cod5

 

[Flybye]

You would be amazed at how amazing games can look on the 360 when compared to a high end gaming machine. Let's take Gears of War for example. Even though you have the 360 setup at 1080p, did you know some games, like gears of war, is only running at about 1280x1024? The 360 upscales it to run certain games at 1080p, but it is not true 1080p. Also, Gears of War was designed to run on a PC with extremely large texture maps. Everything had to be downsized in order for it to work on the 360. See remember, the 360 came out at the end of 05. Meaning it was designed 1-2 years before hand. Of course, getting all the tooling and parts in order for large scale manufacturing, this means that the 360 is basically like playing a game on a 5yr old PC. I've played Gears like 5 times on my 360. And when it came out for PC, I played it there again. The difference from 360 to PC is amazing.

See with the 360, you also can not enable AA or AS, and that just drives me nuts! Let me show you just what a difference that can make:
Here is a Pic with no Anti Aliasing.
Here is a Pic with Anti Aliasing enabled.
No jaggies! And that is just one of the many reasons why I prefer gaming on a computer over gaming on a console. Everything simply looks better and runs smoother on a computer if setup right.

Check out my Gears of War pics on PC at 1920x1200 with AA and AS or what could be called 1200p which is something that consoles can not even dish out:
Pic 1
Pic 2
Pic 3
Pic 4

I'm not knocking the 360 in anyway. It's a great piece of machine for what it is, but you can never compare it to the quality of what the same game will look like on a computer. And if I had a Mac Pro back then, these pics would have come from it! Take CoD, run it on a gaming computer, and you will be like I promise you will never go back to a console.

 

[Pur3 Macs]

Yes I know that all the textures are like 80% better on a PC but I like having a 360 portability and a good controller. Not that I hate keyS I'm pretty good with the halo mac keys (W,S,A,D and mouse).

 

[Flybye]

Hehe...that's another good debate. Controller vs mouse...

 

[Hellhammer]

Flybye, remember that a PC which can run games like GoW at everything set to highest costs about same as 10 X360s... Moreover, when you're playing on a computer, your nose ~30 centimeters away from screen but when playing on a console you're sitting 2 meters or more away from TV.

I just like the easiness of PS3, just put the disk in and start playing.

 

[Pur3 Macs]

Yeh I agree consoles are more easy to well...... plug and play. Anyway I decided to see how much the nvidia could handle so I opened up AOE3 and went to video settings I put shadows to very high. This gave it huge lag but looked nice, so I put it to just high and it had a bit of lag and then low which had no lag at all.

........$2500.........wasted on a poor graphics card that can't even handle 'high' shadow mode at least it handles 'low'

Just wondering is it possible to get a new ATI radeon 512mb dedicated graphics card installed into it to replace my old nvidia?

 

[Hellhammer]

Just wondering is it possible to get a new ATI radeon 512mb dedicated graphics card installed into it to replace my old nvidia?

I doubt it. 9400M is intergraded and has memory and SATA controller etc.. Moreover, you can't buy ATI 4850 from shop

 

[Flybye]

LOL I corrupted him. Time to get a Mac Pro

 

[Pur3 Macs]

Well looks like options will have to be kept to a minimum, unless I can get a cheap desktop PC for gaming and customise it with a radeon and more RAM I doubt I will be getting a new computer anytime soon though

 

[Flybye]

LOL don't sweat it. I just like to show fellow gamers that there is life beyond consoles. I currently use my PC for just gaming and my Mini for everything else. It's just a Mini, but he is fully worth every minute I use him. One thing that I'll certainly be doing someday is buying a used Xeon Mac Pro from ebay. One of the 2-3yr old models can be bought for around $1000 or so, and they can still make extremely decent gaming machines, and you would still be on a Mac.

 

[Hellhammer]

LOL don't sweat it. I just like to show fellow gamers that there is life beyond consoles. I currently use my PC for just gaming and my Mini for everything else. It's just a Mini, but he is fully worth every minute I use him. One thing that I'll certainly be doing someday is buying a used Xeon Mac Pro from ebay. One of the 2-3yr old models can be bought for around $1000 or so, and they can still make extremely decent gaming machines, and you would still be on a Mac.

I'm getting a PC and turning it to a Hackintosh. Much cheaper and I get a new machine

 

[Pur3 Macs]

By hackintosh you mean pearPC correct? So with all these PC parts and cards etc by putting mac on it it would run good with games?

 

[Hellhammer]

By hackintosh you mean pearPC correct? So with all these PC parts and cards etc by putting mac on it it would run good with games?

Yes. What I mean is, I would use Windows for gaming and OS X for other things.

 

[Pur3 Macs]

So your dual-booting, thats what I'm doing with my imac now I've got vista ultimate running it handles games better than mac os x ain't that a surprise

 

[Hellhammer]

So your dual-booting, thats what I'm doing with my imac now I've got vista ultimate running it handles games better than mac os x ain't that a surprise

That's because all games are written to Windows

 

[Pur3 Macs]

I was just reading in the
software>apple games forum, nvidia 9400m capabilities
that it uses instead of 256mb RAM (in mac os x) it uses 512mb RAM for it's graphical processor. (in windows)

...........I'M SAVED FROM THE MAC'S GAMING ISSUES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!