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Please help me decide on an iMac to play WoW

N

Nun Soup

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 29, 2009
4
0
Hi everyone,

I'm going to buy an iMac with either the GT 130 video card or the ATI 4850. Which should I go with if I primarily plan to use my iMac to play World of Warcraft, use Photoshop CS4 and play War Hammer Online?

Would the GT 130 play WoW exceptionally well? Is the 4850 overkill?

I've spent an hour reading what others had to say in the past but I'm still uncertain. Which should I choose?

Thanks for your time!
 
They are almost similar in benchmarks. If you can wait go for 4850 but GT130 will play WoW as well as 4850 does. GT130 model you can pick whenever you want from nearest Mac seller but 4850 has to be ordered from Apple's site and wait for several weeks.
 
Anyone of the iMac's will play WoW with no problems. My 2.4 with Radeon 2600 plays it at 1920x1200 with all options on at 60fps. WoW doesn't even remotely stress any new computer.
 
To avoid sounding like an idiot, go for the best you cna afford is what I meant.... but I was confusing the 130 with the 120.
 
If I go with the 130, will it still be able to play games 3 to 5 years from now? I don't need it to play games like Crysis - just MMOs. Basically, I just want to make sure it still can hold it's own in the future. Will the 130 do that?
 
5 year thing is totally dependent. In 5 years will everything be cloud or will you run everything on your computer?

I highly, seriously, SERIOUSLY doubt you could play a game 5 years from now on a current iMac.

Do you rememeber computers 5 years ago? Do you think they could run the current 2009 games?

Anyway I think in 5 years time www.onlive.com is going to be the mainstream way of playing games and if so then any computer could run any games at highest graphics.

P.s. my 3.06Ghz 4GB RAM 8800M iMac can run WoW full res at around 60FPS
 
Nun Soup said:
Hi everyone,

I'm going to buy an iMac with either the GT 130 video card or the ATI 4850. Which should I go with if I primarily plan to use my iMac to play World of Warcraft, use Photoshop CS4 and play War Hammer Online?

Would the GT 130 play WoW exceptionally well? Is the 4850 overkill?

I've spent an hour reading what others had to say in the past but I'm still uncertain. Which should I choose?

Thanks for your time!
Click to expand...

I personally despise nVidia and will buy ATI over nVidia all the time. This is primarily a recent occurrence based on my 8600 troubles on my now sold MBP, however, for causal to mid-upper my kids and grandkids have more stable results under Windows with ATI cards (2600, 3870 & 4670). I also don't like rewarding nvidia's indifference to the millions who bought those defective 8x00-based mobile systems only to discover they were sitting on a time bomb.

If you can afford to buy ATI, do so and in this case get the faster card to boot.

Cheers,
 
Generally MMO games are designed to run on lower specced machines anyway. MMO designers know they will make more money selling a good game with variable graphics to a large pool of customers instead of requiring more expensive hardware.

Blizzard and ArenaNet are good examples of companies in the MMO/CORPG business who stick to this ethos.
 
I have researched this extensively and found this,and yes i know it doesn't show the gt130 but i was under the impression that the old 8800 gt was similar in stats to the gt 130,so i would go for the ATI 4850 for an extra 50.

cod4_4x-1.gif
 
From what I can tell, the 4850 is the better card. But it seems the graphics / fps junkies are the ones that swear by it. Everyone else seems to thing the GT 130 will do just fine.

I'm going to go with the 130. I'm not a total graphics junkie and the 4850 can take up to 5 weeks to ship.

Thanks for your help everyone!
 
If you're happy at running wow at 40-50 fps, go for 130
If you want 70-90 fps, in 5 weeks (well, 2 weeks for me! :D), you'll have wished you waited for the 4850 :)
 
I just unboxed my '08 refurb yesterday. It's a 24" inch model, 3.06 Ghz, 8800GS 512Mb card, 2 Gb ram.

WoW looks gorgeous at native res, the graphics effects cranked (except shadows), and about a 80% View Distance. I'm getting 40-60 fps with little hitching running around the Argent Stand in Zul'Drak.

Note these numbers are before optimization - I still need to tweak the effect settings a bit. I'm totally satisfied though, and this is a nice upgrade from my old PC (GeForce 8800 GTS 384Mb on a 1650x1024 monitor).

IMO, save yourself $600 and get last year's model as a refurb. It may not play the brand new shooters as well as the 4850, but the 130 card won't either. If you're like me and only worried about WoW though, the high-end '08 iMac handles it just fine.
 
If you care about games of the future, get the 4850. No question really. If you don't, you'll be regretting it this time next year ...
 
I bought a 20" returb after the newest models came out, one with a 2.66 Ghz CPU and 2 GB of DDR2 RAM, and the ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro vid card, and my machine runs WoW beautifully. With minimal settings, I get 70 fps outdoors, and roughly 50 fps with terrain and item distance at 50%, among other increases.

Anything relatively new will run WoW without issue. You have to consider that the game itself is probably 5 years old now, if not more.
 
Nun Soup said:
Hi everyone,

I'm going to buy an iMac with either the GT 130 video card or the ATI 4850. Which should I go with if I primarily plan to use my iMac to play World of Warcraft, use Photoshop CS4 and play War Hammer Online?

Would the GT 130 play WoW exceptionally well? Is the 4850 overkill?

I've spent an hour reading what others had to say in the past but I'm still uncertain. Which should I choose?

Thanks for your time!
Click to expand...

I have the GT130 and its fantastic.. Dalaran is a bit of a bitch but thats it.. Im fine in Raids and all ..
 
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