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Which iMac graphics?

P

pkessler

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 3, 2009
3
0
I am a freshman in high-school. I have the white, 17inch intel iMac and I want one of the new iMacs. My problem is....which one should I get? I want one of the 24inchers....it seemed fine before but everyone seems to be doubting the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics card that the first 2 come with.

Is that not good? The one I have now is an ATY, Radeon X1600. I don't know how good that is compared to the 9400M one. Basically, I play WoW and Sims. Sims 3 is coming in June and I want it to look good. WoW is kinda bad on my computer now but it works ok I guess.

So my question is....is the 9400M one fine? or should i get a better one?
 
The 9400M probably won't run Sims 3 at full resolution with all the visual effects.
 
Avoid the 9400M

pkessler said:
I am a freshman in high-school. I have the white, 17inch intel iMac and I want one of the new iMacs. My problem is....which one should I get? I want one of the 24inchers....it seemed fine before but everyone seems to be doubting the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics card that the first 2 come with.

Is that not good? The one I have now is an ATY, Radeon X1600. I don't know how good that is compared to the 9400M one. Basically, I play WoW and Sims. Sims 3 is coming in June and I want it to look good. WoW is kinda bad on my computer now but it works ok I guess.

So my question is....is the 9400M one fine? or should i get a better one?
Click to expand...

What alphaod said. If you want to play Sims 3, then you want to avoid the 9400M! You want to get the GT 120 or 130 (good) or the Radeon 4850 (best).
 
I have been waiting for some time now for the new imacs to come out.
However, i was a bit dissapointed today,not so much because of the processor (which seems to annoy most people) but mostly because of the graphics.
With the previous models, i could configure a 24" iMac at macuniverse.co.uk, with 4Gb Ram, 750 GB hard drive, and the Nvidia 512 card, at about the price the 24" model with the integrated graphics is sold now.
To tell you the trouth, i'm no expert in the field, but i would like someone to explain to me how decent is either the 9400M or the 256 Mb card that is default with the 3rd model.
I don't play games for some time now, but i do watch hd videos and sometimes do some video/audio conversion.
The rest of the specs of even the lower 24" model, are fine with me. The most demanding running program so far is matlab, which i don't think will have any problem with even the 2,6 processor.
If anyone has any suggestion as to what i should do (get the one with the 9400M if they think it's ok, the GT120, or even upgrade the gt120) i am all ears...
Thanks in advance
 
The 9400M is around the same as the ATI X1600.

The GT 130 is slightly faster than the 9600M in the current Macbook Pro.

If you want to play games, go with the ATI card.
 
Noooo

Nooo! so are you telling me that the new, 24inch iMac has the SAME graphics card as my 17inch white iMac!?!?!? I don't believe it....ugh.
 
pkessler said:
Nooo! so are you telling me that the new, 24inch iMac has the SAME graphics card as my 17inch white iMac!?!?!? I don't believe it....ugh.
Click to expand...

The worst part is that it is not the same, but it is actually WORSE than the X1600.

If it's any consolation, you can get the 3rd iMac for $1,699 (100 bucks off) with Edu pricing. :)
http://images.apple.com/education/pricelists/pdfs/030309EDIPPAddendum.pdf

<offtopic>
BTW, notice how it still says Apple Computer at the top.
</offtopic>
 
avihappy said:
The worst part is that it is not the same, but it is actually WORSE than the X1600.

If it's any consolation, you can get the 3rd iMac for $1,699 (100 bucks off) with Edu pricing. :)
http://images.apple.com/education/pricelists/pdfs/030309EDIPPAddendum.pdf

<offtopic>
BTW, notice how it still says Apple Computer at the top.
</offtopic>
Click to expand...

Actually, thankfully, the 9400 is a bit better than the x1600. I don't know wth Apple is trying to pull of though. The graphics chip (integrated!) is a joke for a machine of this price. It's such a nice machine save for the kiddy graphics chip. My jaw actually dropped in disbelief when I saw the iMac had the same GPU as a Macbook.
 
Maybe consider getting a refurb of the last gen Aluminum iMacs. The NVIDIA 8800 GeForce on the 3.06 GHz works really well for my needs including gaming & light photo & video editing. I'm a Freshman in High School as well.

I'd be worried if I were getting the new iMacs with the integrated chip. Honestly if you want the brand new one I'd max it out with the ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB.
 
Someone mentioned something like this:

20" 2.66: low-end
24" 2.66: "mass" model
24" 2.93: high-end
24" 3.06: ultimate

It looks like most of the people doesn't need GPU so much.

I went for 2.93GHz with GT130 512mb.
 
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