Which to buy?

[frocco]

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Hello,

I like to game, so would it be better to buy a 21" iMac and an asus g74sx at best buy, or the top end 27" iMac with the 6970 1gig?

 

[panzer06]

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Hello,

I like to game, so would it be better to buy a 21" iMac and an asus g74sx at best buy, or the top end 27" iMac with the 6970 1gig?

Last year I went with used iMac 24 with ATI 4850 + Asus G73JH with 5870, now I've upgraded to Alienware M17x-R3 (purchased used) with the AMD 6970. I like having separate systems. Plus SC2 works on the Mac so you can use that beautiful screen.

I'm thinking about getting a 2010 27" with the ATI 5750 so I can connect the AW to the 27". It comes with mini-displayport out so the iMac will work as a monitor. The R3 is very versatile. Also support HDMI input for connecting any HDMI capable device (like PS3 or xbox).

Cheers,

 

[Hellhammer]

If you want to game, then build a gaming rig and get e.g. 13" MBP. You don't want mobile GPUs and inability to upgrade if you're a serious gamer. $1000 builds miracles now so the end price with 13" MBP would be similar to high-end 27" iMac.

 

[VPrime]

If you want to game, then build a gaming rig and get e.g. 13" MBP. You don't want mobile GPUs and inability to upgrade if you're a serious gamer. $1000 builds miracles now so the end price with 13" MBP would be similar to high-end 27" iMac.

Or wait for the mac mini refresh.. Get a monitor with dual inputs (or a KVM switch) and you can share the monitor with a custom gaming computer and mac mini.

 

[MythicFrost]

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Hello,

I like to game, so would it be better to buy a 21" iMac and an asus g74sx at best buy, or the top end 27" iMac with the 6970 1gig?

The 6970M is better than the GTX 560M but the native resolution of the 27" iMac is 1440p whilst for the Asus it is only 900p/1080p thus you may get more performance out of the Asus assuming it doesn't have any CPU bottlenecks in games, which it may have. My vote is for the 27" 6970M iMac as such a large screen gives a very immersive gaming experience and pretty decent performance. The 6970M performs only a little less than the desktop 6850 which it is based off.

Look here for frame rates for the 6850: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3987/amds-radeon-6870-6850-renewing-competition-in-the-midrange-market/11

It struggles to get 25 FPS w/ very high settings at 1200p in Metro 2033, thus it is most definitely unplayable with those settings at 1440p. You won't really max any high end games with this card at 1440p.