Attention iMac G5 owners !

Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
This topic is concerning how the iMac G5 is for gaming.



When the iMac G5 were released, most of the forums were filled up with disgust over the graphic-card that Apple had chosen. The comments were mostly (Except hrmurchinson that is :-) ) that a Geforce 5200 Ultra cannot be used for anything.





And now, 5 months and counting after the release. How good/bad is the current iMac when it comes to casual gaming ? I am not asking the die-hards out there, but to those of you might fire up Unreal 2004 from time to time.



Zon
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 52
    relicrelic Posts: 4,735member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by zenarcade

    This topic is concerning how the iMac G5 is for gaming.



    When the iMac G5 were released, most of the forums were filled up with disgust over the graphic-card that Apple had chosen. The comments were mostly (Except hrmurchinson that is :-) ) that a Geforce 5200 Ultra cannot be used for anything.





    And now, 5 months and counting after the release. How good/bad is the current iMac when it comes to casual gaming ? I am not asking the die-hards out there, but to those of you might fire up Unreal 2004 from time to time.



    Zon




    It's not as bad as you'd think, with medium settings at 1024 x 768 rez, expect 28 - 32 fps. Me personally I would never own a game that can't be played at the native resolution of the monitor. That's why I will never buy a iMac (untill Apple stops throwing in junk) for my home needs, for work their great!



    Wait for the update hopefully Apple won't be so cheap next time.
  • Reply 2 of 52
    telomartelomar Posts: 1,804member
    At this stage I'd be tempted to say wait and hope for a bump of the graphics card but at the same time for casual gaming it does ok. I'm not a huge FPS fan though but it certainly handles WoW ok.
  • Reply 3 of 52
    If you are gonna buy an iMac get used to the fact that it will come with a less capable Videocard than a powermac. FACT.

    The next iMac will be no different, it will have a little better card than this one but deffinately behind the PMG5.and you freakin whiners will be in here cryin again. STFU and buy a powermac if you want high end graphic cards. Had to be said.....
  • Reply 4 of 52
    telomartelomar Posts: 1,804member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by MagicFingers

    If you are gonna buy an iMac get used to the fact that it will come with a less capable Videocard than a powermac. FACT.

    The next iMac will be no different, it will have a little better card than this one but deffinately behind the PMG5.and you freakin whiners will be in here cryin again. STFU and buy a powermac if you want high end graphic cards. Had to be said.....




    I find it interesting that the only person that has whined so far is you...
  • Reply 5 of 52
    pbpb Posts: 4,255member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by MagicFingers

    The next iMac will be no different, it will have a little better card than this one....



    Or the same with an option for more VRAM \ .
  • Reply 6 of 52
    zenarcadezenarcade Posts: 126member
    Hmmm . . . from my place in Norway, this is how it looks . . .



    If you are a hard gamer, not satisfied with anything below 40-50 fps, the iMac may not be for you.



    If you plan to spend a great time working on Apple Motion, the iMac may not be for you.



    Except for that, the iMac looks pretty decent.



    Anyone here agree . . .



    Zon
  • Reply 7 of 52
    nowayout11nowayout11 Posts: 326member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by MagicFingers

    If you are gonna buy an iMac get used to the fact that it will come with a less capable Videocard than a powermac. FACT.

    The next iMac will be no different, it will have a little better card than this one but deffinately behind the PMG5.and you freakin whiners will be in here cryin again. STFU and buy a powermac if you want high end graphic cards. Had to be said.....






    Fact? 3 of the 4 PowerMac models all include the 5200 Ultra as their standard card too. That card in a $2500 "pro" machine is rather insulting. Even the $3000 model only has a 9600 XT as standard, which is a $150 midrange part at best.
  • Reply 8 of 52
    Fact, I have an imac g5 20 and it is fine, it is acceptable, NOW, if you are a hardcore gamer, then fact is dont use mac in the first place, get a pc and custom build it, and then do your monthly(yes monthly) upgrades, if you are going to use it for hardcore gaming. the imac is fine for casual gaming(I play return to castle wolfenstein on it and get over 100 fps with max details), grant it, that came is a few years old, but again, I am not a hard core gamer, and even a hard core gamer, 100fps would not be fast enough(and its just for braggng rights at that)..
  • Reply 9 of 52
    slugheadslughead Posts: 1,169member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by The General

    if you are a hardcore gamer



    Subtract "hardcore" and put "occasional" and you'll include ALL people who will ignore this computer until it gets a better video card.



    I'm surprised they haven't bumped it up yet, how long's it been? 8 months?



    And by the way, can anyone tell me why 10 million computer users have so little access to good FPS games? Because the game companies don't want to release a version for a platform in which 90% of its users don't have a video card that can run it!



    Apple is partly to blame for the lack of games for mac, and after this 5200 joke, it's likely not to stop any time soon.
  • Reply 10 of 52
    relicrelic Posts: 4,735member
    Isn't it frustrating, I mean hears a computer that would give Andy Warhol a boner for design? It screams buy me, but I just can?t put my self to buy it because of the graphics card, even if I?m considered an occasional player. Apple just isn?t being nice. As for those that are defending the iMac, I think if Apple dipped hamsters into Lucite and sold them as iMates half of you would by them just because it?s an Apple product.
  • Reply 11 of 52
    auroraaurora Posts: 1,142member
    Its Doom3 scores will be pathetic meaning everything off and at 640 x 480, Some early benches are hitting the net and it aint pretty. Macs are hammered. Macologist has some benches. New Imac G5 owners will be a hooping and hollering on this one. Ouch!
  • Reply 12 of 52
    relicrelic Posts: 4,735member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Aurora

    Its Doom3 scores will be pathetic meaning everything off and at 640 x 480, Some early benches are hitting the net and it aint pretty. Macs are hammered. Macologist has some benches. New Imac G5 owners will be a hooping and hollering on this one. Ouch!



    But dude I'm getting like 1,000 FPS in Marathon II, so all is well in iMac land.
  • Reply 13 of 52
    newnew Posts: 3,244member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Aurora

    Its Doom3 scores will be pathetic meaning everything off and at 640 x 480, Some early benches are hitting the net and it aint pretty. Macs are hammered. Macologist has some benches. New Imac G5 owners will be a hooping and hollering on this one. Ouch!



    hehe, I get 0.7 frames when large battles occure in WOW...
  • Reply 14 of 52
    relicrelic Posts: 4,735member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by New

    hehe, I get 0.7 frames when large battles occure in WOW...



    They call that bullet time, it's all the rave right now.
  • Reply 15 of 52
    junkyard dawgjunkyard dawg Posts: 2,801member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Aurora

    Its Doom3 scores will be pathetic meaning everything off and at 640 x 480, Some early benches are hitting the net and it aint pretty. Macs are hammered. Macologist has some benches. New Imac G5 owners will be a hooping and hollering on this one. Ouch!



    This isn't only because of the video card, however. Id didn't develop the Mac version of Doom 3 in house, choosing to have Aspyr do the port instead. If a game is a quick and dirty port done by people who didn't even create the game, then chances are it will be very poorly optimized for the Mac. Doom 3 for Mac isn't even dual CPU aware - how can a Mac game not be optimized for dual CPUs!



    Quake 3 was a special case, where we had Id working on it in house and a proponent of the Mac platform working at Id on continuous optimizations of the Mac version. Steve Jobs must have pissed off Carmack bad, since only a couple years ago Carmack was showing the first Doom 3 demos on a Powermac. It's too bad because Mac hardware today is far more competitive than it was at the release of Quake 3 Arena.
  • Reply 16 of 52
    auroraaurora Posts: 1,142member
    Apple doesnt play nice with most companies and folks know that but here the problem lies within Apples horrid drivers. The performance is in the CPU's and the High GPU's so the bottleneck has to be something very wrong that Apple has going on with drivers and these great componets not able to talk to one another. AMD 3500/6800GT runs it pretty with all on at 1280 x1024 at about 55 fps.... there shouldnt be a reason for the dual G5 macs not to do it except for something very very wrong in software from Apple. They are a little twoface on graphics and games no matter how you look at it. I bet 95% of the Problem is over at Cupertino. This should embarress the heck out of some software dept within Apple.
  • Reply 17 of 52
    gargar Posts: 1,201member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Relic

    I've seen things you little people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion bright as magnesium. I rode on the back decks of a blinker and watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate. All those moments... they'll be gone.



    Rutger Hauer rules, as do your amusing posts, lately



    [edit] and (to stay on topic) unreal tournament 2003 runs nice and flawlessly on a 20"iMacG5. if i have time to play, i'll tray Starcraft.
  • Reply 18 of 52
    rraburrabu Posts: 264member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by zenarcade

    This topic is concerning how the iMac G5 is for gaming.



    When the iMac G5 were released, most of the forums were filled up with disgust over the graphic-card that Apple had chosen. The comments were mostly (Except hrmurchinson that is :-) ) that a Geforce 5200 Ultra cannot be used for anything.





    And now, 5 months and counting after the release. How good/bad is the current iMac when it comes to casual gaming ? I am not asking the die-hards out there, but to those of you might fire up Unreal 2004 from time to time.



    Zon




    To be honest, I am a little disappointed. I have Diablo 2 and until recently, it was playing very slowly on my 600 MHz iBook. In fact, slower than it had played on my old 266 MHz Beige tower. I recently got an iMac G5 and was looking forward to finally being able to play this game "full speed" with all effects. Unfortunately, I got quite the dizzying experience. The framerate was good and decent but the screen refresh is quite horrible. As you move the character around, naturally the character stays in one place on the screen as the entire background slides around. The LCD screen just doesn't update quickly enough or something. I found the screen blurs as you move, going back to nice and sharp as soon as you stand still.



    I'm not entirely sure if it is just a slow LCD refresh or if this is simply natural on LCDs. I never experienced this on my iBook but then again, it may be that my iBook never could generate a high enough framerate to actually cause this.



    If anyone has any ideas, they'd be welcome. One thing I considered doing but just haven't gotten to yet was to hook up my 19" NEC to the iMac and mirroring there to play. This should be a good test to see if it is the display or some software issue. Although I'm just that casual a gamer to not really care enough to bother trying this out yet. Maybe someday when the days are longer (than 24 hours that is) and I actually have some free time...
  • Reply 19 of 52
    pyrixpyrix Posts: 264member




    Have any of you dissing the graphcis ever actually USED an iMAc. It seems not. I own an old windows box, but the iMac G5 for Film and TV at school, using Final Cut Express HD, and they run fine. Admitadly the graphics card is about a year, year 1/2 old, but it is fine for day to day use.



    The probable reason that Apple hasn't upgraded the graphics card is that at the time it was released, the 5200 was the most economical performance to price chip that can be intergrated onto a PCB. As well as that, becuase it is slower, it emits less heat. Now that nvdia has come out with its geforce go 6000 series cards, which can be intergrated onto a PCB, apple is probs designing an update as we squeak complaints.



    OF course my whole argument could go to hell if someone corects me by saying that it is a seperate graph card, not intergrated onto the PCB. I THINK it is intergrated, been a while since i checked.





    P.S



    Hardcore gamers buy a windows box. Custom build, more titles, newer titles. Casual gamers buy an Xbox/PS2
  • Reply 20 of 52
    zenarcadezenarcade Posts: 126member
    Maybe we can get back to the topic. This is not for the ramblers or those with a tiny vocabulary.



    Would anyone with an actual iMac G5 experience give us some info about playing games with it ?



    Command and Conquere ?



    Unreal 2004 ?



    Rise of nations ?



    Call of duty ?



    Zon
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