[kiskynet]

Ok, so I LOVE the new iMac (much nicer than the sunflower IMO), I want to get one! I don't play games a lot but it would be nice to finish of Medal of Honour AA one day, maybe even try out UT2004 or Doom when it comes out.

I'm not a hardcore gamer I don't expect 127FPS. I do like my OS upgrades though and want to be able to use Core Image but as Apple says its supported I'm happy to believe them ?

I've read the bitching about the crappy GPU etc, is it reallly this bad? Can anyone who already has this card tell us what its actually like to use, will anyone defend this thing or is that embarrasing.

Some screenshots would be nice, I've only seen bar charts so far which don't mean anything to me. Comparisons are no good unless someone can tell me how it compares to my only reference point a GameCube. How about a movie so we can actually see some FPS. I'm really hoping that after years of a Rage Mobility 128 my expectations are so low that I'm actually going to be impressed by a 5200.

This is not a deal breaker. I'm going to get a iMac G5 anyway because games just arn't enough of a priority, as much as I'd like too I can't justify getting a PowerMac just for upgradeable graphics. I would though like to part with my cash without thinking I'm getting completely screwed by a non upgradeable part that's actually as bad as its sounds.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by kiskynet:
I'm not a hardcore gamer I don't expect 127FPS. I do like my OS upgrades though and want to be able to use Core Image but as Apple says its supported I'm happy to believe them ?

I've read the bitching about the crappy GPU etc, is it reallly this bad? Can anyone who already has this card tell us what its actually like to use, will anyone defend this thing or is that embarrasing.

In a word, yes. In some situations, that 5200U really is that embarrassing.

To be fair, I suspect for light Core Video, it will be fine.

However, even for light gaming it will suck with recent games. 127 fps? You wish. More like 20-40 fps with lowish to medium settings. That's simply bad, since at those speeds, the slowdowns really cut into the enjoyment of the game. And there are even a few benches out there where the GeForce4 MX beats the 5200 Ultra (although that isn't the norm).

The new iMac G5 is a good machine overall, and a good value. However, if you're the least bit interested in gaming, then the GPU is a disappointment. How much this will apply to Core Image/Core Video I dunno, but the GPU is still somewhat of a concern here as well. For the low end iMac G5 I wouldn't worry so much, but for 20" iMac G5 it's disappointing. If you're gonna spend nearly $2000 on a computer, you may as well get a good GPU. At this price ballpark, I think many people would be happier to spend $1949 or even $1999 on a machine with a 9600 XT than they would to spend $1899 on a machine with a 5200 Ultra.

[gperks]

When I want to buy a new Mac, the last place I'm going to look is these forums. They'd scare you off buying anything!

If they had put in today's greatest video card, not only would it cost $300+ more, this time next year people here would be scoffing at it saying how low-end it now is. With $300 added to the price, this forum would be filled with pricing complaints.

Let's be clear. The iMac is an incredibly fast machine with plenty of storage, housed in a desirable, practical, beatiful enclosure. It uses a reasonable amount of power and is exceptionally quiet.

The graphics will blow away your GameCube and your Rage Mobility 128.

It's three times faster framerate than the previous iMac and as far as I know people have been playing UT 2004 and Halo on G4 machines with slower video cards, slower system buses, and certainly not AGP 8x.

[Don Pickett]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
In a word, yes. In some situations, that 5200U really is that embarrassing.

To be fair, I suspect for light Core Video, it will be fine.

Could you back this up with some data? I have not been able to find any reviews of Motion in which the reviewer said that the 5200 rendered the program unusable or so slow as to be unusable. Since this seems to be your argument, I would need to see some proof.

[turtle777]

Ca$h entering this thread and cussing people out:
Soon in a thread near you !

T - 5,4,3,2,1...

-t

[JustinD]

Originally posted by gperks:
If they had put in today's greatest video card, not only would it cost $300+ more, this time next year people here would be scoffing at it saying how low-end it now is. With $300 added to the price, this forum would be filled with pricing complaints.

You're kidding right? There's no way it would be $300 more, that logic is a bit flawed. Besides, no one is asking for a top-of-the-line card, just not a bottom-of-the-barrel one! You're missing the point entirely.

Let's be clear. The iMac is an incredibly fast machine with plenty of storage, housed in a desirable, practical, beatiful enclosure. It uses a reasonable amount of power and is exceptionally quiet.

... and its Achilles Heel is the crap graphics card.

The graphics will blow away your GameCube

Not in a million years. Have you seen Metroid Prime on an HDTV (to give one example on one console)? There's no way the iMac G5 could keep up with that. MAYBE if you cut the res down to console quality (at most 640x480 I believe), but that's the only case.

It's three times faster framerate than the previous iMac and as far as I know people have been playing UT 2004 and Halo on G4 machines with slower video cards, slower system buses, and certainly not AGP 8x.

Three times faster? According to who, Apple? If you believe that I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. And how many graphical options did those people playing those games have to cut down? How far did they have to cut the resolution?

I admit, none of us have really seen what the iMac G5 is capable of, but the fact remains that they used a crap video card on an expensive machine, a card that almost every review gave low or mediocre marks to even at its release. It's even slower in some cases that the GeForce 4 Ti!

You just can't argue with all the published tests and reports on this chipset - it's crap compared to all the other chipsets (even OTHER budget ones!) they could have used.

[elvis2000]

Originally posted by JustinD:
You just can't argue with all the published tests and reports on this chipset - it's crap compared to all the other chipsets (even OTHER budget ones!) they could have used.

Has anyone considered the *heat* generated by all those other chipsets they could have used? The 5200U is CRAP, definite CRAP. This is the video-card found in most mid-tier $400 PCs.

But, they run without a fan and only a cheap plastic heatsink. I wonder if this didn't, in some repect, have impact on their decision.

But I doubt it. Apple is just being chintzy.

[PEHowland]

Originally posted by kiskynet:

I'm not a hardcore gamer I don't expect 127FPS. I do like my OS upgrades though and want to be able to use Core Image but as Apple says its supported I'm happy to believe them ?

Core Image is nothing more than a programmer's API. It's the equivalent of Microsoft's DirectX. The 5200 fully supports hardware acceleration of the functions in that API. But the point is not "using Core Image" but whether the 5200 is capable of providing enough horsepower to support the applications you want to use, that themselves call the Core Image API. If you are a hard core gamer, the answer is probably no. If you're in to complex video rendering using Motion then the answer is also no - but you'd also probably want a dual-CPU machine anyway. For anyone else, the answer is that 5200 Ultra is more than enough for the lifetime of the iMac. It is actually pretty well matched to the rest of the machine in terms of specifications. Gamers should get a PC - far better choice of graphics card than any Mac and much greater choice of games and peripherals - and people into serious video rendering need a PowerMac. The real complaint is coming from those who want to use a Mac for gaming. The iMac is inadequate for that, but in the scheme of things, Macs are inadequate for that in general.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by PEHowland:
Core Image is nothing more than a programmer's API. It's the equivalent of Microsoft's DirectX. The 5200 fully supports hardware acceleration of the functions in that API. But the point is not "using Core Image" but whether the 5200 is capable of providing enough horsepower to support the applications you want to use, that themselves call the Core Image API. If you are a hard core gamer, the answer is probably no. If you're in to complex video rendering using Motion then the answer is also no - but you'd also probably want a dual-CPU machine anyway. For anyone else, the answer is that 5200 Ultra is more than enough for the lifetime of the iMac. It is actually pretty well matched to the rest of the machine in terms of specifications. Gamers should get a PC - far better choice of graphics card than any Mac and much greater choice of games and peripherals - and people into serious video rendering need a PowerMac. The real complaint is coming from those who want to use a Mac for gaming. The iMac is inadequate for that, but in the scheme of things, Macs are inadequate for that in general.

I agree for light Core Image, the 5200 U should probably be OK. However, there was a review out there that still suggests a 9600 Pro over the 5200 U, even on a single G5.

So far I am only using Motion on a G5 single processor with an Nvidia FX5200 Ultra. This is close to the bottom of the supported configurations but motion is still fast and usable for medium size compositions. For better performance I would really recommend at least an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128, and these cards can go in recent G4 towers as well as the G5.

This jives with what people have reported Apple reps told them. For certain types of Motion usage, you may be better off with a fast GPU than a fast CPU. An example is here:



Look at the orange line. That's a dual G5 2.0 with a 5200 U. Note that it is only marginally faster than a single G5 1.6 with the same card, and it gets soundly trounced by a single G5 2.0 with a better video card.

As for gaming...

I agree that hardcore gamers should probably get a PC, but the point is that the iMac (or at least the 20") should at least be capable for light gaming, which it really isn't.

For many people the current iMac is fine, and that's fine by me. However, in my case, the GPU is indeed a deal breaker, because I want a somewhat future-proofed Mac with light gaming capabilities.

To reiterate the point I've made in other threads. If the iMac 1.8 20" had a Radeon 9600 Pro or better in it, I would have bought it. The money was already in the bank. However, since it's hobbled by a bottom of the barrel (for a current generation) video card, I didn't buy it. Simple as that.

[DaBeav]

Keep in mind that the new iMac does crank out faster framerates than the old one - and they use the same GPU and amount of VRAM. The problem with the G4 wasn't the graphics chip, it was the architecture. The system couldn't really keep up with the video card. The new G5 architecture doesn't have this problem. It's the same video card.

Notice that on the graphics page, Apple gives the speed increases in percentages, they don't give the actual frame rates. That's because even with the 189% speed gain, you're going from a barely playable 22fps to a somewhat better 42fps. Here are some performance numbers for the old iMac to compare. The percentage increases don't look so great in that light, unless you're playing older games based on the Quake 3 engine. Here are the G5 cards compared. As you can see, even the Radeon 9600 Pro (not the current XT, which is a bit faster) totally spanks the 5200U.

The iMac is a consumer machine. Not only that, it's Apple's high-end consumer machine. Consumers play games. With more GUI functions being offloaded to the GPU in OS X, and 3D on the desktop on the horizon, it does make a difference in the long run. Sure Apple will try to bring as many features as they can and wring as much out of the chip as they can, but they can only do so much. For many, it will be enough. But for quite a few, it just won't cut it.

[Don Pickett]

So no one can back up the "too flimsy for Core Image" remarks?

I'm shocked.

[Grrr]

Oh look, Another G5 iMac graphics thread!

Oh alright then, I'll add some input.. Personally, I think that although Apple could have done better, it surely isn't as bad as may people imply? Even if we take Apples own graphics performance figures with a pinch of salt, it's still at least twice fast for games and whatnot as the outgoing G4 iMac. So why complain about the G5 iMac when not many were complaining about the G4 iMac?

And for what it's worth, my G4 1.2ghz eMac chugs along quite nicely for UT2004, so it must be a damn site better on a G5 iMac. Right?

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by Grrr:
Oh look, Another G5 iMac graphics thread!

Oh alright then, I'll add some input.. Personally, I think that although Apple could have done better, it surely isn't as bad as may people imply? Even if we take Apples own graphics performance figures with a pinch of salt, it's still at least twice fast for games and whatnot as the outgoing G4 iMac. So why complain about the G5 iMac when not many were complaining about the G4 iMac?

Because I actually have an interest in the G5 iMac. I had had zero interest in the G4 iMac in the last 2 years, because IMO it was grossly overpriced for the performance.

[DaBeav]

Core Image, scope the system reqs in the lower right. The FX 5200U is the very bottom rung. This is for the version of Core Image that ships with Tiger.

Now, let's go into the near future to 10.5 and beyond. Core Image adds even more effects. The 5200U however, may not support these new features because it barely supported the features in the first version (kinda like moving from DX8 to DX9 on the Windows side). Technically, the 5200 is DX9 compliant, however if you enable the advanced features, performance will slow considerably.

Yes, it will stomp all over the previous generation iMac and the current eMac with respect to graphics. That's not saying a whole lot. They're not exactly graphic speed demons to begin with.

Compared to PC AIOs, the iMac is actually a good machine. Gateway's Profile uses Intel Integrated graphics on the 15 and 17" models. Their 20" uses - a 5200 (non-Ultra I believe). The chip is also non-upgradeable. Dell's low-profile also uses Integrated, or you can "upgrade" to a GF4MX. So compared on that note, the iMac G5 is up to snuff. However, other makers also offer other consumer alternatives that are more upgradeable (and don't mention the G5 tower, I mean real consumer alternatives that don't start at $2K just for the tower). Perhaps there is a deficiency in Apple's product line. Maybe they should bring back single CPU G5 towers.

[iBorg]

Originally posted by DaBeav:
The iMac is a consumer machine. Not only that, it's Apple's high-end consumer machine. Consumers play games. With more GUI functions being offloaded to the GPU in OS X, and 3D on the desktop on the horizon, it does make a difference in the long run. Sure Apple will try to bring as many features as they can and wring as much out of the chip as they can, but they can only do so much. For many, it will be enough. But for quite a few, it just won't cut it.

Bingo.

For a $1900 purchase, I want to have a desktop that I won't have to upgrade in a year, just to do casual gaming, video editing and run Tiger. PLEASE, Apple: throw us a bone here, and let me give you more money (i.e. profit) for a video upgrade BTO option!



iBorg

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by iBorg:
Bingo.

For a $1900 purchase, I want to have a desktop that I won't have to upgrade in a year, just to do casual gaming, video editing and run Tiger. PLEASE, Apple: throw us a bone here, and let me give you more money (i.e. profit) for a video upgrade BTO option!



iBorg

Heheh. Well said.

I do find it ironic that in the era of the iMac G4 we just ignored it, or else criticized it for costing too damn much.

In the era of the iMac G5, we are asking Apple to let us give them more money.

[jcadam]

I was waiting for the iMac G5. The only spec I didn't like was the GPU. Really, I tried hard to convince myself to buy one. But the sh!t GPU was just too much for me to handle.


I will only say this once:

If you intend on doing anything more graphically intensive than basic OS X GUI accelaration (via Quartz Extreme) buying an iMac would be an EXPENSIVE MISTAKE.

Anyone who disagrees with me is wrong. I'm not arrogant. I'm just right.

[gperks]

The way you all are carrying on, everyone should throw away any machine with a 5200 or slower!

Still, I do hope Apple soon offers a BTO option of a better video card, if only to save forum bandwidth on macnn :-)

[turtle777]

Originally posted by gperks:
The way you all are carrying on, everyone should throw away any machine with a 5200 or slower!

Hey' I'll take 'em

-t

[pliny]

Yeah, really, shouldn't apple make it easy for more people to give them more money? i've been waiting for 5 YEARS to upgrade from my imac and am ready to give Apple my money if they will just give me a little reach around.

[thunderous_funker]

Originally posted by gperks:
The way you all are carrying on, everyone should throw away any machine with a 5200 or slower!

Still, I do hope Apple soon offers a BTO option of a better video card, if only to save forum bandwidth on macnn :-)

They don't have to throw them away, but I sure hope they like last year's games cuz they're stuck with em!

[DaBeav]

Originally posted by gperks:
The way you all are carrying on, everyone should throw away any machine with a 5200 or slower!

Still, I do hope Apple soon offers a BTO option of a better video card, if only to save forum bandwidth on macnn :-)

Well, if you got have a tower with the 5200U, you don't have to throw out the whole machine, just pop in a new graphics card. Can't really do that on the iMac.

[iBorg]

Originally posted by jcadam:
I was waiting for the iMac G5. The only spec I didn't like was the GPU. Really, I tried hard to convince myself to buy one. But the sh!t GPU was just too much for me to handle.

This was the deal-breaker for me, too. I've tried and tried to talk myself into buying the iMac G5, but just can't justify the garden-slug 5200 - not for $1900!

Maybe this is fortuitous - despite repeated warnings to "avoid the first version of anything Apple", I found the design and remaining capabilities of this AOI so compelling, that I would have violated this advice on-the-spot, and plunked my money down on day one! Perhaps Apple's crippling of the video card will end up saving me from problems that will be solved by revision B, when they'll also upgrade the video card and include 8x DVD burning ....



iBorg

[Sparkletron]

Originally posted by iBorg:
Perhaps Apple's crippling of the video card will end up saving me from problems that will be solved by revision B, when they'll also upgrade the video card and include 8x DVD burning

8x DVD burning is nice, but more useful still is the new dual layer burner. Most of the time is not spent waiting for the burn but rather waiting for the MPEG-2 encoding which is CPU-intensive. Anyway, DL has been out for months now and Apple still doesn't offer a BTO option.

-S

[jamesa]

Originally posted by gperks:
If they had put in today's greatest video card, not only would it cost $300+ more, this time next year people here would be scoffing at it saying how low-end it now is. With $300 added to the price, this forum would be filled with pricing complaints.

You're a fool.
1. Apple don't pay retail prices for a graphics chipset. They get bulk discounts, they only buy the chipset not the rest of the card, they don't have to pay retailers to distribute the card, they don't have support for the card, etc etc. I'd guess that they pay half the price of a card.
2. The 5200 is ****. Nobody is saying they have to put a $300+ card in it though. However, the graphics card in the 5200 is beaten by the graphics cards in many of Apple's laptops - which is sure saying something.

Let's be clear. The iMac is an incredibly fast machine with plenty of storage, housed in a desirable, practical, beatiful enclosure. It uses a reasonable amount of power and is exceptionally quiet.

If you want 3D performance for whatever reason, it doesn't matter about how powerful the CPU or how much storage there is.

The system becomes as fast as it's weakest link. That there's a $50 graphics card in a $2k computer is really saying something.

The graphics will blow away your GameCube and your Rage Mobility 128.

That really sums up the baseline for you Apple apologists. "It's great, compared to the graphics card in my five year old laptop."

The graphics card sucks, and nobody that knows **** about a computer would pay $2k for a consumer machine with that kind of graphics card in it. Except from Apple.

-- james

[gperks]

that really sums up the baseline for you Apple apologists. "It's great, compared to the graphics card in my five year old laptop."

That was the original post I was referring to with the Rage Mobility 128 comment.

You're a fool.
1. Apple don't pay retail prices for a graphics chipset. They get bulk discounts...

They may very well... However Apple will ask for $350 for a 9800XT, or heck $500 for a GeForce 6800. My $300 suggestion for a top-end card isn't so foolish afterall, eh?

My point is they have to find a balance between performance and price. The outgoing iMac was quite expensive for what you got. The new iMac's price/performance ratio is far better. It appears Apple want to err on the cheaper cost side - afterall the top end iMac is already very close in price to the PowerMac range which you can configure however you like. A hundred or two hundred more dollars and the ranges start to overlap price-wise quite considerably. My guess is that Apple does not want the iMac's price in PowerMac territory, because at that point people buy PowerMacs not iMacs.

For many people the 5200 is more than adequate.



I do agree that a BTO upgraded GPU would be wonderful. As this iMac matures I expect that will come. I think Apple has make a great computer for an excellent price.

[jamesa]

Alright, let's put this into a bit of perspective.

Look at the hardware we can get for the same amount of money from Dell:
For $1616 (then take off a $100 rebate, meaning $1516) we get:
3ghz P4
512MB DDR2 RAM
160GB serial ATA drive
16x Superdrive (double layer write compatible, unlike the Macs)
17'' flat panel
128MB Radeon X800
IEEE1394 card
Gigabit
2 year warranty

Apple's $1499 machine
1.8ghz G5
256MB RAM
80GB Hard drive
Superdrive (single layer only)
17" flat panel
64MB nVidia GeForce 5200
IEEE1394
10/100bT ethernet
1 year warranty

So, for an extra $17, we get an extra 256MB of RAM, 80GB Hard drive space, a better superdrive (that's also faster), one of the best graphics cards available instead of one of the worst, gigabit ethernet, and an extra year's warranty.

Yes, the iMac is better designed. But that hardly helps when you actually want to do something with the machine, does it?

Apple could have easily afforded to put in a better graphics card, if Dell can afford to do all that. All these people that say the machine would have cost an extra $300 for a better graphics card, they're smoking crack. The computer vendors get graphics cards cheap because that's where the volume comes from - not updated graphics cards, but ones shipping in new machines.

I don't want to buy a Windows box. But all a machine is is a collection of parts assembled in Taiwan, whether with an Apple brand or a Dell brand. There is no reason why Apple could not have put a better graphics card in for very little extra dollars - except they want to force users to upgrade more often, or spend a very large amount on a G5.

-- james

[jamesa]

Originally posted by gperks:
They may very well... However Apple will ask for $350 for a 9800XT, or heck $500 for a GeForce 6800. My $300 suggestion for a top-end card isn't so foolish afterall, eh?

Well that's more to do with Apple's desire to extort its customers more than on any basis of cost.

I go to the Dell Store, I can go from an integrated graphics card to a 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro (which is pretty much the same as an XT) for $200. On the same page, I can go to a GeForce 5200 with 128MB of RAM, DVI out and TV out for $50.

So that's all we're talking about here. $150. No need for the huge inflated "it would have added $350 to the price", because a 9800 pro would have been great.

I do agree that a BTO upgraded GPU would be wonderful. As this iMac matures I expect that will come. I think Apple has make a great computer for an excellent price.

I agree with you on that, but this is a very weak link in what is otherwise an excellent machine. At the very least, the top of the line model should have had a better graphics card.

-- james

[iBorg]

Originally posted by jamesa:
this is a very weak link in what is otherwise an excellent machine. At the very least, the top of the line model should have had a better graphics card.

-- james

Bingo.

I have no problem with Apple using a bottom-feeder GPU in the $1299 entry-level iMac, even though in today's dollars, that's hardly a "cheap" computer.

But in a $1900 computer, it's a deal-breaker, particularly when Apple doesn't even allow its buyers to pay even more for a BTO video upgrade (meaning extra bling for Apple!)



iBorg

[Link]

Originally posted by jamesa:
There is no reason why Apple could not have put a better graphics card in for very little extra dollars - except they want to force users to upgrade more often, or spend a very large amount on a G5.

You mean like the ibook's flexible case causing motherboard flexing which caused many ibook motherboards to dislodge the video chip, the imac rev A-D's intentionally lousy analog board, the way all the TiBooks had a plastic frame of which the hinges were mounted on, and many powermac g4s were designed with the power supply butted up against the processor heatsink which can cause the power supply to wear out faster because of the extreme heat going through them? Howabout those ibooks with the fraying yo-yo power supply cables and the powerbook g3s with defective AC adaptors?

Sometimes you have to wonder if apple intentionally makes their computers to wear out/break easily so people come back for another, since afterall most of the people who buy a mac buy one for the OS, and by the time the machine's unusable, they're usually within a few months of being able to upgrade.

Oh yeah, apple can't possibly be capable of that!

[jamesa]

Originally posted by Link:
You mean like the ibook's flexible case causing motherboard flexing which caused many ibook motherboards to dislodge the video chip, the imac rev A-D's intentionally lousy analog board, the way all the TiBooks had a plastic frame of which the hinges were mounted on, and many powermac g4s were designed with the power supply butted up against the processor heatsink which can cause the power supply to wear out faster because of the extreme heat going through them? Howabout those ibooks with the fraying yo-yo power supply cables and the powerbook g3s with defective AC adaptors?

Sometimes you have to wonder if apple intentionally makes their computers to wear out/break easily so people come back for another, since afterall most of the people who buy a mac buy one for the OS, and by the time the machine's unusable, they're usually within a few months of being able to upgrade.

Oh yeah, apple can't possibly be capable of that!

If that's sarcasm, it's a very poor attempt at it.

Apple intentionally chose the video card they put in the iMac. Unless someone has evidence that it ended up in there by accident?

Similarly, I have never claimed nor has anyone ever provided proof that Apple intentionally shipped poorly manufactured machines.

The distinction is really quite clear. Hamstringing the graphics card becomes the users problem - they knew what the problem was, and went ahead and purchased it anyway. Build quality is something that should be assured, and should it not be up to standard, it's something the consumer didn't choose.

You can choose to paint this as a conspiracy theory if you want, but really it's out there and in the open. The graphics card sucks. Apple won't even provide FPS for their iMac "digital graphics" site.

-- james

[Lancer409]

i dont play games on my powerbook. it's made for work and internet browsing ... n ilife .. n what not ... i still believe pc's are superior for gaming as porting games to mac's seem .. well .. late and lackluster .. if a top of the line g5 cant run a ported game as well as my (now midrange) gaming pc ... i wont bother on a laptop ... i'm fine with the card in this pwoerbook .. and people who arent gaming hungry will find the card adequate for the imac ... consumers wont care and it'll save them money ..

now for gamers .... i dunno .. probly wouldnt suit your tastes ... but then again .. if a dual g5 powermac cant handle as well as ...

[DaBeav]

Apple charges $50 to swap out the 5200U for a 9600XT in the G5. The 9600 is a great mid-range card. Would have been nice to see it as an option in the iMac.

[turtle777]

Originally posted by DaBeav:
Apple charges $50 to swap out the 5200U for a 9600XT in the G5. The 9600 is a great mid-range card. Would have been nice to see it as an option in the iMac.

And an impossible option, too.

The heat of the 9600 could not have been absorbed in the current iMac design.

-t

[Simon]

Originally posted by turtle777:
And an impossible option, too. The heat of the 9600 could not have been absorbed in the current iMac design.

Numbers, links, proof? Or are you taking this from...

[Link]

Originally posted by Simon:
Numbers, links, proof? Or are you taking this from...

He whipped it out of his butt.

[Luca Rescigno]

- The 9600XT in the PowerMacs has only a heat sink, no fan.
- A lower-clocked 9600 Pro would run even cooler.
- All variants of the 9600 tend to be overclocking monsters (just ask PowerMacMan). You can easily get 50MHz extra out of it, without adding any extra cooling. So it will remain stable even at a high temperature, whether it's hot from the higher frequency or from the small iMac enclosure.
- The G5 processor almost certainly generates more heat than the graphics card.

The GeForce FX5200 is only slightly better than a Radeon 9200 Pro, which is in turn similar in performance to the Radeons 8500 and 9000, and the GeForce 3 and 4MX. These are old video cards, and all of them are about the same as the FX5200. Sure, the iMac should be able to run... uh... Medal Of Honor? UT2k4 maybe? A lot of Mac games are CPU bound anyway - upgrading from a GeForce 3 to a Radeon 9800 did almost nothing for me in UT2k4. Then again, in Call Of Duty, it gave me a huge improvement. So it may vary from game to game, with some CPU-bound games performing well, but for the most part it will not do very well.

A lot of people are saying that for "most people" the 5200 is "more than adequate." I would argue that no, it's not more than adequate... it's JUST adequate. For Panther and probably Tiger. After that... *shakes head*. If any new graphics technologies make it into 10.5 or 10.6, I'd be willing to bet my Radeon 9800, or any Radeon 9600 or 9700, would be fully supported, but the 5200 would not be.

[curtlivingston]

if you were to assume that apple chose this video card for the sake of cost and cooling, could it be possible that one of those mac accessory companies might make a replacement back for the imac?

one that is a little "wedged out" and with a grill where there is some gigantor of a graphics card built in, that plugs (complicatedly) into the mainboard. or one that includes the mainboard and gpu (with a rebate for the old one).

being user-installable could lead to this right?

[JustinD]

Originally posted by turtle777:
And an impossible option, too.

The heat of the 9600 could not have been absorbed in the current iMac design.

-t

Are you kidding? I already said this before - there are already THREE blowers in the iMac! All it would have taken was to adjust the path of one, or add a tiny fourth one. They're already using THREE different LoBos (edu model, 17" size, 20" size), what's a fourth when it would mean getting more customers?

[yen_lai]

Originally posted by jamesa:
I go to the Dell Store, I can go from an integrated graphics card to a 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro (which is pretty much the same as an XT) for $200. On the same page, I can go to a GeForce 5200 with 128MB of RAM, DVI out and TV out for $50.
-- james

then go.

in fact all you gameboys need to figure out something, apple is a company that sells products, if you a) like/need/desire said product and b) can afford said product, you purchase it, if not, no harm no foul.

i understand, the video card is old news, but you guys are acting like apple insulted your mother by including a 5200 instead of (fill-in-the-blank).

if the video card is holding you back from purchasing, so be it, don't buy the thing.

just stop the bitching.

i don't go to dell's support forums and bitch that i can't get their computer in aluminum or their mp3 players in pink blue or orange do i? no, i just move on and buy something i do like.

[Luca Rescigno]

A lot of the people complaining about the graphics (myself included) would probably never consider buying an iMac anyway. Just the idea of a completely non-upgradable computer is disturbing to me. We're arguing that for Apple's sake, they should include a better GPU, because it will not cost much more ($50 extra, tops), and it will drive sales. There probably aren't a huge number of people who are holding off buying an iMac solely because of the graphics card, but I bet there would be almost no one holding off if it had come with a 128 MB 9600 Pro or XT.

In other words, we aren't whining that it's not up to our own personal standards. An iMac in itself is just not the computer for me, regardless of specifications. I'm a tower kind of guy. What we are saying is that for the price points the iMac occupies, it is simply stupid to cripple the video card. If you're paying nearly two grand for a computer, you ought to get a quality video card. The FX5200 is appropriate for maybe the lowest-end model, at $1300, but the other two really should have better ones just because they cost a lot more.

Next thing you know, you'll be arguing that most people only use a very small portion of their hard drive, and therefore the low end should come with 20 GB. Yeah, it would still be large enough for a great deal of iMac buyers, but why bother crippling something with yesterday's tech when it costs nearly the same to use modern technology instead?

[jamesa]

Originally posted by yen_lai:
then go.

in fact all you gameboys need to figure out something, apple is a company that sells products, if you a) like/need/desire said product and b) can afford said product, you purchase it, if not, no harm no foul.

i understand, the video card is old news, but you guys are acting like apple insulted your mother by including a 5200 instead of (fill-in-the-blank).

if the video card is holding you back from purchasing, so be it, don't buy the thing.

just stop the bitching.

i don't go to dell's support forums and bitch that i can't get their computer in aluminum or their mp3 players in pink blue or orange do i? no, i just move on and buy something i do like.

sorry yen, it's highly unlikely we are going to stop bitching. We are at the moment taking position "don't buy the thing". But a lot of us want to, and there are no other OS X options.

If Apple want to lock us in to one hardware vendor with their OS, then at the very least they should provide us with options to suit our needs. We can't get hardware anywhere else.

I think even Apple recognise this, that's why there's all the feedback pages.

And, if you don't like the bitching threads, my advice to you is simply to steer clear of them.

-- james

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by Luca Rescigno:
A lot of the people complaining about the graphics (myself included) would probably never consider buying an iMac anyway.

I would buy an iMac today, if it had a 9600 Pro or better in it. I guess I'll wait for the 9600 XT 128 MB plus 2.2 GHz rev. B.

BTW, here is a new Motion review:

"...based on my experience you want a G5 (any model) with an ATI9600 Pro 128MB for decent performance while a Dual 2Ghz G5 with an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB will do very nicely indeed."

[tonyibook]

I used to own an iMac G4 700MHz but went over to using PCs. As soon as I saw the iMac G5 I placed an order for one.

With my old iMac I could play Alice, Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 Arena and Wipeout without any problems. I played these games at 1024x768 in 32 bit colour, using the built-in GeForce 2 MX graphics card.

The iMac G5 appears to have three times the processor power and a graphics card more than twice as powerful. Do modern games such as Doom 3 really require so much more processor power? Can you turn off features until they run smoothly?

[pantalaimon]

Originally posted by tonyibook:
I used to own an iMac G4 700MHz but went over to using PCs. As soon as I saw the iMac G5 I placed an order for one.

The iMac G5 appears to have three times the processor power and a graphics card more than twice as powerful. Do modern games such as Doom 3 really require so much more processor power? Can you turn off features until they run smoothly?

You can lower the resolution and turn off features so it will run smoothly, but really no-one knows yet how well Doom 3 will run yet on the G5 imac. I'm betting it will run pretty well with low - medium settings.

[iBorg]

Originally posted by jamesa:
sorry yen, it's highly unlikely we are going to stop bitching. We are at the moment taking position "don't buy the thing". But a lot of us want to, and there are no other OS X options.

If Apple want to lock us in to one hardware vendor with their OS, then at the very least they should provide us with options to suit our needs. We can't get hardware anywhere else.

I think even Apple recognise this, that's why there's all the feedback pages.

And, if you don't like the bitching threads, my advice to you is simply to steer clear of them.

-- james

Well said!



iBorg

[george68]

Originally posted by pantalaimon:
You can lower the resolution and turn off features so it will run smoothly, but really no-one knows yet how well Doom 3 will run yet on the G5 imac. I'm betting it will run pretty well with low - medium settings.

AhAHHAhHahAhAhHahAHHAhahAHHHahahA

Oh yeah, as long as 'pretty well' means 10-25fps.

- Ca$h

[jamesa]

Originally posted by iBorg:
Well said!



iBorg

thx

-- j

[Don Pickett]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
I would buy an iMac today, if it had a 9600 Pro or better in it. I guess I'll wait for the 9600 XT 128 MB plus 2.2 GHz rev. B.

BTW, here is a new Motion review:

"...based on my experience you want a G5 (any model) with an ATI9600 Pro 128MB for decent performance while a Dual 2Ghz G5 with an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB will do very nicely indeed."

Like all of the arguing in these threads, this quote is entirely without data. There are no tests, no benchmarks, nothing to back up the writer's claim.I have posted links to threads showing Motion running just fine on machines with 5200s.

Bottom line: people just like to complain.

[MrForgetable]

Originally posted by george68:
AhAHHAhHahAhAhHahAHHAhahAHHHahahA

Oh yeah, as long as 'pretty well' means 10-25fps.

- Ca$h

yep, 25 is fine with me