[mark34]

All this talk about how weak the graphics card is in the G5 iMac has me a bit concerned. I am not a power user. I do not game on the machine...use XBox for that purpose. I use all of the iLife applications heavily...edit and burn home movies, lots and lots of pictures and MP3's. I may try Final Cut Pro at some point. Beyond that I primarily use Safari and Windows programs (Excel, Word, Powerpoint). View quicktime trailers.

Based on what I have read, I will probably be OK. Will that OK'ness extend to Tiger?

Thanks for your feedback. I could go with a PowerMac, but I know I would then want to buy an Apple display, but I am trying to keep myself from over buying for my needs.

Thanks,
Mark

[Grrr]

You can't be serious??

[Luca Rescigno]

The FX5200 sucks at anything that requires a lot of graphics horsepower. Lucky for you, you're not doing anything that really strains the graphics card. The only things that would really benefit from a faster card would be games and Motion.

[Finrock]

The 5200 is more than adequate for the majority of iMac users including myself. I am a serious poweruser and have never run into a situation where the 5200 has let me down. Of course, I don't play games, so that is not a consideration for me.

[turtle777]

Originally posted by mark34:
Based on what I have read, I will probably be OK. Will that OK'ness extend to Tiger?

You'll be fine. Don't worry, don't believe the hype !

-t

[UnixMac]

The 5200 is nothing to scoff at. It can hold it's own with the top of the line cards of only 2 years ago... that basically means it can handle just about all but the highest GPU apps.. Motion, Maya, Halo etc... My mom's iMac 1.6 is very fast and brisk on all iapps and safari.

Go for it!

[mark34]

Thanks for all of your input.

Grrrr, what's your point?

[UnixMac]

Originally posted by mark34:
Thanks for all of your input.

Grrrr, what's your point?

I don't think he had one.

[macaddict0001]

Originally posted by mark34:
Thanks for all of your input.

Grrrr, what's your point?

"you will attract more flies with honey than you will with vineger"
on the other hand who wants to attract flies

[turtle777]

Originally posted by macaddict0001:
"you will attract more flies with sh!t than you will with honey"

Fixinated.

-t

[the_glassman]

Originally posted by UnixMac:
The 5200 is nothing to scoff at. It can hold it's own with the top of the line cards of only 2 years ago.

It can't even hold it own against a 3 year old GF 3 Ti.

[Luca Rescigno]

Yeah, the 5200 is pretty much a slightly updated GeForce 4MX. In most tests, it's slower than the GeForce 3 or Radeon 8500/9000 Pro.

Mind you, that's fine if you're using iLife and that sort of thing, but it's not a very powerful card, so don't assume you'll be getting something that will be able to play any games that game out later than 2002.

[Grrr]

Originally posted by UnixMac:
I don't think he had one.

Sure I do. So i'll spell it out. If far older macs with relatively inferior specs can handle iLife, Safari and what not, then why on earth should a G5 iMac have a problem with these apps? In short, a G5 iMac will handle it no sweat at all. Thats not obvious?

[brapper]

Originally posted by Grrr:
Sure I do. So i'll spell it out. If far older macs with relatively inferior specs can handle iLife, Safari and what not, then why on earth should a G5 iMac have a problem with these apps? In short, a G5 iMac will handle it no sweat at all. Thats not obvious?

see just type that the first time..

[macaddict0001]

Originally posted by Luca Rescigno:
Yeah, the 5200 is pretty much a slightly updated GeForce 4MX. In most tests, it's slower than the GeForce 3 or Radeon 8500/9000 Pro.

Mind you, that's fine if you're using iLife and that sort of thing, but it's not a very powerful card, so don't assume you'll be getting something that will be able to play any games that game out later than 2002.

actually I'd take it over a geforce 3 even though in pure clock speed its only a bit faster it has many advanced features not found on the geforce

[mark34]

Grrr: Your brilliance would shine through a little better if you didn't act like a complete creton.

Message boards are funny...people have know idea who they are talking to with their "I am iMac board God" attitudes. I asked a simple, perhaps obvious question, to a group of folks likely to have a firm opinion on the topic. I am used to buying on the high end in most gadget product groups. I am pretty convinced that the G5 iMac is a perfect fit for the particular application I am addressing, but I get anxious about buying anything but the most highly spec'ed product. It has been helpful to read the insights of most, who seemed to grasp what I was asking and why I might ask such a question.

Put down your mouse once in a while and take a walk out in the world. Consider how civilized humans interact and take a wild ride and try to act the same way in writing.

[toti]

Well... here are my first impressions, and my 2�. ( If you don't like my opinion, take the 2� and buy some comfort )

I got my 20" today. ( BTO, 1GB RAM, BlueTooth, AirPort Extreme )

The short version: Awesome.

The long version: I use my computer for a hoard of stuff:

Image processing and production in: Corel Suite ( Corel Draw, Photo Paint, Corel Trace ), Photoshop Elements, iPhoto, PhotoStudio, Bryce, ToonBoom Studio

Video Work in: iVeZeen, iStopMotion, iMovie, Final Cut Express, iDVD

Music Work in: Reason 2.5, Cubase SE, Garage Band, SoundStudio, SoundHack, Audacity, Delta Live, iTunes

Programming in: XCode, RealBasic5.5, FileMaker7

Games: some FPS ( StarWars JA/JO, UT2k3/4 ), SecondLife

It has not let me down yet

I think this one will last for quite some time before I'll start thinking about upgrades ( and usually I do that once-twice a year - or more often )

*peering into crystal ball* I see an iMac... it's the year 2007.. oh, it's just your old one.

[macaddict0001]

yeah and the imac will only get better when tiger is released because it will be fully optimized for the g5.

[popstand]

Hey there,
unless you need it right away, you might want to wait a few months. Just like buying a new car, it's not always a great idea to buy the first iteration of any computer model (see: 15" powerbook white spots). My guess would be that the graphics card will be one of the first changes that Apple makes, along with a price drop.

[YYZ]

mark, I have nothing bad to say about my 20" G5. FCE flies, as do all the iLife programs. Very quiet, a beautiful screen, fantastic form. Don't wait for the future, buy it now, enjoy it now.

[UnixMac]

Sitting on my mom's (I got it for her to replace an old G4 400) new iMac G5 17" and I'm loving it.. This thing is fast and cool looking. Very functional, and truely the best home PC (generically speaking) out there.

I loaded it up with a bunch of stuff, even OpenGL stuff like www.giofx.net and it trucked along in near silence.

[P]

Originally posted by Luca Rescigno:
Yeah, the 5200 is pretty much a slightly updated GeForce 4MX. In most tests, it's slower than the GeForce 3 or Radeon 8500/9000 Pro.

No, it's not. They're not even remortely related. I know you don't like this board, but get your facts straight.

The Geforce4 MX (NV17) was a slightly updated Geforce2 MX (NV15) , but the 5200 (NV34) is based on the same GPU as the 5600-series of chips (NV31) (The 5800/5900, NV30 is the same, but with 4x2 pipelines instead of 2x2. The 5700, NV36, is similar to NV31). The difference is that the 5200 has only one chip (the main GPU) instead of two for the other 5-series chips, where the other chip is the one that saves memory bandwidth.

The tests where the plain 5200 is beaten by the Geforce3 are ones that don't use the shaders, rely heavily on memory bandwidth and don't use any FSAA. However the 5200 Ultra, which the iMac G5 uses, has 3 times the memory bandwidth compared to the plain 5200. Memory bandwidth is 10.4 GB/s compared to 8 GB/s for the best GF3, the Ti 500. The crippling of the 5200(U) is that the Z-buffer compression is gone (and the texture/color compression, but that's only relevant for FSAA, and the GF3 doesn't have it anyway) so that bandwidth can't be used efficiently. Add to this that nVidia's first drivers for the 5200 sucked. I can theoretically see a situation where the GF3 Ti 500 could be faster than a 5200U, but it's not the average setup - not even near it - and I can set up a test where the 5200U crushes the GF3.

The only relationship between the 5200(U) and the Geforce2 class of GPUs is that neither has Z-buffer compression. That's a bit like saying that a Trabant and Ferrari are basically the same thing because neither has wings.

[pliny]

I use a 5 year old iMac DV at 400 mhz with 8mb of video memory to run some of the iLife apps, Safari, Word, InDesign, some other photo stuff, watch some videos, etc, i can't list them all it is early.

I suspect the iMac G5 with specs far far far far superior to this machine in EVERY WAY is a bit more than just "fine" for these applications, not to mention other things that will come out.

It is a very good machine at a good price and with the new work in Tiger I think it will only get better.

[Mike Pither]

Originally posted by pliny:
I use a 5 year old iMac DV at 400 mhz with 8mb of video memory to run some of the iLife apps, Safari, Word, InDesign, some other photo stuff, watch some videos, etc, i can't list them all it is early.

I suspect the iMac G5 with specs far far far far superior to this machine in EVERY WAY is a bit more than just "fine" for these applications, not to mention other things that will come out.

It is a very good machine at a good price and with the new work in Tiger I think it will only get better.

I agree, my old iMac 400dvse has no problem with any of these programmes and nor with microsoft office. It's not blindingly fast but I have never sat there and said "my god this computer is slow"

[diehlr]

Originally posted by UnixMac:
The 5200 is nothing to scoff at. It can hold it's own with the top of the line cards of only 2 years ago... that basically means it can handle just about all but the highest GPU apps.. Motion, Maya, Halo etc... My mom's iMac 1.6 is very fast and brisk on all iapps and safari.

The top of the line graphics card 2 years ago was the 9700 Pro. The 5200 is about a factor of 3 slower than a 9700 Pro. Please do not make the claim that the 5200 was top of the line 2 years ago.

[macintologist]

Originally posted by Luca Rescigno:
Yeah, the 5200 is pretty much a slightly updated GeForce 4MX. In most tests, it's slower than the GeForce 3 or Radeon 8500/9000 Pro.

Mind you, that's fine if you're using iLife and that sort of thing, but it's not a very powerful card, so don't assume you'll be getting something that will be able to play any games that game out later than 2002.

Holy fcsk!! I didn't realize it was THAT slow! I thought it was decent and all the people here were a bunch of whiners! Damn you Apple!!!

[macaddict0001]

Originally posted by macintologist:
Holy fcsk!! I didn't realize it was THAT slow! I thought it was decent and all the people here were a bunch of whiners! Damn you Apple!!!

Actually alot of people are confusing the 5200 with the 5200 ultra the ultra is about twice as fast.

[Luca Rescigno]

Heh. Well, I am sorry for bringing it up again. I've kind of stopped caring. I mean, how many people game on a Mac? In fact, I saw some benchmarks run by Other World Computing that show that having a faster graphics card really doesn't help for games on a Mac anyway.

So yeah, the FX5200 (especially the Ultra, which should be almost as good as a 9600 Pro) should be just fine. And the iMac won't be great for anything beyond occasional gaming, not because of the integrated graphics, but because it's a Mac. It'll make up for that one shortcoming in all the other areas, like ease of use and software quality.

I'd rather see it get 128 MB of VRAM though. Gaming aside, that really does help with things like Expos�.

[UnixMac]

Originally posted by diehlr:
The top of the line graphics card 2 years ago was the 9700 Pro. The 5200 is about a factor of 3 slower than a 9700 Pro. Please do not make the claim that the 5200 was top of the line 2 years ago.

My mistake, I confused the Nv30 based 5800 with much lower Nv34 based 5200... 8 vs 4 texture units, and 4 vs 2 pixel pipelines make for a big mistake on my behalf.

I don't even know if the 5800 was available on Mac.

[diehlr]

Originally posted by Luca Rescigno:
I mean, how many people game on a Mac? In fact, I saw some benchmarks run by Other World Computing that show that having a faster graphics card really doesn't help for games on a Mac anyway.

Problem is, they are advertising the iMac G5's video as "blistering" and good for playing games. Look at the iMac page on Apple's web site.

[toti]

Why don't you try it out before you start whining like a bunch of old ladies ( no offence to the old ladies that might be reading this forum )

I have a 20" iMac with 1GB RAM. I started UT2K4 in 1600x1050, all display options set to highest, and it simply is awesome. It does NOT play jerky ( I mostly play single player against bots, onslaught, last man standing ) and is simply a delight to play.

My 1.25GHz G4 PowerBook never had a chance in full screen full resolution without setting all display options to "medium".

The 5200U is working beautifully to my opinion. It may not be a hard-core players choice, but it IS the casual players choice. It works, and it works well.

[UnixMac]

The sad thing is that it would have probably cost Apple no more than $25-50 more per unit to use Nv30 or better GPU... but anyway, it's really not bad from a usability standpoint.

[discotronic]

For gaming I have found my iMac 1.8GHz to do just fine. Here are some games that I have played or tried with no problems:

Homeworld 2 all settings to high 1400X900 resolution
Call of Duty (can't remember what settings I used)
Battlefield 1942 all settings to high 1024X768 resolution
UT2004 all settings to high 1024X768 resolution
Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy all settings to high 1024X768 resolution
Halo (can't remember what settings I used)
Aliens vs. Predator 2 all settings to high

While the iMac isn't the ultimate gaming rig it still does just fine for someone like me. I like to play games but I don't expect too much from an iMac in that area to begin with. I do expect to be able to play games decently and that is exactly what I get. I was actually surprised when I played Battlefield 1942. I couldn't get the video settings right on my old G4 17" 1.25GHz iMac. I hated the way that it played so I just gave up on it. Now it play perfect.

The only way to know if the iMac is right for you is to check it out.

[Luca Rescigno]

Actually toti, you just proved my point. Your PowerBook's graphics chipset is probably more powerful than the one in your iMac, or at least equal to it. And hell, even with a Radeon 9800 and a 1.33 GHz G4, UT2k4 is pretty crappy and I had to turn the settings down. My point is that all these Mac games are almost completely CPU bound, and don't really use the graphics card at all. That's why the iMac does so well - it may have so-so graphics, but the CPU is fast, and that's all that matters.

[mproud]

You know what? Everybody shut up! I have a 400 MHz G4 with a 16 MB card... don't make me look so bad!

[macaddict0001]

there not making you look bad on purpose. My second newest machine has a 1 meg graphics card(I think)

[toti]

Bleh..

My first ( my own ) machine had 1 kilobyte of RAM in total, and shared 704 bytes of that to the display.

I still think its the coolest computer I ever had

( Sinclair ZX81 )

[Luca Rescigno]

Well, I only have 2 MB of VRAM right now in my computer. Really.

I built a PC that has 1 GB of RAM, a 200 GB hard drive, a 2.0 GHz Athlon 64 3000+, and the video card I ordered was dead when I got it. I'm waiting for my replacement to ship out, and in the meantime I'm borrowing a friend's 2 MB Matrox PCI video card.

It would be nice to have at least 4 MB of VRAM so I can do millions of colors instead of thousands!

[Link]

How is UT2004 crappy on anything less than a 6800 or 9800? I run it on my dual 800/gf4mx just fine.. and at 1600x1024 too!

The real killer is how much ram you have, honestly. With >512, I didn't see any frame drops AT ALL.

I doubt it averaged any higher than 30fps, but I wasn't really expecting much more from a videocard that old. Radeon 9800.. here I come!

[hyperb0le]

I have a similar situation. My sister will be getting a mac for Christmas. She really digs the look of the iMac, but I wanted to double-check about the video card. She is not a heavy gamer at all. She plays the Sims and will play the Sims 2 when it comes out for OS X. Will the 5200 be sufficient for these games? I assume there won't be a problem with the Sims, and the Sims 2 can be a bit slow. As long as it doesn't interfere with playing the game, slower framerates are acceptable. Am I wrong in assuming that the 5200 will be able to handle the Sims 1 & 2 without slowing to an absolute crawl?

[Luca Rescigno]

Originally posted by Link:
I doubt it averaged any higher than 30fps, but I wasn't really expecting much more from a videocard that old. Radeon 9800.. here I come!

Disappointment city, here comes Link!

Really, even though the Radeon 9800 is a tremendous improvement over the GeForce 4MX, you will not see the huge performance gain you're expecting. I have compared Mac versions of the GeForce 3, Radeon 8500, and Radeon 9800, and I have to say there's not much difference among them. The best route would probably be the GeForce 4 Titanium anyway, because nVidia cards have a much better OpenGL implementation. ATI beats nVidia on Direct3D, but there are no Mac games that use Direct3D.

Get the 4Ti or nothing at all. There's no point in "upgrading" to anything else. Your decent performance is probably thanks to your dual processors... UT2k4 apparently likes them, moving all sound processing over to one processor while the other handles graphics.

[pliny]

Originally posted by hyperb0le:
I have a similar situation. My sister will be getting a mac for Christmas. She really digs the look of the iMac, but I wanted to double-check about the video card. She is not a heavy gamer at all. She plays the Sims and will play the Sims 2 when it comes out for OS X. Will the 5200 be sufficient for these games? I assume there won't be a problem with the Sims, and the Sims 2 can be a bit slow. As long as it doesn't interfere with playing the game, slower framerates are acceptable. Am I wrong in assuming that the 5200 will be able to handle the Sims 1 & 2 without slowing to an absolute crawl?

did you see discotronic's post above?

Originally posted by discotronic:
For gaming I have found my iMac 1.8GHz to do just fine. Here are some games that I have played or tried with no problems:

Homeworld 2 all settings to high 1400X900 resolution
Call of Duty (can't remember what settings I used)
Battlefield 1942 all settings to high 1024X768 resolution
UT2004 all settings to high 1024X768 resolution
Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy all settings to high 1024X768 resolution
Halo (can't remember what settings I used)
Aliens vs. Predator 2 all settings to high

[Grrr]

Originally posted by mark34:
Grrr: Your brilliance would shine through a little better if you didn't act like a complete creton.

LOL! Steady on with the attitude. You hark on about how I and others should act, then make an ass of yourself in the process
If G5 iMac graphics were not suitable for the apps you mentioned, there would be a complete uproar, and deservedly so. You are asking about pretty basic apps that are bone stock on any Mac. It's a brand spanking new model of G5 Mac, of course it can handle these apps, and then some! How could it not??

PS, The spell check feature is handy.. "cretIn"

[P]

Originally posted by hyperb0le:
I have a similar situation. My sister will be getting a mac for Christmas. She really digs the look of the iMac, but I wanted to double-check about the video card. She is not a heavy gamer at all. She plays the Sims and will play the Sims 2 when it comes out for OS X. Will the 5200 be sufficient for these games? I assume there won't be a problem with the Sims, and the Sims 2 can be a bit slow. As long as it doesn't interfere with playing the game, slower framerates are acceptable. Am I wrong in assuming that the 5200 will be able to handle the Sims 1 & 2 without slowing to an absolute crawl?

Sims 1 should run on any shipping Mac. In fact, I belive it runs fairly well on my old iMac DV.

Sims 2 should run OK on the new iMac G5. Exactly how well is hard to say without seeing the actual port, but if the minimum is a 1 GHz G4 w/ Geforce2 MX, a 1.8 GHz G5 w/ Geforce FX 5200U should have no problems, especially since Sims 2 actually uses those fancy shaders.

[cla]

Originally posted by pliny:
I use a 5 year old iMac DV at 400 mhz with 8mb of video memory /.../
I suspect the iMac G5 with specs far far far far superior to this machine in EVERY WAY

Well let's just hope so - that DV is exactly what I'm upgrading from.. :>

P, you mentioned that "nVidia's first drivers for the 5200 sucked". Windows drivers always used to be one nuance sharper than their Mac counterparts. What's the status on this today?

[P]

Originally posted by cla:
Well let's just hope so - that DV is exactly what I'm upgrading from.. :>

P, you mentioned that "nVidia's first drivers for the 5200 sucked". Windows drivers always used to be one nuance sharper than their Mac counterparts. What's the status on this today?

The PC drivers improved noticeably - they often do. When the 5200s are retested with new drivers, performance is better in many cases. (The 2x2 pipeline design is a problem in games that try to apply only 1 texture per pixel - in that case, only half the rendering capacity is used. The trick is to identify this situation correctly, so the 2x2 pipelines can be used as 4x1 pipelines - when that happens, performance doubles.) As for the Mac drivers, it's hard to say as they're never updated without the entire OpenGL stack (and the OS, most often) being updated. 10.3.6 fixed a lot of bugs including two very serious ones that ruined performance, but now I have problems with UT2004 (see separate thread in the Games forum). Performance is fine when it works, though - all current games work, and games that are a little older (like Max Payne) run well at the maximum 1440*900.

Also, with lots of iMacs being sold, improving the drivers is a major priority for Apple - witness the fact that 10.3.7 is already in development, with new nVidia drivers included.

[nJm]

Originally posted by P:
Sims 1 should run on any shipping Mac. In fact, I belive it runs fairly well on my old iMac DV.

Sims 2 should run OK on the new iMac G5. Exactly how well is hard to say without seeing the actual port, but if the minimum is a 1 GHz G4 w/ Geforce2 MX, a 1.8 GHz G5 w/ Geforce FX 5200U should have no problems, especially since Sims 2 actually uses those fancy shaders.

I don't know if it is relevant for the Mac version, but Sims2 is running quite ok at 800x600 (all details on high) on our PIII 500 with 384mb ram and a 64mb ATi Radeon 9000 Pro. I believe the minimum requirements for PCs are a PIII 800 for the Sims2...

[Thraxes]

Actually Sims2 like Sim City 4 is very CPU and Memory bound. The graphics can be turned up and down by large degrees which speeds up performance with a lot of objects (that Mansion that you build with the money cheat will bring any machine to its knees ). But when playing normally the size of your family and how many other people are roaming through your house will have the most impact.

I would say that playing this game on anything less than a G5 with 1GB of RAM is asking for some major jerkiness. The graphics aren't that demanding unless you have a Mansion that would put Bill Gates to shame.

I run Sims2 on my Athlon 2200* machine with 1GB RAM and a 9600Pro card. Except on my cheated Mansion it runs very well indeed.