Thanks a lot for your input. Hearing some hands on account is great info before getting the thing. Are you planning to play ESO on it as well?FYI....I went hands-on with this machine running both benchmarks and games and it works fantastic at 1440p in ultra (not ESO but gaming equivalents I could access), and about 30-34 FPS in 5k mode.
Personally, I'd use it in 1440 because the scaling is remarkably good and doesn't require hardly any cycles to accomplish.
I think the Ars article pretty much got it exactly right. Normal caveats apply...this is the perfect machine for a Mac user who wants to play games in addition to all the things they normally do on their Mac. It is not the most robust or cost effective gaming rig one could get by a country mile...but then no one is saying it is.
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Personally, I'd use it in 1440 because the scaling is remarkably good and doesn't require hardly any cycles to accomplish.
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WyndStryke wrote: »...
Personally, I'd use it in 1440 because the scaling is remarkably good and doesn't require hardly any cycles to accomplish.
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That would be dropping it down to a 3.6MP display right? In terms of pixel count, less than half of a 4K display and a quarter of the 5K display. IMO that just demonstrates that the GPU they picked is underpowered compared to the display (for the purposes of games playing or 3d rendering).
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Actually...there are no current rigs that I am aware of that can get to 60 FPS at 5k without an SLI configuration...which is just never going to happen in an iMac. In short, the card they chose is quite robust, but you'd need two of them to game like butter at 5k and 60fps, whether that's in an iMac or an Alienware. ...
WyndStryke wrote: »...
Actually...there are no current rigs that I am aware of that can get to 60 FPS at 5k without an SLI configuration...which is just never going to happen in an iMac. In short, the card they chose is quite robust, but you'd need two of them to game like butter at 5k and 60fps, whether that's in an iMac or an Alienware. ...
Well, yes, 60fps on 5k is going to be out of reach, but what I don't understand is why they didn't base this machine on the 290X desktop version (or the 295X2 for that matter) which would have performed better than the mobile version, and are reasonably priced. Or the most recent nVidia GPUs which are also good performers (albeit on the expensive side).
I am considering getting one. They are simply mouth watering. But it would be quite a disappointment if ESO didn't run on ultra-high.
EDIT: Planning to use the native OSX client.
Currently I am playing on a late 2009 iMac and I can run it only at lowest quality.
- ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
- 12 GB RAM
- 2.8 Ghz Intel Core i7 (Quad Core)
henrycupcakerwb17_ESO wrote: »the 780M 4GB is good enough for running the game on 2560 x1600 at all ULTRA setting ( everything like sub sampling quality / texture quality / maximum particle system / Anti aliasing ) tho there will be some crashing issue because the OS X client is still running at 32 bit infrastructure )