If you hate 27″ screens and wanted to get the strongest video card Apple offers in the 21.5″ model, this is probably the machine you went for (or… the machine you’re thinking of getting).
In any case, the Radeon HD 5670 offered in the iMac is actually an ATI Mobility 5730m. Higher model number, but mobile chips are clocked a little lower, so you’ve got roughly the power of a desktop 5670. If you’re wondering why Apple goes with mobility GPU’s, they’ve got pretty good reasons:
- Mobility chips use a lot less power. It’s tough to find a desktop machine that competes with the iMac’s power consumption. This makes the tree-huggers happy, as well as the people with high electric bills. Incidentally, it also means Apple can go a little less crazy on the power supply in the iMac. Everybody wins.
- Mobility chips generate less heat. Related to the power thing above. Less heat means the fans don’t need to sound like jet engines. Apple doesn’t have to worry about people burning their hands on the aluminum. Your air-conditioning doesn’t have to work as hard in the summer. Good plusses here.
- Mobility chips tend to go on small circuit boards. Since these are the things you find in laptops, they’re smaller. There’s a lot packed into the guts of an iMac so this helps immensely.
Moving on, because this is a mid-range card and I’m used to high-end cards, I was curious to see how this would fare in games. I ran it through World of Warcraft (on the Mac side), and through Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2 in Windows through BootCamp.
Here are the results:
You’ll notice 2 resolutions were used, adjusting the Quality Slider in WoW for different test points. This was done in Dalaran in the wee hours of the morning (few people on) in a location where the frame rates were typically low. Framerates differ massively throughout Dalaran, and I wanted consistent numbers that weren’t very optimistic.
To give a playability perspective, I hopped into a battleground (Alterac Valley), so that I could see if things felt smooth with 40 players.
The “Good” quality setting in AV was absolutely perfect. “High” was very strong too, although there were a couple moments where it wasn’t 100% smooth (but only for a moment). I’d recommend starting off at “Good” quality, and going to High/Ultra if you really feel you’re missing out. You can always back down again if you find things get spiky at inopportunte times.
In terms of Windowed mode, the game isn’t handled quite as well (even though the FPS dictates it’s about the same). Spinning in circles, it’s not 100% smooth all the time. It’s still perfectly playable, and many people probably won’t even notice the minor spikes (which look like a single dropped frame).
Regardless, in the case of WoW, I’d recommend playing at full screen, full resolution, and medium to high settings. It looks great. Use VSync though, or you will get tearing during the times/locations when the framerate skyrockets above 100fps.
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Next up is Dragon Age: Origins (bootcamp/windows 7). You’ll notice a couple things: continue reading…
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