iMac update aimed at gamers?
The iMac recently got a speed bump, pushing the Intel Core 2 Duo processor to 3.06 GHz and the addition of Nvidia GeForce 8800 GS graphics. As a gamer it’s hard to take the iMac seriously, and mean lets face it, the iMac is made of mobile grade parts.
The real question is how much further behind is the iMac compared to it’s desktop counterpart? After some research I found an excellent benchmark pitting the Mac Pro sporting a Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT against the new iMac.
I was surprised to find the 8800 GTS trailed close behind the dedicated graphics card 8800 GT, Nvidia did a good job closing the gap between mobile and desktop performance.
The benchmarks speak volumes, to summarize the results, the new iMac nearly doubled the performance for gaming compared to the previous iMac which has ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro for graphics.
The only benchmark the 8800 GTS lost handily to the 2600 Pro was a non-gaming benchmark iMaginator 4. It seems rather clear Apple placed OpenGL performance higher in priority than Core Image, even to the extent that Core Image performance actually suffers by going with the 8800 GTS.
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