First thing is first, we have to dispel the “Apple Tax”. Let’s look at the 3 systems below. System 1 (iMac i9) is the reference Mac in this article. This is the high-end model with the Core i9. Of note, the machine at this price has only 8GB of RAM. I upgraded to 24GB. System 2 is the Ryzen 1600X Windows PC is the reference PC (and my personal gaming rig) and System 3 is the system as I parted it out to create a PC version of an iMac per the specs. The PC is obviously in a case and any of the parts can be swapped out in case of damage or ability to upgrade. These are luxuries that the iMac doesn’t have. The only user replaceable part is the RAM. If you venture inside the chassis, the HDD is easily removed and upgraded. The CPU (and there are really not much to upgrade to in my case) and the SSD are very difficult to upgraded/change.
Of note here is that the monitor in the iMac is a 5k monitor which most people will not buy, but I put it here so there is a some soft of equivalency between the similar equipped PC and the iMac to remove the “Apple Tax” argument. Now, I think most would opt for a similar monitor to what I have, which is a 144Hz setup. That would reduce the cost of the “Windows” i9 similar setup to $1600 rather than $2600. Again, you can get much more gaming power for less money and that’s not what I am here to compare. I am here to show that the iMac is not horribly priced compared to similarly priced PC but also my gaming desktop is a mere $900 including the monitor and how it stands up against the iMac.
So, at 1080p [the most common gaming resolution], this is what I found when comparing System 1 (iMac) vs System 2 (Gaming PC).
From this, I can summarize that the iMac can deliver 60fps on HIGH and even ULTRA but no higher due to the simple fact that the monitor is locked at 60Hz. Some of these 60fps runs were not pushing the video card to 100% utilization. Here are some quick stats on the monitors and cards used in this comparison. I used my RX 570 both in stock and an OC configuration using MSi Afterburner.
I decided that since I cannot go higher than 60fps, what if I try 1440p gaming on the iMac and see if it can handle fps at 1440p in most instances. Here are the results:
Here you can see that the iMac ran both of these titles at 60fps on 1440p at HIGH settings. The bottom result for Forza had 23 accounts of stuttering but did achieve 60 fps; however the top result accounted for 0 stutters after I changed one setting: MSAA from 2x to OFF. I have no idea how that affected what I saw but it affected the scores.
The i9 iMac, not ideal for gaming because gamers don’t really covet 5K gaming and those who want 4k gaming are going to need a very strong video card. I’d recommend a 2080Ti for that. It is expensive, though. The next series of shots are going to be my data collected for this blog post. There will be no real commentary on them. I believe the numbers speak for themselves.
SYSTEM 1 (iMac 1080p)
Forza Horizon 4 (Top is High, Bottom is Ultra)
Gears of War 5
Wolfenstein Youngblood, Riverside (Top is High, Bottom is Ultra)
Wolfenstein Youngblood, LabX (Top is High, Bottom is Ultra)
Heaven Benchmark
Superposition (Top is Medium, Bottom is High)
SYSTEM 2 (PC Stock GPU)
Forza Horizon 4 (Top is High, Bottom is Ultra)
Gears of War 5 (High)|
Wolfenstein Youngblood, Riverside (High) [Ultra wold not work because my RX 570 is 4GB and not 8GB VRAM]
Wolfenstein Youngblood, LabX (High) [Ultra wold not work because my RX 570 is 4GB and not 8GB VRAM]
Heaven Benchmark
Superposition Medium
Superposition High
SYSTEM 2 (Overclocked GPU)
Forza Horizon 4 (Top is High, Bottom is Ultra)
Gears of War 5
|
Wolfenstein Youngblood, Riverside (High) [Ultra wold not work because my RX 570 is 4GB and not 8GB VRAM]
Wolfenstein Youngblood, LabX (High) [Ultra wold not work because my RX 570 is 4GB and not 8GB VRAM]
Heaven Benchmark
Superposition (Medium)
|
Superposition (High)
System 1 (iMac 1440p)
Forza Horizon 4 (with MSAA OFF)
With MSAA at 2x
Gears of War 5
Wolfenstein Youngblood [High] (Top is Riverside, Bottom is LabX)
Wolfenstein Youngblood [Ultra] (Top is Riverside, Bottom is LabX)
