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rasmits
2007-03-03, 21:43
Would the GMA 950 in the low end iMac be more powerful than the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra (8X AGP) from the original iMac G5?
Windowsrookie
2007-03-03, 22:46
Would the GMA 950 in the low end iMac be more powerful than the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra (8X AGP) from the original iMac G5?

Yes. But both suck. :p
rasmits
2007-03-04, 04:16
Well yeah, obviously. Someone I know wants to replace their iMac G5 with the $899 iMac, but likes to play the Sims. I wasn't sure if the GMA would be a step-up or down. The iMac G5 is super slow at the Sims, and makes a lot of very annoying graphical glitches.
chucker
2007-03-04, 04:43
I couldn't find any results for the C2D GMA 950 iMac. However, I could find some for the iMac G5 1.8 Rev A (which is probably roughly your pal's old machine), and some for the C1D 2 GHz MacBook (which, graphics-wise, shouldn't be far away from the current C2D GMA 950 iMac).

Let's see:

MacInTouch Reader ( http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/benchmarking/topic4047.html )
Here the results from my iMac G5 1.8 Rav A
CINEBENCH 9.5
Tester : thoma
Processor : iMac G5 Rev. A
MHz : 1.80
Number of CPUs : 1
Operating System : 10.4.6
Graphics Card : GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
Resolution : 1440 x 900
Color Depth : 32-Bit Farbe
Rendering (Single CPU): 248 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): --- CB-CPU
Shading (CINEMA 4D) : 265 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 881 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 1637 CB-GFX
OpenGL Speedup: 6.18

vs.

13" MacBook ( http://www.macintouch.com/specialreports/perfpack02/ )
Rendering: 306
Multi-CPU
Rendering 550
Shading 354
OpenGL
Software 1205
OpenGL
Hardware 1076

So, the CPU is slightly (15.5%) faster in single mode, and over twice as fast (121.8%) with both cores.

Shading is significantly faster (33.6%). If you add software lighting, the difference is even more significant (36.8%), but in hardware lighting, the GMA easily falls short by 34.3%).

This says nothing about capabilities, of course. Even thought the GMA is certainly slower, it may have more of the newer features (such as pixel shaders) to make up for this.

It might be worth waiting for late spring, though, when Apple will likely replace the 950 with an X3000, boost the FSB from 667 to 800 MHz, and so on. Should make for a more worthy replacement of your friend's computer.
Windowsrookie
2007-03-04, 10:17
I have the 17" C2D iMac with the X1600. It really is worth the prce.
rasmits
2007-03-04, 16:15
Ahh, thank you. The GMA isn't as bad as I thought, but I'll tell him to wait until Spring.
Graphguy
2007-03-04, 17:48
Cinebench might not be the best benchmark for game-performance :)

Even though GMA950 sucks, it's slightly faster than the 5200. It gets 1280 points in 3dmark 03, where the 5200 gets 1100. It should also be better for watching HD-movies, since it's newer and optimized for it. You can read some more here, theyre THE best site for mobile graphics:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Grafic-Cards.130.0.html-

And you might want to wait a bit. The next graphics card from Intel is the 965, and it's coming later this year. Shouldn't be too long, before it finds itself in lowend notebooks and Imacs.
Luca
2007-03-05, 00:13
They suck equally badly. The GMA will do worse in a few areas thanks to the choked memory bandwidth. But the much faster processor in the Intel iMac (not to mention the ability to boot into Windows for games) will easily make up for what disadvantages the GMA might have, if any.

This has been debated over and over and it's honestly really hard to compare the two. The GMA's shared memory is a major drawback, but how much do most benchmarks reflect that? How much does it affect most games? The GMA is also newer... does it matter? Besides, with one computer shipping with a faster processor that is ALSO on a totally different architecture, it's hard to compare. Comparing equal Windows boxes, one with a 5200 and one with a GMA, may shed some light, but even then you're dealing with Windows drivers, not Mac drivers, so again it's not quite perfect.
Kraetos
2007-03-05, 00:54
Well yeah, obviously. Someone I know wants to replace their iMac G5 with the $899 iMac, but likes to play the Sims. I wasn't sure if the GMA would be a step-up or down. The iMac G5 is super slow at the Sims, and makes a lot of very annoying graphical glitches.

The ORIGINAL Sims?

Should run fine on the new MacBooks. I remember playing the Sims on my clamshell. Which had an ATI Rage Mobility. With a whopping 4 MB VRAM and 160 MB Main RAM.

The Sims 2? That might be a bit of a rough ride. On both machines.
rasmits
2007-03-05, 01:10
Sims 2, yeah.
Kraetos
2007-03-05, 01:18
Sims 2, yeah.

Bummer. Don't think a GMA 950 would handle that very well.
rasmits
2007-03-05, 01:31
Well, if it handles it better than the 5200, it'll be fine. It's by no means excellent on the 5200, but it's fairly playable.
HezMah19
2007-03-05, 03:46
My sister has a MacBook (1.83 C2D, 512MB RAM) and the Sims 2 plays surprisingly well in Windows. Definitely playable.