The 27-inch iMac received a hefty update late last year after Apple upgraded its integrated display to 5K resolution (5120x2880).
Should you buy one for gaming? If gaming is a serious consideration for your portable Mac purchase, a larger 15-inch MacBook Pro is probably the one to go for. This Mac is still no way as powerful as a dedicated gaming laptop, but will generally run most games with a good frame rate.
You’ll get better results from the 15-inch MacBook Pros, which come with Intel’s more powerful Iris Pro integrated graphics, while the $2499 top-end model has an Nvidia GeForce GT 750M. It might not sound impressive at all compared with what a GeForce GTX 980 can do, but once again, it’s enough for gaming if that’s the only computer you own or have at hand. On a 13-inch 2013 Retina MacBook Pro with a dual-core Intel Core i5-4288, running at 2.6 GHz, Intel Iris HD 5100 graphics and 8GB of memory, we not only had Dota 2 running fine in OS X but got Battlefield 4 running at a playable frame rate on a Boot Camp Windows partition, with the resolution set to 1280x720 and the detail settings on low. The integrated graphics is better on the 15-inch model, too.
The 13-inch MacBook Pro comes with a dual-core processor, while the 15-inch model comes with a quad-core chip. (Note: that cool-looking aluminium chassis has a tendency to get pretty hot when asked to push 3D graphics around.) Of course, you won’t get anywhere near the performance of a desktop gaming PC out of an entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro, but it’s now enough to at least run modern games, probably with the resolution and detail settings turned down and the fancy effects kept to a minimum. Should you buy it for gaming? This configuration will deliver the very best gaming performance of any Mac, but it’s still only a system you should be buying if you’re doing video editing or design work (or have a ton of money and an unrequited crush on Johnny Ive).Īlthough integrated graphics are certainly no match for a proper graphics card, Intel’s offerings are far better than they used to be. Bump the graphics cards to the D700 option for an extra $1000 and you’re basically getting two top-end AMD FirePro cards for far less than the cost of the desktop variants.
The quad-core Mac Pro costs far more than a PC of comparable performance, but you can add a nice upgrade that works out as reasonable value for money. For gaming, the quad-core processor will deliver better performance in most cases, as the extra clock speed will affect gaming performance more than extra cores. The Xeon processor options range from a 3.7 GHz quad-core chip to a 2.7 GHz 12-core processor. Instead, you have to make do with up to 1TB of flash storage, which uses 4 PCI Express lanes for roughly 1GB/sec read and write speeds and external storage for additional capacity.Īnd since the Mac Pro is a workstation, it’s priced as such. The oddly shaped design gives the Mac Pro some really superb thermal efficiency, but also means you can’t fit hard disks inside it. It’s the only Mac to offer desktop graphics cards, custom designed by AMD to fit into the Mac Pro’s cylindrical shell.
It comes with dual AMD FirePro professional GPUs, rebranded as D300, D500 and D700 cards.