Question about 256 VRAM

[Josh396]

Sorry if this has been talked about before, as I'm sure it has but I couldn't find a quick answer and I'm about to go to my local Apple Store. Would get 256 MB of VRAM on a 20" iMac be worth it. I'm going to pick up two 20" for my cousin and my uncle because they don't want the 256 upgrade. However, I would like to have it. I have three on hold right now so I'm guaranteed to get mine tonight if I decide to get a stock model.

What would you do? To me a week or two to wait for the upgrade is no big deal, but if it's not going to make a big difference then I'll just stick with the 128 and get it tonight. I do game, mostly WoW and Call of Duty. Sorry again if this is a re post but I'm about to leave. Thanks for your input.

 

[MacsRgr8]

Mac gaming on a new Mac Intel is stll a bit of a mystery.

Best review of PPC gaming on an Intel iMac can be seen here

If you want to play any modern game, and specifically a game which will be launched in the near future for Mac Intel Cores, VRAM is very important.
So, yes... the extra 128 MB VRAM is worth it!

 

[yellow]

I jsut bought a 256MB video card (ATI Radeon 98000 Pro) for my massively upgraded Quicksilver at home. It's replacing a servicable but aging nVidia GeForce 4 Ti (128MB).

WoW and CoD look killer now. They looked good before.. but WOW.

 

[therevolution]

As a gamer, you should definitely get as much VRAM as you can since you won't be able to upgrade it later. Keep in mind that until the games you play run native on the machine, performance won't be as good. I read that the WoW universal binary should be out within a few weeks, so you might as well wait anyway.

EDIT

I'm looking at the product specification page for the iMac, and it says the video card is PCI-Express, so maybe you can upgrade it then... still, I'd get the 256MB now.

 

[Dreadnought]

Nope, you can't update it. It uses the PCI-E bus to connect to the rest, but it is soldered/integrated on the motherboard.

 

[Josh396]

Well I obviously didn't search enough because I found separate thread on this already.

Anyways, I decided to wait and upgrade it online. I figured it's not that expensive and I may be home next weekend to pick it depending on how the playoffs turn out this weekend.

I also thought about the games in the next few weeks. I realized the patches aren't out yet and it will be a few weeks before they are so why not wait and just upgrade it then. Thanks for the input.