Like I really need to ask... :P


I think Apple should provide a vertical compartment on the back if a iMac near the top to allow better video cards.

I'm going to be contrarian here and say "no". This is based on my experience with PCs -- I never upgraded a video card unless I needed to for a new monitor, and the monitor can't be upgraded in an iMac.

Guess your not a 3D gamer.

I like the iMac, but by design I think they're more marketed & designed towards "soft" users... surfing, email etc...

If you see the value in upgradablity, then you're probably a power user (gamers, graphics, photo etc...) and will want a rigg that has upgrade space for cards, mem, drives...

Well that's what most "home" 3D gamers are, not having the iMac play a decent 3D video game at a acceptable speed along with PC's is just stupid.

On a PC one can get into 3D competitive gaming for about $1000. They don't need a dual processor workstation that costs $3000 like it is on a Mac.

Heck I can play 2 3D games at once, who the heck needs that much power?

See this decision by Apple leaves a market soley owned by PC's, all those kids that could be growing up using a Mac instead of a PC, just because the iMac can't upgrade the video card 6 months down the road with a new 3D game.

We all know the hardware has to be upgraded in three years regardless, but at least allow folks the chance to 3D game for those 3 years and not 6 months.

Apple could limit the size of the cards and only to a AGP slot so no monster things or PCI cards get in and professionals use the iMac instead a PowerMac.

But they should allow folks the option. 3D gaming and iMac's go together.

PowerMac's are more of a workstation box.

With this switch to MacTels, I hope Apple realizes the benefit of matching hardware with PC's as closely as possible if they expect to take any significant market share.

Heck a cheap tower with Mac OS X would scare the pants off of Micheal Dell.

Nope!
But as other people have touched on, the iMac isn't really a 3D gamer's system.

It could be a very nice one, if Apple allowed video card upgrades, since a 3D game is all video card dependant anyway.

Hard drive speed doesn't matter as the game engine is all loaded into RAM for speed. Neither does game engines require a whole lot of CPU power either, just a bit of RAM like all iMac's need anyway.

A nice little pocket door on the side that tilts out, out with the old, in with the new.

I concur Mr. Fish, I would love to check out "Doom 3" but my 1st gen. iMac G5 will not do it justice. Should have bought the Power Mac, live and learn.

The high end video cards I've see all require massive cooling and power supplies. You would basically have to swap out the power supply as well as somehow beef up the cooling. Better to buy a PowerMac, a PC optimized for games, or a Playstation/XBox...

Power the card and its fans. I am kind of with Sail on this one. I will admit I am not a gamer. It would be great to have that ability on an iMac and would definitely add more Mac users it seems.

Be great if my G5 brought me coffee in the morning too... but sadly it wasnt designed for that. If you want to play games then you really should've looked hard at the very least a SP 1.8... with that you have the performance and the ability to keep up with the games by being able to add new cards...

I agree it would be great to see more performance out of all Macs, but the fact is specific models are designed for certain niches... iMac arent robust gaming machines, werent designed to be... by adding more options/performance then they are infringing on 1.8 market...

There is no single 1.8 anymore.

And the question was not to buy a iMac or a PowerMac for 3D gaming, but to allow the iMac some video card upgrade capacity as to encourage the mid range Macs to be used as a recreational 3D gaming machines.

Once those who only could afford a iMac taste 3D gaming and get a few years of life out of their purchase, will more seriously condsider buying a PowerMac the next time.

Right now new iMac owners get screwed and 3D games run slow as molasses because engine developers always push the envelope to resell the game engine. Hardware then has to catch up.

Agreed. And whats the point of putting a speedy G5 processor in a machine and gimping it with a very low end graphics card? 64mb of VRAM is laughable. I am sure a G4 is more than sufficient for the "casual" user's web/email/word processing tasks. For 3D gaming, the iMac G5 is like the little engine that can't.

Why should the user who likes to play the occasional 3D game at humanly tolerable framerates and detail settings have to shell out 3-5k for a power mac rig?

The lagging game performance has probably hurt the Mac market more than we realize. I myself, while not being a hardcore gamer, really enjoy them from time to time, and not being able to even get some games for the Mac has kept me away for years. OS 10 finally got me.

And if you think games are not important, look at the numbers. Most PC users don't need near the procesing power of the machines out there. It almost seems as if the gaming world is pushing the chip developers, not the scienticic community...

If the Mac were a robust gaming platform, I think they'd sell boatloads more.... The OS is already superior...

If you need to upgrade your Mac, you should have gone with a desktop Mac, and not an iMac.

Face it, gamers will need more upgrades besides video and memory (and video memory). An iMac is rarely ever efficient enough to deal with the stress of high end games.

Games that I would want to play, if any, are still PC based. It's great that they came out with EverQuest for the Mac, but I don't like the fact that Mac users are stuck with their own environment. Matrix Online is another good one, but they refuse to programme for the Mac.

Back to my point... iMacs don't need upgrades.