Anyone running 27" i7 iMac?

[Herbumus]

I'm looking very seriously at the 27" i7 iMac for x-plane.

2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7

8GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM

ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Can anyone tell me, from their own personal knowledge, of x-plane's performance on this platform? I'm well aware that x-plane will run well on almost any computer if you optimize your settings for the particular platform. What I'm interested in, is performance with max settings, full resolution, or clear description of what you've found to be highest settings for acceptable framerate (35+fps) on the i7. My desire for this computer is to run (smoke) x-plane with high settings and still have computer left to grow with x-plane as it continues to demand more and more from our video cards and co-processors. If you can speak to this topic, in some detail, I would be extremely appreciative.

Thanks in advance,

Herb

[Simmo W]

I'm looking very seriously at the 27" i7 iMac for x-plane.

2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7

8GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM

ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Can anyone tell me, from their own personal knowledge, of x-plane's performance on this platform? I'm well aware that x-plane will run well on almost any computer if you optimize your settings for the particular platform. What I'm interested in, is performance with max settings, full resolution, or clear description of what you've found to be highest settings for acceptable framerate (35+fps) on the i7. My desire for this computer is to run (smoke) x-plane with high settings and still have computer left to grow with x-plane as it continues to demand more and more from our video cards and co-processors. If you can speak to this topic, in some detail, I would be extremely appreciative.

Thanks in advance,

Herb

hi Herbumus, sounds pretty capable. I have a Windoze vista 64 'handicapped' Core i7 with 6gig ram and gtx 275 1 gig graphics. I run max all settings most of the time, but in the more detailed sceneries, I might have to reduce ai traffic and objects, but only a little. My latest xbone video was done @ full settings, including treehugger setting

if u can upgrade your graphics card that would be good. Check out Toms hardware benchmark graphs of vid card performance. The 4850 is about 35% slower, but maybe your slick mac os will make up for things! Maybe another mac owner can confirm satisfaction. I easily get 30-60fps, I'm happy. For xp10 I may upgrade to windoze 7 and a beefier graphics card. I think that's the advantage of pcs, being able to swap cards easily. Have fun shopping, wow 27 incher..

[Kesomir]

I run an overclocked core i7 + radeon HD4870 x2 at 1980x1200 with maxed textures, and loads of traffic, objects, trees etc.

I think the mac is a nice machine, but from what I hear, you may do better installing windows on it to run x-plane as I think the graphics drivers may be better on pc than windows.

The CPU is powerful, but textures will come down to the GPU, so a better card will help.

In my case (and I did look seriously) it was better top purchase a top quality large dell monitor (27") and the corei7 (self assembled). this is cheaper and will allow easier uprades in the future.

If you're set on having a mac for other reasons than x-plane, then that's a very nice machine, although the GPU is a little dated now and the imac is not upgrade friendly after purchase.

[john82088]

I am just curious - Was x-plane originally designed (Laminar Research) on a windows or mac machine?

John

[Kesomir]

I am just curious - Was x-plane originally designed (Laminar Research) on a windows or mac machine?

John

X-plane is written and cross compiled from a mac I believe. Unfortunately, driver support is better on windows, as is the range of available hardware.

[john82088]

Thanks.

John

[garrettm30]

I am just curious - Was x-plane originally designed (Laminar Research) on a windows or mac machine?

John

There used to be a little page on the Laminar website that would answer your question. Austin was talking about his secret that enabled him to get things done so efficiently, but that he wasn't going to say what it is. Then as if it were a completely different matter, he posted a picture of he and a few of the others in a group photo all holding their MacBook Pros rather prominently. I spent at least half an hour trying to find that page on the new site, but perhaps it isn't up anymore. I thought you would have found that interesting since you were curious.

[john82088]

I do find that interesting.  Thanks for sharing that with me.

John

[RealScenery]

Hi John,

I listened to this FSBreak podcast interview with Austin Meyer last year and found it very interesting and insightful. Austin talks about the early days before his simulator was even known as X-Plane and how it has grown over the years as well as his motivation to create a computer-based flight simulator. He also has a very interesting discussion about framerate and its importance in not only flight simulators, but other types of simulation as well.

I've included the link directly to the podcast below.

http://media.fsbreak.net/podcasts/fsbreak_022.mp3

Here is the link to the FSBreak website if you're not familiar with it. It is a weekly program, now broadcast live, that talks about a lot of the new products available for the flight simulator community. The archive of the show is available a few days after the live Internet broadcast. X-Plane products are talked about often.

http://www.fsbreak.net/

Enjoy!

Eric

[john82088]

Thanks Eric.  I look forward to checking out these links you have provided.

John

[Herbumus]

Hey friends,

I just wanted to thank you for all your replies regarding the i7 iMac. Even though I'm sure she's a beautiful machine with plenty of power for the day to day, I'm convinced I would have been disappointed with her performance for x-plane. Certainly a strong CPU, but lacking severely in the graphics co-processing department. Especially with that high-res 27" monitor.

So... as much as I hate to leave the Mac platform, Windows, here I come.

Here's what I ended up building for my x-plane platform:

ASUS P6T SE Intel X58 Motherboard, Intel i7 960 4x3.2ghz CPU, 12gig RAM (A-DATA gaming series), Radeon 5870 1gig VRAM, couple o' monster hard drives and a 28" LCD monitor w/2ms response @ 1920x1200.

I'm praying now that I can crank up my rendering options and still some have acceptable frame-rates... we'll see.

Thanks again for all your help and support,

Herb

[Simmo W]

Hey friends,

I just wanted to thank you for all your replies regarding the i7 iMac. Even though I'm sure she's a beautiful machine with plenty of power for the day to day, I'm convinced I would have been disappointed with her performance for x-plane. Certainly a strong CPU, but lacking severely in the graphics co-processing department. Especially with that high-res 27" monitor.

So... as much as I hate to leave the Mac platform, Windows, here I come.

Here's what I ended up building for my x-plane platform:

ASUS P6T SE Intel X58 Motherboard, Intel i7 960 4x3.2ghz CPU, 12gig RAM (A-DATA gaming series), Radeon 5870 1gig VRAM, couple o' monster hard drives and a 28" LCD monitor w/2ms response @ 1920x1200.

I'm praying now that I can crank up my rendering options and still some have acceptable frame-rates... we'll see.

Thanks again for all your help and support,

Herb

no probs herb, you'll enjoy that setup for a good few yrs ( I hope so, or else I'm in trouble too!) Hope u try windoze 7, I'm in vistaland and looking fwd to next yr when I may try 7  (uninstalling everythings a pain so I'll do it once a yr

[john82088]

Herb:

Let us know how the framerates work for you on the new setup.

Thanks.

John

[Kesomir]

Make sure to have 64bit windows 7 to go with that - you won't be able to use most of the ram on 32bit.

It's a nice machine, you'll get very nice framerates at beautiful settings with that.

[Herbumus]

Yes, Kesomir. Windows 7 Premium, 64-bit.

Sincere thanks for your advice and support.

Herb