24 inch iMac resolution scaling?

PinkPig · 4 Nov 2007 at 14:11

Hi everyone,

I'm currently sorely tempted to buy an iMac - in the past I've bought fairly high-end PCs but the amount of time I spend gaming has dramatically fallen and I mostly use the PC for things that I could easily do on a Mac instead. I'd be quite happy to use my 360 for gaming.

Having said that, it would be really nice to be able to boot the iMac into Windows and play a few games from time to time - in particular say HL2. I've seen reports and videos that it plays fairly well (relatively speaking) on an iMac. I'd really like to get the 24 inch iMac though, and I'm a bit worried that the high resolution (1920x1200) will give the fairly weak graphics card no chance at all.

So has anyone tried playing any games (in Windows under Bootcamp) on the 24 inch iMac in the native resolution? Does anyone know how well the screen scales to lower resolutions? Does the iMac support most common resolutions? If I played in say 1280x800 would the display look horribly blurry or pixelated? I'm really looking for someone who's actually tried it rather than just speculation, so please say if you're just giving ideas or opinions!

PinkPig · 4 Nov 2007 at 15:28

TheVoice said:
My housemate has the 24" iMac (2.4GHz), and his manages games fairly well, albeit obviously not at the native resolution of the display. It does seem to scale down well though; MoH Airborne at 1280x800 or thereabouts still looks good, as does HL2.

It's still very playable, just don't expect amazing performance from its mid-range graphics chipset. It does well, as long as you don't start piling on the AA and AF.

Could you just confirm that you're talking about the current generation iMac? I've just realised that the previous ones (September 2006-ish) had an option for a 7600 GT (I think) which is better than the 2600 Pro on the current generation.

PinkPig · 4 Nov 2007 at 16:09

theheyes said:
I think the 2.4Ghz suggests the current iMac.

Good point. I can't even find out what resolutions the iMac supports (in Windows and OS X), does anyone know?

PinkPig · 8 Nov 2007 at 08:21

PAC2007 - or anyone else with a new 24 inch iMac - could you tell me what resolutions are available in Mac OS X and in Windows? I'm just a bit worried that there might not be much flexibility if the only options are 1920x1200 and 1280x800, say. Is there a resolution similar to the native resolution of the 20 inch screen?

Secondly, my laptop has a "don't scale image to full panel size" option (something like that)in the graphics settings, which means that it will show a lower resolution in just the centre of the screen rather than stretching it, which avoids the blurring issues you get from a scaled image on an LCD. Does the iMac support this either in Mac OS X or in Windows? (it's dependant on the graphics driver in Windows)