20" iMac Graphics Card vs 24" graphics card

Which is better ATI or Nvidia? .... and by how much?...

* ATI radeon 1600 is used in the 20"

* Nvidia GeForce 7300 is used in the 24"

- I have the 1600 in my Macbook pro, and know that its quite good... but its only the 'mobility' version, do the iMacs use the same graphics card as the macbook pros?... just curious.

my laptop handles vista and gaming beautifully, but I want a desktop (all in one) that does it even better...

Im trying to convince my parents its time to upgrade thier old craptacular pentium 4 2ghz with 256mb ram... I could just get more ram.... but it would be nice to run Vista smoothly... or if I could get them to switch to Mac OSX permanently that would be even better.

I like the imacs design too, but may end up waiting for the next gen iMac (with alluminium shell- hopefully )... PS- off topic conversation about iMacs in general is WELCOME... as I need selling points, but i mainly wanted to know bout the graphics cards

#446570

iMac..looks as sexy from the front as it does from the back. As such you can put it in the center of the room no problem. It likes being the center of attention.

On-topic: As of this moment Nvidia has crap for Vista support. Ati is more prepared. Maybe in a month or two Nvidia will get their act together. Graphics on nvidia are better though. Using an nvidia board on my gaming rig rite now. But that's for Windows. I have no experience with nvidia on a Mac, but my sister has the 17 incher iMac, 128 MB x1600 graphics. Does a pretty decent job if you ask me.

Edit: for selling points, just show your parents the apple adds - Mac vs PC. Simple, funny, but get their message across. You'll only scare them with too technical stuff.

#446577

You know better yet.... if you don't want to confuse your parents with Technical blahblah... make them use Your macbook pro for a while, let them get a feel of it and how DAMN easy it is for creatures called "Parents" and I'm sure that would be Battle half won.

I assume, that your parents are not Gaming freak (not that it's not possible, but I'm going with general experience)... so you can rather go with mac mini.. GMA950 does decent job at Aero handling, you can Max out on RAM and drive space. Just an idea as your folks will be able hook it up to TV for dvd watching and stuff.

#446703

Off Topic selling point: Mac Mini is the answer for sure. I hooked one up to a 42" Sony DLP with wireless keyboard and mouse and it's now the family computer/entertainment center. No more unsightly big-box cord-monsters near the TV.

#446707

in fact, I'd say wait for Hardware refresh... as strong rumor that Apple is planning to put H.264 decoder chip (yeh baby, Hardware Decoder) in all macs (and even possible in notebooks).

Though it may not sound very groundbreaking, the thing is that "THIS Particular" chip is Hardware Codec (decoding and.... yes, encoding). Which, gives a possibility of using your Mac as DVR with right software.

So I would rather advice waiting for confirmation of it... specially people who are looking to get mac mini as home entertainment center.

#446716