Seeking for Mac simmers with a Apple iMac Intel i7, 8GB Graphics Card experience!
Hey all,
I’m seeking for flight simmers who bought the iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017) with a 4,2 GHz Intel Core i7 and the Radeon Pro 580 8 GB. The amount of system memory is not really a big issue.
What I want to know from you when you have this configuration what your X-Plane experience is when running High Sierra version 10.12.3 with the latest X-Plane 11.11r2.
I would like to know what kind of frame rates do you have, or even better when you can provide me with some screenshots and the A/C and scenery situation they where made. Knowing your experiences tells me if my current iMac is performing below what I had expected. At the moment I’m not so enthusiastic about this machine and my older iMac Late 2013 performs even better. That said, either I’m doing something wrong or I have forgotten something.
Thanks you in advance for your reply and hopefully useful information.
Hi Angelique, and happy new year.
I have a new (about 3 weeks old) 2017 iMac and am still getting my XP11 config set up on it (I still have kept my older iMac too, with the intention that I will use a second licensed copy of XP11 slaved to my new machine, but I have still to configure that too).
Are there some configurations of XP11 (scenery/location/aircraft/weather/time of day) that you would like to compare? We could even exchange situation files, as long as we both had the same aircraft loaded I believe). My experience is that the new machine is better than the older one, although the CPU appears to be the bottleneck- in my old PC building days I would probably overclock the CPU).
I must have dropped off your e-mail list, I haven’t had any e-mails for some months from X-Plained (but am glad to be back here!). My new iMac is the same GPU as your’s, I have 32GB ram and 2TB SSD. Let me know how we can help each other. My e-mail (best way to get me) is brucekn@me.com
Hi Bruce,
Welcome back and you too happy new year.
Recently – at least before the 12 weeks – I’ve returned the 2nd iMac too to Apple. Honestly, I wasn’t by the overall performance of the Late 2017 model. Yes, it did at the ned a better job with XP11, in particular when clouds come into view. But at “that” moment of testing I had the idea why so much money for so little improvement. I’m aware that I could compare it with my older Late 2013 i7 iMac and after all, I decided to return it. At it looks now, I’ve the opportunity to test the iMac Pro entry model, so I will give that a chance.
I have a 2015 5K iMac at work and a 2017 5K iMac at home (same specs as yours). I’ve tried X-Plane on both. I find the 2017 iMac is a better performer because of the graphics card.
I prefer to fly the Carenado B200, although I find that it stresses the CPU a bit more than the default aircraft, such as the C90. I have the graphics detail turned up fairly high. The sim is CPU-bound when flying the B200.
Some details for comparison:
2017 5K iMac, 4.2 GHz, Radeon Pro 580
Mac OS X 10.12.6
X-Plane 11.11
Carenado King Air B200
Saitek X52 Pro
Rendering Settings:
Visual Effects: Maximum
Texture Quality: Maximum
Antialiasing: FXAA
Numer of World Objects: High
Reflection Detail: Minimum
Full screen, default monitor resolution
Weather: Scattered
Visibility: 25 sm
Frame rates when in Circle (exterior) view:
Flying over the city of Montreal (3000 ft), near CYUL: 30 to 40 fps
Flying over countryside (3000 ft): 50 to 55 fps
Flying over Manhattan (3000 ft): 27 to 30 fps
Flying over London (near Big Ben, 3000 ft): 23 to 27 fps
Flying low over Heathrow: 20 to 25 fps
As I said, these numbers are a bit higher with the default aircraft.
Hope all this helps! How does your experience differ?
Hi Angelique,
It’s so simple since July that I X-Plane 11 I did not fly any single minute. X-Plane launches, loads all scenes and planes. I have the vision of the cockpit, the engine runs, the animations work (70 to 30 fps) but I do not have the pointer of the mouse. Something is blocking the end of the installation.
Configuration:
iMac Retina 5K, 27 inches, 2017
Proc. : 4.2GHz Intel Core i7
Same. : 16 GB 2400 MHz DDR4
Graphism: Radeon Pro 580 8GB
Hi Richard (or is it Jean-Paul),
Thank you for taking the time to reply and own experience regarding the FPS.
Regarding your current XP version? Do I understand this correct that you can’t update to the latest X-Plane 11 version?