iMac ATI 4850 Crashes and Graphics Problems (glitches)

So, I am not starting to see problems with, what I think, is the ATI drivers for the ATI 4850 in the new iMacs. Look at the picture upper left in this post here and look at the upper right corner. See that greenish line, it isn't part of the image. That picture is part of a screen shot taken from within Aperture 2. I have seen that with other images, If I exit and come back into Aperture it is gone. The line moves around too and grows and shrinks in size for different pictures. I am also seeing crashes and freezes....

I am also seeing crashes and freezes in OSX now. I was using Aperture and had moved to a new picture when the whole system just froze. No response from anything. I had to power off the iMac and power back on to recover. I, again, am seeing more crashes in boot camp, this time in Fallout 3, had to reboot.

OSX 10.5.7 is due at "any time now(TM)". Lets hope they roll out new ATI drivers for both OSX and boot camp.  Here is a picture of the full aperture session.

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Aperture and ATI 4850 iMacs

So, I have been using my new ATI equipped iMac for a few days now and have done a good amount of photo editing using Aperture 2. I am very happy with the performance. My library, right now, is about seven thousand pictures (all 12.1 MP). On my old iMac I use to have lots of stutters and pauses while I adjusted certain sliders. That has all gone away now. I don't even have to use 'preview' mode while traveling between photos, I just let it go ahead and load the RAW masters for each photo. That is fast. Now, I have never used Aperture on a MacPro. I guess that would be even nicer. But, I don't get paid for taking photos so I can't really justify that. However, unless I start working on video (come on 5D Mark II!) I can't imagine needed a stronger box.

Now, everyone is talking about the glossy screen and....



Now, everyone is talking about the glossy screen and photo editing. Again, I am no pro, and I am just getting into soft-proofing for print labs, but I love the glossy. My old iMac had a matte finish. The glossy screen just looks SO NICE that I can find a way to work around any color problems I might run into. The glossy screen is great for everything else I do like games, photo slideshows (they rock glossy) and everything else OSX related. I don't have problems with reflections like I thought I would. So far that is. At work, I have 3 or 4 19" matte monitors and I sit next to a window. I always have to keep the window closed because of reflections, so I am bothered by them in general.

To sum up, I don't think I will ever go back to a matte screen again, that is how good the glossy makes everything look, even if it is a distorted view of reality. I will reconsider if it ends up getting in the way of photo print lab stuff, but in that case I would probably just run a second monitor with my iMac that is matte.

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Gaming with the iMac, ATI 4850 and BootCamp

So, I got my new 24" iMac all setup, backed up and patched. The very next thing I did was get BootCamp installed. For those that don't know, that is how you run Windows (XP or Vista) on an iMac natively, in its own partition and at full speed. Basically, games. I installed Supreme Commander, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Fallout 3, BioShock, World of Goo and Portal so far. On the OSX side, I installed World of Warcraft and Eve Online. Read more to find out my initial impressions of game playing on these iMacs with the very nice ATI 4850.

I have had only (only?) one lock up so far. It was under BootCamp (Windows XP SP2) running BioShock. However, before it locked up it was SO beautiful. I am running it at full resolution, 1900x1200 wide sreen, with every single bell and whistle turned on and getting very very good frame rates. Looks so nice compared to my old iMac. My only gripe with it is with the mouse sensitivity. I am not sure why, but if you up the sensitivity of the mouse, the movement of the graphics, as you pan around, gets a bit 'jagged'. Setting the mouse sensitivity to 1, no boost, makes it go away. Not too big of a deal for me, but I generally like to crank it up. I don't remember seeing this when I played it on my old iMac, but I had to have a lot of the graphics options turned down there.

Next up was Microsoft's Flight Simulator X, with Service Pack 2. This is another game I ran extensively on my last iMac. On that old machine I had to turn down most of the graphics to get decent frame rate. Not a problem since I used it mostly for IFR training, so all you saw was grey clouds. On the new iMac with the ATI 4850, I have turned up the graphics to Ultra High settings and drive it at 1900x1200 with no problems at all. I guess all that rain and clouds will look really good now. :)

I also ran Fallout 3, which looked very nice and had no problems at all. Again, every graphics option is set at the highest and it runs smooth as silk. Very nice.

I am going to hook up my 32" HDTV to the new iMac as a second monitor and use it in Supreme Commander. I will post another separate article on that since I will be also using the 2nd monitor for Aperture 2 and other OSX based apps, not just games.

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