Is the Apple iMac Retina 5K built for gamers too?

One of the greatest perks of owning an Apple iMac Retina 5K, is a stunning display featuring the highest pixel resolution and picture quality available on a desktop all-in-one, which begs the question whether the iMac 5K is also capable of handling games as well as a PC does, within a similar price range.

With up to 3TB of Fusion drive storage, a 4.0 GHz Intel Core i7 CPU, and up to 32GB or RAM, the iMac 5K is designed to handle higher-end work tasks, such as video and image editing, programming, and more, flawlessly, while running one of the most robust and secure operating systems.

With that said, Apple has hardly ever shown interest for high-end gaming, a category in which Windows PCs have dominated for decades.

While the above I true, often by Apple's own admission, the iMac does have features that make it ideal for casual gaming, within certain limitations.

One such limitation, of course, it's the GPU. The iMac 5K comes with a AMD Radeon R9, with up to 4GB DDR5. While this type of graphic hardware will perform smoothly with most casual games, it's not nearly enough to satisfy hardcore gamers who expect at the very least a NVIDIA GeForce GTX, to play games like Fallout 4, or Rise of the Tomb Raider at maximum settings.

According to a recent thread on Reddit, several users have pitched in with their own experience, and while it confirms the lack of support for high-end settings in the most advanced and resource-intensive games, most users have agreed that even as lower settings, the quality of of the picture, as well as the framerate is still outstanding, as long as one is willing to do without realistic lighting and rendering effects such as refraction, global illumination, ambient occlusion, motion blur, and focus blur.