Considering becoming an imac gamer, need some advice

Personaly i'd still keep windows becausemany games don't work in linux/macOs.
linux might be a good option as more and more games are having linux versions.
My advice would be to dual boot linux/windows. You could use linux for the main use of the PC and when you want to play a certain game that doesn't run in linux you can boot to windows.

Like many others have already said, don't get a Mac for gaming. The (main) reason I built a PC was so I wouldn't have to play games on my Mac.

I got you, fam.

The problem witha lot of mac "ports" is that the're not really ports. A lot of them use things like Cidar (which is basically Wine for Mac), or use libraries that convert DirectX calls to OpenGL. So the performance is quite worse for these games. From the games you mentioned, I know for sure that the Guild Wars 2 "port" uses Cidar, so its performance is poor.

Sorry maybe I'm rude, but only people without common sense are buying iMac especially for gaming. It is an overpriced crap, check the specifications iMac-s have really weak hardware. Mostly it is enough for facebook, but not for games.

Install older windows or switch to linux and donate that money to sick children.

I am considering throwing out my perfectly capable windows desktop PC, and buying an iMac 4k or 5k.

Why not make the windows PC your gaming computer?

I have two main computers.

1. Windows 10 gaming computer. Only (yes ONLY) used for games and google docs. Google docs is to get steam keys onto the pc.

2. Chromebook.

For you, #2 might be iMac if that's what you like. But I tell everyone to at least consider Chrome OS (Chromebook) because it's so easy, fast, and reliable. My favorite OS by far.

I also have

Threee. Linux

to do things a Chromebook can't, but you would have the Windows PC for that. A Chromebook can pretty much only do what you can do with Chrome. You can't even plug a printer into it. But... it WORKS!

Don't be affraid to build one by yourself, it really isn't that hard... I only bought one store-pc in my life, the second one was my own build, and I did it all alone, without any experience... If you have doubts, there is always the manual (the one from the MB is very important) techthreads and offcourse YouTube... 乁( ◔ ౪◔)ㄏ
The best thing is, you could use any OS you want on it and you'll love your mean machine the more for it... (─‿‿─)

You can't do better than OS X on a 5K iMac ...for everything except gaming.
There are plenty of games that run on OS X, more than for Linux, that's not so much the issue. The real trouble is that the GPU is too weak to play many at the native resolution, and the games you can play at 5K will mostly lack UI scaling.

I have 1st hand experience in win, mac and linux systems, and I'll try to make this as objective as I can.

From your post I understand that:

• you don't have big limits in budget;
• you don't like any windows after XP and more recently win10;
• you have plenty of time, but you want to use it gaming and not learning about fine tuning;
• you don't state if you need a new system only for gaming or also for other things.

My advice is:

• If you want a new system only for gaming, buy a complete desktop or laptop pc requesting win7 instead of win10 (should be still possible).
• If you want a new system for gaming and for other things, consider a mac over a pc.
• Don't consider linux as it won't be any better then pc and mac at gaming and will steal you way more time to keep in optimal working conditions.
• Sheer gaming performance of a mac compared to a pc with same specs can be somewhat lower. Possible reasons: coding not so close to hardware level, bad porting, overhead from emulation or transcoding, etc.

My MBP, now 6 years old, runs fine Valve games, Diablo 2/3, Tomb Raider (but nowadays I use it for other stuff and not for gaming any more). Actual generation will run fine actual games, even if the gpu is not going to shine at ultra settings. On a plus side for mac, they use to be useful during mode years than pc, and with far less maintenance. You can get for mac most big games and almost all good indies, which is untrue fro linux.

I use OSX and Macs all the time, but I can't really recommend them unless you're otherwise fully in the Apple ecosystem. If you only use iPhones, iEverything, then Macs make sense to me. All OS's have their learning curves and "features" that are annoying, OSX is no different. In fact, there's lots more that I can't do on my Mac to the point where it's really my fancy web browser, and my PC does all the heavy lifting.

I use Macs for one of my jobs, I do some gaming on the MacBook Pro I have while travelling and have also used a few older machines that were decommissioned that I was allowed to take home. I like the OS and the hardware is good and despite the limited selection I've found plenty of great games that do work really well on them - but for me I wouldn't consider buying one for personal use just because they are so overpriced, and I still use a dual boot Windows/Linux desktop as my main gaming computer despite free Macs. If you are determined to go Mac then get a Mac Mini and a third party display rather than an iMac as you will get far more bang for your buck.