Second Take: The Future of Mac Gaming - Page 3

around the same as getting struck by lightning,
winning the lottery,
or Jessica Alba giving you a kiss

better than spotting BigFoot or Elvis in the woods

Does having a crazed Canadian lab tech test out a homemade tazer on your forehead, and the capacitors of your video card count as getting struck by lightning?

I did a little shopping and found macs to be waaay overpriced. I looked at the parts from the apple store for a mac pro and then created a shopping cart for pc parts at newegg. I can build a better than comparable pc system for about $800 less.

Mac Pro:
Two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
4GB (4 x 1GB)(667MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)
250GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB (2 x dual-link DVI)
One 16x SuperDrive
Apple Keyboard and Mighty Mouse - U.S. English
Mac OS X - U.S. English

Price Tag: $3,447.00


A pc set up from newegg:
LIAN LI PC-60APLUSII Silver Aluminum ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail
EVGA 768-P2-N831-AR GeForce 8800GTX 768MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card - Retail
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 Kentsfield 2.66GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80562QX6700 - Retail
CORSAIR XMS2 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X4096-6400C5DHX - Retail
Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
Logitech Media Elite 967559-0403 Black USB + PS/2 Wired Standard Keyboard - Retail
Logitech MX518 2-Tone 8 Buttons 1 x Wheel USB + PS/2 Wired Optical Gaming-Grade Mouse - Retail
Creative X-Fi 30SB073000000 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Blaster - OEM
SONY Combo Drive Black IDE Model CRX320EE/B2S W/O SW - OEM
ASUS Striker Extreme LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX The Ultimate Gaming Motherboard - Retail
COOLMAX CUG-700B ATX 12V( V.2.2) 700W Power Supply - Retail
Microsoft Windows XP Home With SP2B 1 Pack - OEM

Price Tag: $2,706.37

The pc parts are better and there's more of them. The pc memory is faster, the mouse is better(gaming mouse), there's an x-fi audio card, and the video card is way waaay better. Everything else is fairly the same. To make the systems exactly comparable I'd have to strip a few parts out, but I left the better ones in to demonstrate just how big the price difference is. To build something at the same cost of the mac, I could actually jack up my pc specs to surpass the mac specs by a lot. Plus, I can upgrade any of my parts and even go SLI without any trouble if I want to. In fact, I could actually buy another vid card and make a SLI system for still less than the mac pro. I think I found another reason to stay on pc(windows for the moment) gaming.

Yeah, but isn't it relevant that it's not possible to build a mac from scratch? To even start with a mac you have to buy through the mac store. Nice find with the memory, but it's also still an inferior speed of memory.

even if gaming isn't the primary task, you can still get a better system for less on a pc by building one.

I'm curious about what you mean by any software.. What is any software? you saying macs can run anything? There's sure to be a lot of software macs can't run.

Productivity is somewhat relative I suppose, so I guess I'm talking about benchmarks. For instance, how fast will photoshop process a filter, or something like that. The better the hardware, the faster the system. So if productivity is related to speed, i'd say the faster hardware would be more productive.

Now that ability to run windows software does throw a wrench in my theory a bit. Technically the only thing a "pc" can't run is osx. hmm.. damn that was a good point. But still, if you have a windows machine running the better hardware, what would you need to have the mac os for? Really windows will have everything you need, unlike osx where you'll have to switch to windows to run a specific program you want to run. Of course I'm only speaking for myself and there may be some mac only program out there people would want.

I'm still sticking to my guns in that a "pc"(with XP) is a better system for the money in that it will technically perform better at a lesser cost. I'm not sure how to answer that more productive question. To me, the faster the hardware, the faster the apps, the better the game performance, the better the system. the mac you buy at $420 will be slow, limiting your productivity.

no doubt, no doubt. Games are usually the best way I judge a system performance, mainly because I can see it. In apps though, unless the systems are wildly different, it's probably really hard to tell the difference.

Productivity is really a hard thing to nail down. I think i'm quite proficient and productive on both os's and don't generally find one more advantageous than the other. For me, the only advantage windows has is that it can run all my apps and my games, so that's what I use.

as far as iLife, I've never seen it in use so can't say too much about it. but from what I've heard it doesn't seem like something that can't be done on windows, they just put the user friendly promotion machine behind it. I also don't know about final cut, but i've heard quite a few people talk about it.

Coldmast, nobody said Windows ruled video editing. But I'm ready to be convinced by your statement that OSX rules in video editing. Based on what? What makes OSX platform totally beating up Windows platform as far as video editing is concerned?

Stability + software = productivity is again incomplete imo. OS does change how productive you are. Hardware performance aside, all OS in 10 years will offer more productivity than today. For instance, when you start pushing the Automator in OSX, you realize that.

In the end, a Mac is just something that runs OSX and the software associated with it, Windows and the software associated with it, Linux and the software associated with it.

That versatility is indeed a distinct advantage, and a big one imo.

so if M$ decided for alter their EULA for Windows "Vienna" to not run under bootcamp or VMware or anything that would make it better?
we are starting to get to the point where "more expensive" is no longer = "better", and were able to do more work on one machine then could be done by a entire department 10 years ago.

pardon my vague generalizations but that's what all the patent lawsuits make me do.

I really don't know what I'm commenting on anymore,

soon the ipods will revolt against their masters and enslave the world.

KBits, what kind of fanboy are you? {what product do you swear by?}
lets have a flame war of vague generalizations?

in the end, hardware runs software and software runs on hardware.

oh and "trust" the iPhone keypad
enjoy "pinching out".

Big Ass Table
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_czPDtECjlU

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20060513

btw J/K

After years of Windows building PCs, I'm finally ditching them. I use a Mac at work and Vista at home. Every evening I have to battle through the crap Vista throws at me after using a decent OS throughout the day.

I'm planning on sticking Bootcamp on an iMac and using an XP partition just for games. So I can still game and use OS X for everything else.

The only problem is that I'm waiting for Apple to stick a decent graphics chip into the iMac.

Looking at Windows gaming on a Mac - you get Core 2 Duos, SATA HDs, fast DDRII RAM and hopefully decent graphics soon. That's a very decent gaming rig.

Say the Mac costs a grand, hopefully I'll get £350 for my existing PC, so that's £650 for a decent machine with a big widescreen TFT. Not bad.

The iMac is virtually unupgradable though. However, Macs hold their value fantastically. In 3 years time I can stick it on ebay, get £600 for it and buy a new iMac for £400.

So I'm here clutching my credit card at the moment, waiting for them to ditch that crappy Radeon X1600 and put something decent in it!

You're quite right. Bear in mind you are buying a product with cache - you can buy a Ford for less than a Mercedes with the same engine, but people want the badge and extra quality. No doubt an iMac or Mac Pro looks better than 90% of PCs - they're custom made and use high quality materials. It's why people buy iPods, even if other MP3 players might have better features.
Also remember that the product will cost more to manufacture than pile 'em high sell 'em cheap companies like Dell.

We actually have experimented with Linux on the PS3. Nothing interesting to report yet.

Ok i have been reading over this thread at work from lack of stuff to do. Some people are quite interesting and have good points, but other people are just complete idiots.

The first thing i cracked up at was:

Are you serious? You realize apple uses the exact same panel manf. as most other companies? I own a 24" Dell ultrasharp lcd which i got for 569$ off dell.com.

current prices:

dell ultrasharp 24" lcd.
1000:1 contrast
450 cd/m2
599$

apple cinema 24" lcd
700:1 contrast
400 cd/m2
899$

Basically apple is overpriced and a bunch of BS in regard to lcds. They're outdated and overpriced. You can get the same or better panels in most other companies. Even cheap companies like acer give you better panels and quality for the price.

In regard to computers i can't even begin to state how much crap macs are. Alright my mom is a photographer and has used pcs all her life until a few months ago when she bought a 3000$ mac book pro, and also has access to a top of the line Mac Pro at the office. I really have nothing against macs, and they're fun to use as paper-weights but as a computer an actual apple would work better.

I've also used both my entire life and tried to get her into macs. Despite having months of training and various trips to the macstore "genius bar" she still couldn't be as productive on her macs, than she is on her recently built PC. She's even told me she's about 5-6 times faster editing photos on her pc than on either mac.

I wanted to test her thoery so i set up a little test. I took my PC build, and compared it to her Mac Book Pro, and the Mac Pro.

My pc:
OS: Vista Ultimate 64 bit
Core 2 Duo 6600 @ 3.8ghz stable (around 35c idle water cooled)
Mobo: asus p5n32-e sli
Video card: 2x evga 8800gtxs ko in SLI
Ram: 4 gigs (2x2gbs) ddr2-pc6400 (800mhz)
2x Western digital raptor 10k 150gb (raid setup for OS)
2x Seagate barracuda 500gb
1x Seagate barracuda 300gb
Dell ultrasharp 24" 1920 x 1200 lcd (1000:1 contrast)

mac book pro
2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
1680 x 1050 pixels
2GB memory
160GB hard drive1
8x double-layer SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with 256MB SDRAM

mac pro
Two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon “Woodcrest” processors
4GB memory (667MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)
NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT graphics with 256MB memory
250GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200-rpm hard drive1
16x double-layer SuperDrive

Anyway i had all three computers and did random bootup time tests and benchmark tests. Sorry i can't post the specifics now, as i am at work, but my PC which i built pretty much demolished both of the macs in regard to everything. Photoshop CS3 booted up MUCH faster on my PC than both macs. Adobe bridge opened/cycled through photos faster. IE7 64 bit opened before i had my finger off the mouse button, whereas safari took quite a bit longer on both macs. In regard to CS3 filters, my PC beat both macs on every one i tested. Adobe premier ran faster on my PC also. Pretty much anything i tested ran faster on Vista on my PC. OSX seemed slow and outdated in regard to GUI and speed in comparison to my PC running vista. Vista 64 runs so incredibly fast there's really no load times for 90% of the applications i tested. Word, excel, in fact ALL of Microsoft Office pops up instantly. Whereas OSX was slow and sad.

Then i moved onto games. Trying to play ANY new games through XP on bootcamp was a total waste of time. Not even to mention vista. I'm currently playing Lost Planet (DX10), Call of Juarex (DX10), Tomb Raider Ann. (DX9), Oblivion (DX9), STALKER (DX9), Halo 2 (vista only), and an emulated mario kart 64 at 1920 by 1200!!!! (which crashed on XP on the macs).

So in conclusion neither of the macs would play ANY of the games i tested, not to mention OSX was just slow in regard to general OS tasks. Vista 64 bit was even noticebly faster to my mom than OSX, and it takes a lot to get her to see a difference in newer hardware/software. Instead of rambling on about one or the other, i wanted to make a personal experience comparison in which i decide for myself.

Again i'm at work, and i don't have any resources so i posted what i remembered. Gaming on macs is a joke, and OSX is a joke in my opinion. I enjoy using macs on occasion and have used them all my life, but in terms of what I DO, a mac is a horrible choice. Everyone should check out vista. I was able to get a 1080p video as my desktop background, as well as a 720p movie going in another window, another 1080p video going in another window, and finally 1080i Conan on NBC going in windows media center. ALL running without any frames dropped. Oh yeah i opened Oblivion too, and that was running. I tried opening this many HD videos on Quicktime on the Mac Pro and it was just sad what happened.

What are you talking about? Nothing you said makes sense. Did you even look at the specs of the two monitors? Not to mention, do you even know who makes the panels dell and apple uses?

First of all that link of the apple 23 inch has a contrast ratio of 400:1, with a brightness of 250. The dell i was posting has a contrast of 1000:1, and a brightness of 450. So explain to me the difference between your "performance" and your "features". You just googled "apple 23 inch" and posted the first link you got right? You got an old link. Apple sells outdated LCDS for WAAAAY too much $. You go to www.newegg.com and you'll find the same panels, but with better specs and for A LOT cheaper.

Explain yourself man. You posted two links trying to prove the apple display was better, and yet both links proved that the dell display was FARRRR superior. You just disproved your own point. Rethink your definition of "performance" and "features".

Are you an idiot?
I can't even begin to explain how wrong you are. No computer LCD "only supports 1080i". Are you stupid? Interlaced? I SAID LCD. My dell lcd supports up to 1920 by 1200p. So you could say "1200p" if you wanted to compare it to an HDTV. In regard to quicktime. I downloaded 1080p trailers and tried to open lots of them on the Mac Pro, and frames were dropped like mad after opening a few.

Oh and your whole post is BS because you missed the point of my post. I apologize i didn't emphasize my point but it's PRICE. I compared three systems around 3000$ in regard to performance. I compared a pc build (around 2500-3000$), a mac book pro (around 3000$), and a Mac Pro (around 2800$). My pc build based upon a performance/price index owns both macs.

My original point, Apple is overpriced for the performance you get. Yeah you could beef up a Mac Pro, and somehow get a nicer GPU, but it'll cost you 5000$+, and THEN it might watch up with performance to my 3000$ pc build.

Are you serious? You just pulled this out of your ass didn't you. You're trying to argue for "student discounts"? When's the last time you were a student? Students arn't usually going to pay for all that, when they can build a much cheaper PC and get the same performance and actually play the latest games. Can't play jack on a mac anyway.

Completely not true. Out of all the pcs and macs i've tested. Mozilla or IE7 will open much faster (instant on my pc) than any mac. Even on a beefed up Mac Pro, there's still some wait time.

Gamer? Gamer on a mac? What are you talking about?

Performance/price index was the point of my post. Apple loses in about every respect in regard to this. I was simply comparing three similar priced systems. Vista 64 was faster than both macs for the money.

It's cool man. I love macs too. But don't try to defend something you know nothing about. What's the largest resolution monitor you have?

Correction it's 1920 x 1200. And yes it does.

You're so confused man. My buddies at work are laughing horribly. No harm though, we all learn sometime. Ok let me lay it out clear for you. You're speaking in regard to HDTV signals. And it's really confusing you.
My dell 2407 has a native resolution of 1920 x 1200. This is a progressive resolution it's technically 1920 by 1200p. If you buy a 30" you can even get 2560 x 1600p. Yes my 2407 does support 1080p, in fact it'll play games at 1200p (1920 by 1200 progressive). Of course HD movies/tv shows/previews are only as high as 1080p, so because my LCD is 16:10, there's black bars on the top and bottom. HDTV's are 16:9, so a 1080p 16:9 movie will fit fine. 2.35:1 will have black bars anywhere. Yay epic ratios!!

Anyway, back to my original point. Of course you can run 1920 by 1200 on my lcd. Hell, go buy a 30" and run it at 2560 by 1600 progressive.

Oh and in regard to your monitor argument. You know dell, apple, sony, and most companies all buy lcd panels from the same manufacturer right? For example, you can have a panel in an apple cinema display, that's the same panel in a dell or a sony display. The only difference is apple bumps the price by a few fold, then slaps thier nice casing around it. You're simply paying for the metal around the panel. Apple doesn't manufacturer lcd panels. This blows your whole argument to shit, because you can't compare LCD brands, you have to compare the panel in regard to Contrast ratio, brightness, viewing angle, etc etc.

My 599$ 24" dell lcd has a contrast ratio of 1000:1, and a brightness of 450cd/m2.

While the apple cinema 23" has a contrast ratio of 700:1 and a brightness of 400cd/m2.
FOR 899$!!! (clearly a rip off because the dells specs are so much better)

899$-599$=300$ (amont of money i'm going to save, while laughing at you)

Also i can adjust my dell lcd tilt up/down, right/left, and even turn it vertically. On the apple casing, you can only tilt it.

I win. Never buy an apple display. Paying for outdated panels, with poor contrast ratios, and horrible casings.

Ok you're still an idiot. My monitor supports 1920 by 1200 PROGRESSIVE. THAT'S 1200 PROGRESSIVE. Do a little research first. You're really really confused in regard to resolution.

So so wrong. My monitor supports 1920 by 1200 PROGRESSIVE RESOLUTION. You stick a blueray or hd-dvd drive in there and it'll play 1080p. Not to mention games are at 1200p.

You're still very confused about resolutions.

Kaizoman is my hero.





Macs are fantastically amazing........for certain things. And gaming ain't one of em. They are a whole lot of horsepower and flash, but are running on a very narrow side street.

I'm sure Jobs views Mac gaming with the same disdain that a valet would look at an old Chevette that he needs to park in the lot.



Next topic........

umm...triple post.

WTH does it NOT go to my post after I post? It starts AT THE BEGINNING DISPLAY. Oh, the headaches with these forums.........this is just too much.

I tried, I really did. I'm out.

WTF, are you an idiot?? was I talking about your montior... NO!!! I used "A" monitor, not "Your" monitor. Do you even read and understand the sentence all the the way or you're a f**ktard? 1920 x 1200 and 1920 x 1080 are both video resolution and video mode. All 24in LCD monitors only supports 1920 x 1200 which is 16:10. The number 1080 represents 1,080 lines of vertical display resolution, while the letter p stands for progressive scan or non-interlaced.

Good for you if you can support 1080p because your monitor is Rev A04. Before the rev A04 came out, it never supported 1080p, only 1080i and You never point out which Rev version on your 2407 at the first place. Just because your 2407 supports 1080p doesn't mean the rest does, which means that not all 2407 supports 1080p. Did you ever knew that? NO! because why? Yoru a f***ing dumbtard

Hell, I have another LCD Monitor that is 4 years old and only supports up to 1080i. it means that my old monitor is partly progressive.

I know I'm reviving a dead thread, but I just watched the video for the first time. I used to be a Mac gamer so I was interested in what you guys had to say. Everything Rob brought about was painfully true. I don't think Mac and gamer can really be used in the same sentence. Anyone who gets a Mac solely to game is just punishing themselves. I used a Mac all through the 90s and I used an Apple IIgs before that, so I've had a double dose of disappointment and lack of commitment from game developers. But during that time, I at least knew I'd probably be getting the best quality game possible. IIgs games were some of the best versions of games during the late 80s, being exceeded only by the Amiga in some cases. And Mac games were far better than DOS and Windows counterparts during the early to mid-90s. Plus, the Mac had some excellent shareware titles and developer support from great companies like Ambrosia. But as the years went on, PCs became more and more powerful with dedicated graphics cards and newer versions of Windows that closed the gap between the advantages of Mac OS over Windows. Sure you'd get the occasional gems and Mac exclusives, but you constantly had to wait and hope games would get ported to the Mac and then hope it wasn't some stripped down port. I encountered a lot of disappoints with ports being planned and getting canceling or missing key features, like Neverwinter Nights not including the Aurora Toolset. I even got desperate in the mid-90s and bought a DOS compatibility card for my Mac just to play a couple games I didn't want to miss. But over the years, I got fed up with missing out on so many good games. By 2004, I gave up on Mac gaming and built my own PC. Cost and games were the key factors. I could build a $1000 PC to play the latest games instead of buying a $1500 Mac, probably more like $2500 if I wanted one capable of playing any high-end game with decent graphics. Sometimes you have to break your loyalty and move on. I still think Macs are great systems, just not if you like games. Because for every game that ends up on the Mac, there will be 10 others you wish you could play.

And I think those ports from EA are just going to end up hurting Mac gaming. The games are decent, but they're not really games you wouldn't want to miss out on. I've been spoiled with lots of PC games lately, and I never had any desire to buy those. Maybe Mac gamers will be desperate and get them anyways, but I think they want games like Bioshock or Half-Life 2. They want they A list titles, not the B and C list. So I can't see these games selling very well and EA will end up reinforcing its already bad impression of Mac gaming. Besides Maxis titles, I can't think of any games that have been ported to the Mac except for a few token games. And then the consensus from big game companies will be "See? We told you Macs aren't good for games." That's why so many Mac users were incensed and felt betrayed and took it personally that Bungie, THE biggest Mac game company went to Microsoft, Apple's arch rival. I think that effectively killed Mac gaming. Besides Blizzard, Maxis, and the efforts of Macsoft and Aspyr to port games, there isn't a whole lot. Bungie was kind of like the symbol of Mac gaming, and when they showed the very first preview for Halo at Macworld Expo, Mac users were excited and proud.

vista only gives the appearance of more speed by using a method called time tradeoff

vista uses a lot of resources and takes much longer to startup and has much more hard drive activity at bootup because it is spending time loading those programs into memory

a hard drive reads at around 50-70MB/s

memory reads at about 8000MB/s

so because of this, vista turns almost all programs into startup items and loads them into memory, so that large program is not opening any faster, what is happening is that instead of spending 10 seconds loading when you double click on it, it spend those 10 seconds at startup loading it into memory

but there is a problem with this feature (not microsofts fault as it is impossible to work around)

because vista has so many running processes and heavy memory usage at all times, when you open a large program such as maya 3d and load up a very complex scene and also open photoshop and (as anyone with maya usually also has photoshop opened (when I use maya, i will have photoshop cs3, both use a ton of memory especially when working with large images and multiple layers.)

since windows tried to give extra memory to active programs, you get lag with it moves the preloaded programs from memory into pagefile )

when using vista, (I have 3GB memory) after some time with maya and photoshop, almost all of the memory will be in use and the page file will also get quite full. once vista starts unloading from memory, to page file, running programs will lag, then when you close those programs, vista will load away for a while as it clears the pagefile of the programs you just closed and then transfers back to memory.

I have vista on a 20GB partition and windows xp on a 45GB partition

xp boots in about 17 seconds from when the power button is pressed, to when the pc is 100% ready to use, (at startup windows xp only uses around 60-70MB of ram (PS windows xp will boot with 16MB ram also (I tried it on a old pc and after about 10 minutes, it was ready to use) (try doing that with vista)

also look at vista requirements for games

you will usually see things like (for even older games)

memory: 512MB(windows xp), 768MB for vista

1.5GB, 2GB windows vista

on the toms hardware benchmarks for vista, they even said, now new version of windows has ever given more application performance

I game a lot on windows xp, games run smoother and load faster, especially battlefield 2, maps load in almost half the time in windows xp compared to vista (in windows xp, the verifying client data only takes about 5 seconds, in vista, it can take up to a minute)

and vista doesn't seem any more secure than windows xp. as vista is still falling for the same exploits as windows xp

if you heat to a crack website using IE (instead of firefox), both xp and vista fall for the same exploit (even with all of vistas security features enabled, the spyware installs it's self within seconds, and both oses get the same taskbar popup telling you to buy some scam of a spyware remover to remove the infection

(i'm not dumb enough to use IE but on many of the computers I fix, the user would report going to a crack website or a porn website on their vista laptop, then suddenly the desktop background changes, then they get a taskbar popup telling them that they may be infected with spyware)

if vista has any more security, it certainly isn't helping users with common exploits

(windows update never even fixes these exploits also (if they do, it just seems to get exploited hours later)

while gaming on the mac can easily be done if batter drivers and better support for gaming was to come, but it just is not going to happen,

macs just cost too much and are too expensive to maintain, and there not as easy to upgrade as a pc.

while gamers will spend a lot on their pc's, none of them have the money to buy a new mac every year or 2.