Ideal PowerMac G5 for World of Warcraft?

Later this year, I am debating switching my PC out for a G5 tower. The Athlon XP box is a little long in the tooth, and rather than another MB/CPU/RAM/HD upgrade, I thought about trying a Mac for once.

I don't play a huge amount of PC games, but I would like to continue to be able to play World of Warcraft. I don't want to have to gimp it, either, I'd like all the options turned up.

I will also use the machine pretty heavily for dumping and editing home movies.

Would I be fine with the single 1.8 ghz processor, or do I need duellies? Also, how much RAM?

Thanks in advance!

I should think a single processor 1.8 will be good enough so long as you bump it up with as much ram as you can afford, about 1GB would be good. I think you will be surprised how fast a 1.8 G5 processor is as it's not really possible to compare it with intel specs.

Mr Bobbins said:

I should think a single processor 1.8 will be good enough so long as you bump it up with as much ram as you can afford, about 1GB would be good. I think you will be surprised how fast a 1.8 G5 processor is as it's not really possible to compare it with intel specs.

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Thanks, and I had one more question; I currently have a Radeon 9800 Pro that is the one good part of my PC that I'd like to stick in the Mac. Can I pop it in a new G5 and expect it to work, or do I have to prep it with a new BIOS first? I vaguely remember reading somewhere that you need to do this, but I could be thinking of older Macs.

Thanks again!!

World of Warcraft does'nt need much to run. You can get an old used G4 off of ebay that would run it just fine.

archer75 said:

World of Warcraft does'nt need much to run. You can get an old used G4 off of ebay that would run it just fine.

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It doesn't run that well on my mac mini, If he wants it to run at least as good as his PC with a Radeon 9800 Pro, he is going to want a G5 Powermac. If you get a G5 Powermac, spend the extra cash to get the dual CPU.

I don't know about converting a PC R9800 Pro to work with a mac, I would be interested to know if you find anything out on that because I have the same card in my PC.

There is a bit of a difference between a mac mini and the g4's in that the mini's have a slow laptop size harddrive in them. But lets face it, if you have got the money who wouldn't buy a top of the range G5. I'm not sure if it would be necessary but it would be nice.

Mr Bobbins said:

I'm not sure if it would be necessary but it would be nice.

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I think it is necessary in order to play with all the visual effects turned up like he mentioned he wanted.

Just make sure your mini has 1gb of ram. Others have reported WoW running just fine on a mini with that.

Does anybody here have WoW with an iMac G5 and can say what settings works best on?

I'l get it this friday and i'l tell ya how it works

Considering that OSX can use up to 512MB of ram just with a start up I should imagine that archer75 is right. Just give it lots of ram.

no point to single 1.8 powermac

get an imac g5 with about a gig of RAM you will not be able to use
your 9800 radeon on your powermac, as it only accepts one kind of radeon card and pretty much guaranteed that it wont be yours. the 5200 on the imac is all you will need for WOW. The only benefit of going Imac to Powermac in a single 1.8 is a better graphics card.

Ps
Bugger WOW and play neverwinter nights its better and you dont have to pay a monthly fee!

I'm also pretty interested in putting my Radeon 9800 pro from my PC into my mac ... anybody know if it'll work or would if blowup in my face killing everything and burning down my house?

uncle sam said:

Ps
Bugger WOW and play neverwinter nights its better and you dont have to pay a monthly fee!

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While I do feel WoW is a crap game and Neverwinter Nights is better, it is NOT a mmorpg.

What's a mmorpg ?

Yes, d-funct i would be careful by just putting in a graphics card from a Mac into a PC as I have heard that it can cause the crust of the earth to open up and swallow everything within a two mile radius, so I would at the least WARN THE NEIGHBOUR'S and LOCAL POLICE before attempting such a reckless adventure.

d-funct said:

I'm also pretty interested in putting my Radeon 9800 pro from my PC into my mac ... anybody know if it'll work or would if blowup in my face killing everything and burning down my house?

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There is nothing fancy about the AGP or PCI-X sockets in the PowerMac so hardware wise nothing will "blowup" but I've not heard good things about the ATI retail drivers.

The main difference between the retail cards and the Mac specific ones is the output sockets, i.e the Mac versions come with the Apple Cinema screen socket which contains power/on-off/usb within them.

Amen-Moses

then would'nt the board try to push power though connectors that should'nt be having power pushed though them?

I am pretty sure the differences between the PC versions and Mac versions of video cards are more than just the outputs.

d-funct said:

then would'nt the board try to push power though connectors that should'nt be having power pushed though them?

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Eh? The retail boards don't have ADC connectors whereas the Mac versions do. If you are using a retail card to drive a standard VGA or DVI monitor then as long as it is supported by the retail drivers (download-able from the Apple site) then it should work fine.

Amen-Moses

mynameis said:

I am pretty sure the differences between the PC versions and Mac versions of video cards are more than just the outputs.

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Like? AFAIK the VGA and PCI-X slots in the PowerMacs are standard slots so as long as the drivers support them they should work fine.

i.e:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/drivers/atiradeondrivers.html

Amen-Moses

Why would anyone pay $300 for a mac Radeon 9800 Pro compared to $200 for a Radeon 9800 Pro? I have heard that the ROM on the board is different, It would physically fit but it wouldn't work.