Ideal PowerMac G5 for World of Warcraft?

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kabwon

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where can i get games for mac? i can get any in the local computer shops, and didnt see any in the local apple store.... my only option is illegal copies.... where do i getem :p :p heheheh

or if any1 knows of a place in cape town (which i doubt) lemme know. thanks
 
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d-funct

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Amen-Moses said:
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
Click to expand...

I remember reading somewhere that said that the ADC connector provided not only video but also the power to the monitor cutting out the need for another cable ... now if thats true where is the extra power coming from?
 
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kabwon said:
where can i get games for mac? i can get any in the local computer shops, and didnt see any in the local apple store.... my only option is illegal copies.... where do i getem :p :p heheheh

or if any1 knows of a place in cape town (which i doubt) lemme know. thanks
Click to expand...
I should think your best bet would be to order them online. :eek:
 
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d-funct

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Ok I just sent a mail to ATI asking if I could or not :mail:

I will post their reply here for all to see :batman:
 
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Danster

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kabwon said:
where can i get games for mac? i can get any in the local computer shops, and didnt see any in the local apple store.... my only option is illegal copies.... where do i getem :p :p heheheh

or if any1 knows of a place in cape town (which i doubt) lemme know. thanks
Click to expand...

try online eBay, play.com, apple.com etc.

I tried downloading games but ended up buying em

It's not worth it in my opinion
 
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d-funct said:
I remember reading somewhere that said that the ADC connector provided not only video but also the power to the monitor cutting out the need for another cable ... now if thats true where is the extra power coming from?
Click to expand...

The power for the ADC connector (and hence th emonitor itself) comes from the AGP socket. In PowerMacs the AGP socket has extra oomph from the power supply lines, i.e they are higher current rating than standard to allow for Mac specific cards.

Anywho, I've been doing a liitle more digging and it appears that the hardware is pretty much identical between the Mac specific cards and the standard retail but the firmware (i.e software on the card) is different, this was bleeding obvious when I thought about it for more than 5 seconds as cards intended for PC use support and are tailored for DirectX whereas the Mac cards are tailored for OpenGL so it makes sense that they would supply the firmware to best suit the application.

I suppose the real winners in all this are the Linux crowd as they can put either card in their machines and just drive it as required, a Mac user would have to source the firmware from somewhere (I couldn't find it myself) to use a PC card in their machine and a PC user is limited to meagre OpenGL support if they opt for the PC specific cards.

Personally I'm waiting a few months for the Mac X800 retail card to comedown to a reasonable price (and 300 quid ain't reasonable in my book!).

Amen-Moses
 
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Amen-Moses said:
I suppose the real winners in all this are the Linux crowd as they can put either card in their machines and just drive it as required
Click to expand...

Are you sure? I don't think the firmware has to do with what operating system you are running but more with what platform you are running, either x86 or PPC. In x86 the firmware would need to be able to interface with a BIOS where in an Apple PPC system the firmware needs to deal with the Mac ROM.
 
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d-funct

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Amen-Moses said:
The power for the ADC connector (and hence th emonitor itself) comes from the AGP socket. In PowerMacs the AGP socket has extra oomph from the power supply lines, i.e they are higher current rating than standard to allow for Mac specific cards.

Amen-Moses
Click to expand...

Thus justifying me saying ... "would it kill my machine?" :p still waiting on the reply from ATI, if I ever get one I'll make sure I post it up here :)
 
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WilliS

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hey guys... i havent posted in a loooong time.. due to playing WoW haha... but anyway, im playing World of Warcraft on my dual 2.0ghz G5 with radeon 9600 pro (i think it might be a 64 meg card? god i hope not), with 512 mb of ram (yes i know... dual g5..512..***?... i havent gotten around to buying more ram and its never had a problem handling things..)

but anyway heres the low down on the game.

i probably could use a video card update, and could use 1-2gigs of ram, but without them the game runs just fine. i will say this though... i play on Arthas server, very populated (always HIGH at server login) and i play a paladin... so when i go into ironforge, and there are 300+ people doing whatever they do, the lag is unbeliveable.... its not latency problems with connection, and i dont think its video lag because i see no real difference when the video settings are all the way down (which i put on because on all high settings in ironforge you basically cant move). there is some sort of loading issue with ironforge... the lag is somewhere dealing with the hard drive not the video... which sucks, because the only time i lag is in ironforge and an upgrade isnt going to fix that for me.

so thats the grim side of it... its not always lagged... but what happens is, the second you run into an open room with a ton of people in it, immediatly you are hit with processing lag which tries to load every player and all their gear or something... its not a video issue, its very much a hard drive thing...and im pretty sure if youve been playing on a populated server as alliance, you know exactly what im talking about.

my computer runs the game fine although i would like a newer video card so i can feel comfortable with my video settings on high and not lagging when i get jumped by a horde or whatever.


basically i dont see you getting around ironforge lag... and you will hate running through it with any system... its a blizzard issue im sure they are up to their neck in problems with....but a 1.8ghz computer with anything better than my 9600 pro card from when apple first made the g5's will run it just fine.


and for anyone reading this, dispite my gripes against some of the lag in the most populated zone in the game, buy world of warcraft if you can get your hands on it... theres a reason its sold out everywhere and blizzard stopped making copies of it to sell.... they broke all sorts of records on release and its such a ton of fun to play they already filled their quota for server limits on some of them and cant keep making copies of the game because they dont have enough servers to support all the people wanting to play!... been playing since november 23rd and im a lvl 54 paladin and having lots of fun...come play alliance on arthas and send me a /tell ;)
 
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More ram will help with Iron Forge, I have a GB in my PC, I can go through Iron Forge with little trouble. Overall playablity of WoW would improve by more with a ram upgrade than it would with a video card upgrade.

My mac mini can run WoW, even with 512mb it is playable at 1024x768 with no visual goodies. I choose to play on my PC since 1600x1200(my monitor's native resolution) and most of the visual effects turned on is nice.

I am level 49 Paladin on Bleeding Hollow, I have been pissed off lately since the last time I played I was getting corpse camped by a group of Horde, I died a lot, then the bug that doesn't allow you to resurrect kicked in. It is amazing how 4 people will take 30 mins out of their day to camp my corpse, when it provides the no benefit at all.
 
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d-funct said:
Thus justifying me saying ... "would it kill my machine?" :p still waiting on the reply from ATI, if I ever get one I'll make sure I post it up here :)
Click to expand...

No it wouldn't, the non-Mac card just won't draw as much current from the interface as a Mac one, all the voltages are the same so it won't damage machine or card.

Amen-Moses
 
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mynameis said:
Are you sure? I don't think the firmware has to do with what operating system you are running but more with what platform you are running, either x86 or PPC. In x86 the firmware would need to be able to interface with a BIOS where in an Apple PPC system the firmware needs to deal with the Mac ROM.
Click to expand...

The BIOS doesn't contain any knowledge of video cards, it contins simple stuff like I/O timings for AGP/PCI interfaces. Those are supposedly iron-cast specifications that should not change regardless of what machine hardware is being used (just as Firewire/USB/Serial/Parallel specs don't change).

As I said in theory the cards should be interchangeable but in practice, with the raging war between Nvidia & ATI, the cards are optimised for the different OSs (Direct-X in particular).

Amen-Moses
 
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onryou

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mynameis said:
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.
Click to expand...

WoW isn't optimized to use 2 processors, and it will only use one. So, there is no reason to get a dual processor just for WoW.

onryou
 
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onryou

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WilliS said:
hey guys... i havent posted in a loooong time.. due to playing WoW haha... but anyway, im playing World of Warcraft on my dual 2.0ghz G5 with radeon 9600 pro (i think it might be a 64 meg card? god i hope not), with 512 mb of ram (yes i know... dual g5..512..***?... i havent gotten around to buying more ram and its never had a problem handling things..)

but anyway heres the low down on the game.

i probably could use a video card update, and could use 1-2gigs of ram, but without them the game runs just fine. i will say this though... i play on Arthas server, very populated (always HIGH at server login) and i play a paladin... so when i go into ironforge, and there are 300+ people doing whatever they do, the lag is unbeliveable.... its not latency problems with connection, and i dont think its video lag because i see no real difference when the video settings are all the way down (which i put on because on all high settings in ironforge you basically cant move). there is some sort of loading issue with ironforge... the lag is somewhere dealing with the hard drive not the video... which sucks, because the only time i lag is in ironforge and an upgrade isnt going to fix that for me.

so thats the grim side of it... its not always lagged... but what happens is, the second you run into an open room with a ton of people in it, immediatly you are hit with processing lag which tries to load every player and all their gear or something... its not a video issue, its very much a hard drive thing...and im pretty sure if youve been playing on a populated server as alliance, you know exactly what im talking about.

my computer runs the game fine although i would like a newer video card so i can feel comfortable with my video settings on high and not lagging when i get jumped by a horde or whatever.


basically i dont see you getting around ironforge lag... and you will hate running through it with any system... its a blizzard issue im sure they are up to their neck in problems with....but a 1.8ghz computer with anything better than my 9600 pro card from when apple first made the g5's will run it just fine.


and for anyone reading this, dispite my gripes against some of the lag in the most populated zone in the game, buy world of warcraft if you can get your hands on it... theres a reason its sold out everywhere and blizzard stopped making copies of it to sell.... they broke all sorts of records on release and its such a ton of fun to play they already filled their quota for server limits on some of them and cant keep making copies of the game because they dont have enough servers to support all the people wanting to play!... been playing since november 23rd and im a lvl 54 paladin and having lots of fun...come play alliance on arthas and send me a /tell ;)
Click to expand...


IF LAGS for EVERYONE on ANY computer. (mac or windows boxes) Ram seems to help out the most with IF lag, but that's just my opinion.
Also, I play on Arthas, but I play a horde char. (foreals lvl 10)

onryou
 
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