Gaming?

Ok so no matter what when I get done with school I will be buying apples!
I am just curious about serious gaming. I see "weaker" games have mac versions you know like football games and little things like that.
But what about serious games? Crysis, Bio Shock, FEAR, **** Gate London. Games that require some more serious processing power.

First off do imacs have the hardware to run high end games well? The processor looks strong, plenty of ram available, and a decent graphics card. I am not real educated on the hardware right now so what do ya'll think?

Second I know you can install Windows and run windows on your mac. Is it stable enough and powerful enough to run windows to play these high end games?

If anyone games on your mac I would love to hear from you! Thanks

If you want a gaming machine, a Windows computer is still your best bet.
That or a PS3/Xbox/Wii.
Don't get a Mac, since you have a big interest in gaming.

I don't know if you've ever been a hardcore PC gamer, but generally, PC gamers have very high end rigs with dedicated hardware. I used to spend $400 - $500 or so just on the Graphics card alone on each upgrade.

The iMac is a very capable machine, and can run most Mac games well, however it cannot be compared to a high-end gaming PC at all. For a start, the GPU is pretty pathetic - the 2400XT is real budget stuff (frankly awful) and even the 2600pro falls way behind the 8600GT from nVidia and is literally 2 generations behind the 8800GTS (needed for games like Crysis) in terms of actual performance. GPU makers have for years made low-end attractive chips like the 2400XT, but most hardcore gamers understand that these often are slower than the previous two generations top end ships were.

All of that is said in the context of high-end PC gaming, which is a lot more demanding on hardware than many people realise. Games like Orange Box, Crysis, CoD4 and BioShock won't look as they were intended to look, even on the top end iMac, and are best played on hardware costing many thousands of dollars.

So, I completely agree with D3v1L80Y, get console to play games. I have a 360, it's great, and I don't miss PC gaming at all now.

if you don't mind some lower quality, then ya, a mac will work. I play FEAR, Halo, C&C Generals and BF2142 on my MBP. Works just fine. But my xbox360 and ps2 are even better.

my mbp and imac run windows via bootcamp and i play all my games on that.

if you dont want to run bootcamp and run windows on your mac. then dont buy a mac for gaming unless you like the "softer" games.

mac pros are pretty capable when equipped correctly.

I Can Has Mac! said:

mac pros are pretty capable when equipped correctly.

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yea, you can expand the graphics card in them to perform like a high end pc and then play the pc games via bootcamp or parallels or vmware

Mac_OS said:

yea, you can expand the graphics card in them to perform like a high end pc and then play the pc games via bootcamp or parallels or vmware

Click to expand...

That's true, providing that the video card you choose has a Mac OS driver available for it. And if not, well then you sort of defeated the point of buying a Mac Pro - because you can certainly still use it with Windows, but that makes your Mac Pro a very, very expensive Windows machine.

So, my take is this: I don't know if you all sit in front of your gaming machine and use it for all of your computing tasks, but I certainly don't. My primary computing device is my laptop. I don't want to play games on it for the most part, because it's just not ergonomically convenient for that purpose. So, I say it makes sense to maintain a Windows desktop for playing games and a Mac laptop for everything else.

If you need one machine and gaming is a high priority, well then, by all means stick with a Windows machine. Gaming is simply not a Mac strength.

I Can Has Mac! said:

mac pros are pretty capable when equipped correctly.

Click to expand...

Except that you can get a pc that will perform comparably while playing games for cheaper than the Mac Pro. Remember, processing power isn't as important as GPU power for games.

And a $2k custom built gaming rig? That's going to be amazingly fast.

Well I want a Mac for all the reasons any one would want a mac. Video/Photo editing, ease of use, ect... And I am freaking tired of using sorry behind windows error this error that BAH! But I love video games and especially PC video games and since you can run Windows via Boot Camp I was just wanting to check and see if the IMac or MBP would run them decently. Its not very clear on what the verdict is. I may end up having to keep a gaming rig and having a Mac for everything else which wouldn't be so bad it'd make the gamer more efficient the only thing being on it is games and a web browser.

So whats the verdict?

Can an Imac run modern games well via Boot camp or in Native OSX?

zman2408 said:

Can an Imac run modern games well via Boot camp or in Native OSX?

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Yes, but when the video card starts to show its age, there is no upgrade option as there would be on most mid-range PCs that are price-comparable to the iMac.

This is why the majority of folks are recommending that you maintain a Windows machine for gaming purposes.

zman2408 said:

Can an Imac run modern games well via Boot camp or in Native OSX?

Click to expand...

No, I disagree with cwa on this. An iMac will not run a modern game 'well', i.e. at full native screen rez, with AA, AF and full details. No. The video card is already a year out of date, at least. The 7900GTX for example, is more than twice as fast as the 2400XT

A 2400XT is about 15% of the speed on an 8800 and a 2600 Pro (the 'pro' monicker is a joke) is only about 25% faster than that.

You're talking about 15 frames per second on a game like UT3 or Crysis. Top end PC games are very demanding, and have been since the late 1990's

This is Rainbow Six Vegas, a game that's over 6 months old and the resolution here is 1280*1024 (slightly higher than an iMac screen)

(fps)

ATI Radeon HD 2900 - 83.9 (Top of the range PC)
GeForce 8800GTS - 78
GF 7950 GT - 56
Radeon X1950 Pro - 44.4
GF 7900 GS - 43.5 (one year old top end PC)
GF 8600 GTS - 39.2
Radeon X1950 GT - 39.2 (Gaming PC)
Radeon HD 2600 XT - 37.4
GF 8600 GT - 32.9 (MacBook Pro)
GF 7600 GT - 30.7 (2 year old PC/Best Mac Pro)
Radeon X1650 XT - 28.2
Radeon HD 2600 Pro - 25.2 (iMac - high end)
Radeon HD 2400 XT - 14.5 (iMac - low end)

15 fps is unplayable. Most PC gamers would have at LEAST a 7600GT, even budget PC builders.

If you're happy to run these games at 800*600, with medium settings, then great, it'll be fine, but otherwise the iMac doesn't make the grade gaming wise.

Zoolook said:

No, I disagree with cwa on this. An iMac will not run a modern game 'well', i.e. at full native screen rez, with AA, AF and full details. No.

A 2400XT is about 15% of the speed on an 8800 and a 2600 Pro (the 'pro' monicker is a joke) is only about 25% faster than that.

Click to expand...

You're right, I take that back. The 2400XT will play modern games, but you won't be able to have the eye candy turned on (in other words, it won't play them "well").

I updated my post, as embeded image didn't work.

zman2408 said:

....Its not very clear on what the verdict is.

Click to expand...

I think it has been made very clear.
And you seem to have already grasped it yourself:

I may end up having to keep a gaming rig and having a Mac for everything else

Click to expand...

You want gaming, then you don't want a Mac for that... you don't want to use any of the options for installing Windows on your Mac for that......

you want a nicely equipped, Native-Windows machine... not a Mac.

Well thats not so bad. From what I've read a Mac stays usable for many years as opposed to a couple with a windows machine. So I could use the Mac for 5 or 6 years maybe/hopefully and buy a high end Windows machine that will last 2 to 3 ish w/ maybe 1 card upgrade in there.
On the bright side I won't have to put SILLY WILLY NILLY OLD windows on my new shiny Mac haha!

I am the same way, and truly did not want to buy another PC. I went the Mac Pro route, and just installed Boot Camp. I use Boot Camp to play the PC games, and for EVERYTHING else I use the Mac side. I setup with the Mac Radeon X1900 and I am scoring a 5.8 out of a possible 5.9 on the Windows Vista Experience index. It runs BioShock and the very graphics intensive Oblivion very well.

zman2408 said:

Well thats not so bad. From what I've read a Mac stays usable for many years as opposed to a couple with a windows machine. So I could use the Mac for 5 or 6 years maybe/hopefully and buy a high end Windows machine that will last 2 to 3 ish w/ maybe 1 card upgrade in there.
On the bright side I won't have to put SILLY WILLY NILLY OLD windows on my new shiny Mac haha!

Click to expand...

This is only true if you use the Mac typically Mac based applications. Now that you can run Windows on a Mac, this situation may change - and certainly if people want to run DX10 games on their Macs, they'll have to get a Mac Pro and keep the CPU/RAM and GPU up to date.

Obviously a high end PC' will have to be updated regularly, to remain 'highend' - and far more regularly than 2 - 3 years. My PC CPU upgrade path went like this

CPUs
1997 - P 166MMX (overclocked to 208 mhz)
1999 - PII 400mhz (overclocked to 500mhz)
2001 - 1.4ghz AMD
2002 - XP2000 AMD (1.6ghz)
2004 - AMD64 3400+ (2.2ghz)

GPUs
1997 - Righteous Voodoo 4MB
1998 - Righteous Voodoo 2, SLI, 2x8MB
1999 - Voodoo 3
2000 - Geforce 2
2002 - Geforce 4 Ti 4400
2004 - Geforce FX5900 Ultra

RAM
1997 - 32MB then 64MB (Windows 95)
1998 - 128MB (Windows 98)
2000 - 256MB (Windows ME)
2001 - 512MB (Windows XP)
2003 - 1GB
2005 - 2GB

In 2005, I gave up on the PC race and went portable, and in early 2006, went to the Mac. However, you can see the above trend. In some ways, my 2004 desktop PC is far more powerful than my current MacBook, especially in the GFX area. Even though the GeForce FX was in some ways dissapointing (compared to the 9800Pro) it was light-years ahead of something like the GMA950.

Zoolook said:

ATI Radeon HD 2900 - 83.9 (Top of the range PC)
GeForce 8800GTS - 78
GF 7950 GT - 56
Radeon X1950 Pro - 44.4
GF 7900 GS - 43.5 (one year old top end PC)
GF 8600 GTS - 39.2
Radeon X1950 GT - 39.2 (Gaming PC)
Radeon HD 2600 XT - 37.4
GF 8600 GT - 32.9 (MacBook Pro)
GF 7600 GT - 30.7 (2 year old PC/Best Mac Pro)
Radeon X1650 XT - 28.2
Radeon HD 2600 Pro - 25.2 (iMac - high end)
Radeon HD 2400 XT - 14.5 (iMac - low end)

Click to expand...

How about the nVidia Quadro FX 4500 card that is an option on the Mac Pro? How does that card compare?

Neptune said:

How about the nVidia Quadro FX 4500 card that is an option on the Mac Pro? How does that card compare?

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The Quadro line of cards is geared more toward engineering and professional applications (like CAD/CAM) rather than gaming.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/quadrofx.html