Somewhat inspired by this recent thread, I'd like to ask advice on possibly buying a Mac Pro or if I should stay with my current iMac and wait for something better from Apple.
Note that I have no interest in PC's whether home-built or not. That's primarily because I want to run Mac OS X. I know that means I'll have to cough up more money on hardware to get comparable specs. And I'm willing to do that - up to some limit that I haven't really decided upon yet.
So is anyone here running one of the newer Mac Pros? How did you customize if? In particular what video card did you purchase? Are you satisfied with the performance and would you recommend it to others? If you are running an older Mac Pro, I'd like to hear about it too.
I'm asking all of this because I'm not really sure if it's worth it at all trying to get good performance for games on a Mac. It seems to me that Apple has neglected gamers recently. I don't understand why and I think it's a mistake of them. For example, the current iMacs have quite poor video cards as far as I can tell. And there is no possibility to upgrade them.
Almost true. But the last smiley should be a happy one instead. Because a Mac user is always happy even if he knows that more programs are available for Windows than for Mac OS X. :)
Make sure you can get the video card you want. There's not nearly as many options for the Mac as there are for the PC.
Yea, it's actually one of the main reasons I am thinking of buying a Mac Pro. None of the other Macs let you choose video card. Mac Pro gives the option of choosing NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT which I believe is one of best cards available today. Quite pricy though.
Yea, it's actually one of the main reasons I am thinking of buying a Mac Pro. None of the other Macs let you choose video card. Mac Pro gives the option of choosing NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT which I believe is one of best cards available today. Quite pricy though.
Damn you Bam, now you got me eyeing Macs!!!
edit: Looking at the design and specs... I would say something reallly bad for this forum, but yeah... *drool*
I thought Macs were now capable of running windows/win appz through Bootcamp or something? (I didn't keep up with info, could be so very wrong).
yes.. it emulates a bios for windows.. so you can run it on the mac..
some "hackers" has done the same thing vice versa .. emulating that efi thing a mac needs.. so you can run macos on many intel pc .. if you try to get stuff that is also build in intel macs... there are forums about "homebrew" macs. http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showforum=137
I don't know how legal it is to use such a hack if you buy a version of macos .. I'm definitly interested in it when I get more time soon .. :)
I don't know how legal it is to use such a hack if you buy a version of macos .. I'm definitly interested in it when I get more time soon .. :)
I believe the license for OS X says that you are not allowed to run it on any non-Apple hardware. But things start getting complicated since you are not actually running that version you purchased on non-Apple hardware. I guess one problem for Apple is that a large part of their OS is open source.
Apple is in a peculiar situation, I think. Their most valuable product is OS X in my opinion. But that's not what they make money on. They make money on their hardware, their design, and their image. I guess that's why they need such a license.
ok .. I guess they would really dislike it when companys would start selling self build computers with macos .. but I guess nothing will happen to you if you do it at home and you got a license .9
One thing though, no matter what you do, WoW will always run with a higher fps under Windows/bootcamp. Probably a question of the Mac drivers not being as good as the Windows drivers. Or it could be that the OpenGL version of WoW isn't as optimized as the d3d version, I don't know.
I had been playing WoW on a G4 Mac Mini. My frame rate almost never got above 10, and was often 1 or 2 fps, especially in cities. BGs were an experience: "oh, there's a horde, oops, I'm dead". And I had to run with all the graphics options turned way down. I just got a middle of the road iMac - 20" monitor, 1 GB RAM (2nd GB coming). True, it's a built in video card, not upgradeable. Still, it was a lot cheaper than the Mac Pro, and I'm getting frame rates well in excess of 30 most of the time. And that's with most of the graphics options turned all the way up. It's like playing a completely different game. For example, I never knew that, to a ghost, the world looks gray and cold. I never before saw things at the distance I do now. When I move, it's not a series of jerky individual snapshots of the world, it's a smooth rendering of the changing view. I love it. Would a Mac Pro be better? Probably, but it will also be at least twice the price. <shrug>
Oh, one thing... if you buy a Mac, do not buy additional RAM from Apple. Buy it from a third party. I like Other World Computing. I haven't checked video card prices, but it may be a good idea to get that from OWC, too.
I should say that I have an iMac 24", 2GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT (128 MB) right now. WoW is definitely playable on that machine. But I can't use the highest video settings and I don't get great FPS. So I'd like something better. :)
It sounds likely that the OpenGL implementation is not quite as optimized as the DirectX one. Or maybe DirectX in general is just better with most video cards? I have no idea. But overall I assume that Blizzard puts more effort into optimizing and testing the Windows client than the Mac client. Not surprising since there are probably 10 times more customers on Windows. :D
Could be a driver issue cause running WoW in openGL mode in Linux netted me an FPS increase over XP
I've heard that from others too. Though I assume it doesn't necessarily have to be due to OpenGL vs DirectX. Many other factors play a role when it comes to FPS. How does the OpenGL mode in Windows compare to the DirectX mode, btw?
I've heard that from others too. Though I assume it doesn't necessarily have to be due to OpenGL vs DirectX. Many other factors play a role when it comes to FPS. How does the OpenGL mode in Windows compare to the DirectX mode, btw?
As far as I know a mac-mini only has onboard graphics... no wonder wow is unplayable with it ;)
It has onboard graphics, and shares memory with the CPU. The graphics hardware is pretty crappy. It did work okay until TBC came out.
I got the mini because it didn't seem worthwhile to upgrade my G4 Mac Pro after I tried to /follow a guildie from Menethil to Ironforge. I got killed twice, and both times he asked me why I stopped running. My response was "because I was dead". :-) In fact, I saw that I got jumped, and was dead before I could react. Similar to what was happening on the mini in TBC, although the mini was worse.
Mac Pro is the way to go.
For one thing the Jan rev has the latest of the Xeon processors that will be stable (not changing much) this year, where as the iMac line should change mid year (soon?) - look to Intel roadmaps on the web for chip revisions. Also consider that it now uses PCI Express 2.0, which isn't much now but will be for new video cards going forward. If you can't afford the 8800 GT graphics up front, you could get the upgrade kit later (though more expensive in total because it isn't upgraded from the standard card). Additional buying tips: get the base RAM and hard drive, then get additional RAM/larger disk from 3rd parties such as Kingston or Crucial (my personal favorites for RAM) or Western Digital etc for hard drives. Good RAM is important because the Mac Pro uses fully buffered dimms with heatsinks on them - some vendors don't supply the heatsinks!! The hard drives are very easy to put in, screw into the supplied drive trays and slide in - no cables. Since you have 4 drive bays you could slap in a drive dedicated to run Windows for when/if you need it; use Boot Camp for running Win natively or VMware Fusion or Parallels to run at the same time (nice for random Win only small apps). One could also research into the One 2.8GHz Quad-Core Xeon processor model and then add the 2nd chip later on (for the 8-core:Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core total) , I don't know though as I haven't seen the motherboards and it would void your warranty prob.
WoW on Windows does typically get better fps because of DirectX; on the Mac OS you're using OpenGL, optimizations have been made specifically in Leopard and on Intel that have helped a lot though. Depending upon which iMac you use now, PowerPC vs Intel, you would even see a difference just switching models. Blizzard also has a close relationship with Apple... we'll see even more improvements in 10.5.2 that will effect WoW.
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Note that I have no interest in PC's whether home-built or not. That's primarily because I want to run Mac OS X. I know that means I'll have to cough up more money on hardware to get comparable specs. And I'm willing to do that - up to some limit that I haven't really decided upon yet.
So is anyone here running one of the newer Mac Pros? How did you customize if? In particular what video card did you purchase? Are you satisfied with the performance and would you recommend it to others? If you are running an older Mac Pro, I'd like to hear about it too.
I'm asking all of this because I'm not really sure if it's worth it at all trying to get good performance for games on a Mac. It seems to me that Apple has neglected gamers recently. I don't understand why and I think it's a mistake of them. For example, the current iMacs have quite poor video cards as far as I can tell. And there is no possibility to upgrade them.
PC: Playing a game.
Mac: Oh? Which game are you playing?
PC: Any Goddamn game I feel like.
Mac: :(
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Curse PremiumYea, it's actually one of the main reasons I am thinking of buying a Mac Pro. None of the other Macs let you choose video card. Mac Pro gives the option of choosing NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT which I believe is one of best cards available today. Quite pricy though.
Damn you Bam, now you got me eyeing Macs!!!
edit: Looking at the design and specs... I would say something reallly bad for this forum, but yeah... *drool*
I thought Macs were now capable of running windows/win appz through Bootcamp or something? (I didn't keep up with info, could be so very wrong).
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Curse Premiumsome "hackers" has done the same thing vice versa .. emulating that efi thing a mac needs.. so you can run macos on many intel pc .. if you try to get stuff that is also build in intel macs... there are forums about "homebrew" macs. http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showforum=137
I don't know how legal it is to use such a hack if you buy a version of macos .. I'm definitly interested in it when I get more time soon .. :)
I believe the license for OS X says that you are not allowed to run it on any non-Apple hardware. But things start getting complicated since you are not actually running that version you purchased on non-Apple hardware. I guess one problem for Apple is that a large part of their OS is open source.
Apple is in a peculiar situation, I think. Their most valuable product is OS X in my opinion. But that's not what they make money on. They make money on their hardware, their design, and their image. I guess that's why they need such a license.
One thing though, no matter what you do, WoW will always run with a higher fps under Windows/bootcamp. Probably a question of the Mac drivers not being as good as the Windows drivers. Or it could be that the OpenGL version of WoW isn't as optimized as the d3d version, I don't know.
Oh, one thing... if you buy a Mac, do not buy additional RAM from Apple. Buy it from a third party. I like Other World Computing. I haven't checked video card prices, but it may be a good idea to get that from OWC, too.
It sounds likely that the OpenGL implementation is not quite as optimized as the DirectX one. Or maybe DirectX in general is just better with most video cards? I have no idea. But overall I assume that Blizzard puts more effort into optimizing and testing the Windows client than the Mac client. Not surprising since there are probably 10 times more customers on Windows. :D
That was the last nail in the coffin for Windows, and that was ~ a year ago
I've heard that from others too. Though I assume it doesn't necessarily have to be due to OpenGL vs DirectX. Many other factors play a role when it comes to FPS. How does the OpenGL mode in Windows compare to the DirectX mode, btw?
Never tried OpenGL while on Windows :/
It has onboard graphics, and shares memory with the CPU. The graphics hardware is pretty crappy. It did work okay until TBC came out.
I got the mini because it didn't seem worthwhile to upgrade my G4 Mac Pro after I tried to /follow a guildie from Menethil to Ironforge. I got killed twice, and both times he asked me why I stopped running. My response was "because I was dead". :-) In fact, I saw that I got jumped, and was dead before I could react. Similar to what was happening on the mini in TBC, although the mini was worse.
For one thing the Jan rev has the latest of the Xeon processors that will be stable (not changing much) this year, where as the iMac line should change mid year (soon?) - look to Intel roadmaps on the web for chip revisions. Also consider that it now uses PCI Express 2.0, which isn't much now but will be for new video cards going forward. If you can't afford the 8800 GT graphics up front, you could get the upgrade kit later (though more expensive in total because it isn't upgraded from the standard card). Additional buying tips: get the base RAM and hard drive, then get additional RAM/larger disk from 3rd parties such as Kingston or Crucial (my personal favorites for RAM) or Western Digital etc for hard drives. Good RAM is important because the Mac Pro uses fully buffered dimms with heatsinks on them - some vendors don't supply the heatsinks!! The hard drives are very easy to put in, screw into the supplied drive trays and slide in - no cables. Since you have 4 drive bays you could slap in a drive dedicated to run Windows for when/if you need it; use Boot Camp for running Win natively or VMware Fusion or Parallels to run at the same time (nice for random Win only small apps). One could also research into the One 2.8GHz Quad-Core Xeon processor model and then add the 2nd chip later on (for the 8-core:Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core total) , I don't know though as I haven't seen the motherboards and it would void your warranty prob.
WoW on Windows does typically get better fps because of DirectX; on the Mac OS you're using OpenGL, optimizations have been made specifically in Leopard and on Intel that have helped a lot though. Depending upon which iMac you use now, PowerPC vs Intel, you would even see a difference just switching models. Blizzard also has a close relationship with Apple... we'll see even more improvements in 10.5.2 that will effect WoW.