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Time to switch?

B

brentsg

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 8, 2003
Messages
1,750
I'm giving serious consideration to ditching my current FX-55 setup and buying a new PowerMac G5 dual 2.5 rig. Since I use my PowerBook nearly daily, I have no reservations about the OSX platform, nor would I miss many PC apps that I now use.

What I am concerned about is PC gaming. 99% of the time I do my gaming on consoles, but I do dig the big releases like Doom3, Half-Life 2 and such. Most of the PC games I play eventually make it to the Mac, but not all.

Anyone else go down this road with similar reservations? Happy? Regret it?

Thanks for any feedback.

B
 
i don't think they make games like d3 and hl2 for them. till they do, i wont switch. i game. =)
 
well they are working on it...

I dont know about all this...

I would love to have a g5 i would kill for one... but Id still keep my gaming machine.
 
if you get rid of your FX55 box for a slower g5...i will be more than happy to buy your FX55 box... :D
 
I did...Half-Life 2 is coming to the Xbox, and Doom 3 is coming to both Mac and Xbox. I prefer consoles anyway, because they are a controlled environment with standards (like Mac...all games are made to at least run on the latest iMac, they ship on DVDs, etc). I don't play games for superficial reasons like game resolution and AA (I figure that will only be warranted when games are cinematic enough and move to HD), I just want to play the game right away and be immersed in its content, like a DVD movie. The only games I'm concerned about not experiencing are S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and BioShock. I've built a legacy PC for the old PC games, back in the glory days when PC gaming reigned.

So far I don't regret this move, although I have complained about the actual unit itself. But the software platform is second-to-none. This is where productivity is at, headache-free. I shake my head when I see my PC enthusiast friends still hacking and tweaking the crap out of Windows, constantly babysitting their machine, falling prey to/paranoid of security breaches, and just having all sorts of issues. Some people like that though, it makes them feel more "intelligent". I'd like to say I'll never understand, but I've been there myself

PCs are cheaper and faster though, can't really deny that. However, the platform is what I'd call "slop", to put it nicely. But Macs are staying competitive, productivity must be acceptable if a staggering amount of pro work is still done on them. So in reality, the speed will be absolutely acceptable, and the environment is just phenomenal. I don't know who I'm convincing, you already have a powerbook. I guess this is just a masturbatory rant.
 
lol.

macs are for work... thats why the super majority of the audio industry uses them, all sorts of digitial imagaging artists, etc.

pcs are for play, thats why everyone has one and that's why the os is so shotty

keep an sff lying around for play (i have one, works great for hl2) and the dual g5 for work. or realize that not playing a specific game isn't the end of the world and doesn't make you any less of a nerd, and stick with the games that come out for your xbox or whatever.

if i was seriously considering dropping a few grand on a dual g5, I'd not let something trivial like a game stop me from embracing the pinical of apple development.

-esr
 
esr2 said:
lol.

if i was seriously considering dropping a few grand on a dual g5, I'd not let something trivial like a game stop me from embracing the pinical of apple development.

-esr
Click to expand...

It's more a matter of worrying about feeling compelled to build another PC for some games later. And keeping my current setup is pretty much out of the question since it would finance the G5.

Just hoping to find someone else that was worried about the transition and see how it went. Obviously since I already have the PowerBook I am sold on the platform.

B
 
One only needs to look at the shelf space allotted to each gaming platform at the stores, to see where games are headed. A lot of the places around here don't even stock PC games anymore. If you were strictly PC you'd miss out on far more (ololol but console games are dumbed down for the unwashed masses am i rite)

However, it's kind of inevitable that your will miss out on a few games, this is only natural unless you have every platform in existence. Most companies are smart enough to bring their games to console, the ones that don't usually hit the Mac...the few remaining you'll just have tough it up and live without. Or play at a friend's house. It's just entertainment. Haven't really hit "art" yet, except for maybe Thief and ICO
 
Oh! And if you have faith in this sort of thing, the ApeXtreme could be the answer to all of your woes (or even the *cough*Phantom*cough*). One can hope, at least.
 
I think you said it yourself.
You game more on consoles, so therefore you don't need your computer for games. I would give the mac a try. I'm the same way I barely play games anymore.
 
yeah it looks like we've addressed the full switch... the biggest issue is games... but i dont game much like the above poster... i guess that's because my mac is a tool, not used as an entertainment toy. :D

-esr
 
esr2 said:
yeah it looks like we've addressed the full switch... the biggest issue is games... but i dont game much like the above poster... i guess that's because my mac is a tool, not used as an entertainment toy. :D

-esr
Click to expand...

I guess I view the whole thing differently. I don't do any real work on my PC, or notebook. I have a notebook furnished by my employer for that. Other than game, I don't do anything on my personal computers that I couldn't easily do on a low end iMac.

In other words, I don't need an FX-55 or a dual 2.5 G5. I just want one!

B
 
lol, who needs a 1.5ghz powerbook with a gig of ram and all the toys... not i... not with a ibook 1ghz costing $599... i could use an ibook... but i wanted a powerbook... you want a dual g5.. get one.

-esr
 
I don't think anybody has ever really regretted buying a PowerMac, even if (s)he didn't need it. If you can afford it, go for it!

And games... Macs have StarCraft and Civ II! What more do you need? ;)
 
I can't give up my PC just yet though I use it exclusively for gaming and as a media server. All the productive stuff I do on my Powerbook.
 
My Dual 1.8 is the best computer I have ever used, and I've used hundreds over 25 years of geek wankery. IF you really want the best of both worlds and you dont mind waiting for a title anywhere from a few weeks to a few months then drop a 6800 Ultra in that G5 and you'll more than be up there with any PC rig. After 200 or 300 FPS it's all a stupid mind game.

The enviroment you will be in more than makes up for the lack of titles, esp. if you do 99% of your gaming on consoles.

:cool:
 
I've though about making the switch myself but a couple of things have stopped me

1) I have about 15 years of PC games and i'd hate to not be able to play them. Sure some things like DOSbox have helped for older games but still outside of my Blizzard stuff most of my games are PC only.

2) to my knowledge, no hardware upgrade path. I like to keep my system up to day however as far as i know once you buy a mac your stuck with it. if at some point you want to turn that dual 1.8 into a dual 3.0 (whenever they show) your SOL. now i understand that even on the PC end of things you have to put up with new MB standards/chipsets etc. but even then we are able to keep most of our components. (I could be wrong about this part, i;d love to learn more if i am)

3) Cost. a Powermac G5 dual 1.8 with 6800GT and 20" LCD is 4000 :eek: thats ALOT of money. Honestly i'm not some poor college student. if i really wanted to i can make it happen but i would have a tough time justifing that to myself knowing that in 2 years none of the parts in the G5 would be salavagble (Video Card/HD/Mem?)

4) Legitamate use. What would i use my G5 for? This only applies to me and not the rest of you but 99% of the time i'm gaming on my PC (WoW/HL2 etc) or surfing the web. While i think my wife could appreciate the iLife tools i cant think of a use for the mac that my PC doesn't fufill



I dont want to knock the mac its just i cant make that pluge yet. Anyone more knowlegeable about macs have suggestions that might make the mac right for me?
 
jarlaxlecq said:
2) to my knowledge, no hardware upgrade path. I like to keep my system up to day however as far as i know once you buy a mac your stuck with it. if at some point you want to turn that dual 1.8 into a dual 3.0 (whenever they show) your SOL. now i understand that even on the PC end of things you have to put up with new MB standards/chipsets etc. but even then we are able to keep most of our components. (I could be wrong about this part, i'd love to learn more if i am)
Click to expand...

Consider the PowerMac G4. You can upgrade them from 350MHz to 1700MHz. The processors in the PowerMac G5s are on daughter cards, just like before. I would be very surprised if it turns out you cannot upgrade the processors at all. (Aside from the iMacs and the new single 1.8Ghz PowerMac, since their processors are soldered onto the motherboard.)

3) Cost. a Powermac G5 dual 1.8 with 6800GT and 20" LCD is 4000 :eek: thats ALOT of money. Honestly i'm not some poor college student. if i really wanted to i can make it happen but i would have a tough time justifing that to myself knowing that in 2 years none of the parts in the G5 would be salavagble (Video Card/HD/Mem?)
Click to expand...

Here are a couple of quick fixes:

Don't buy the 6800GT. It's not as much better for Mac as it is for x86, since Nvidia couldn't write a proper Mac driver if their lives depended on it. Are those extra few frames per second really worth it?

Apple makes beautiful displays, and the new ones are really good, too. But they're horribly expensive. Buy a Dell monitor or something instead. They're good and cheap. It may not look as orgasmical, but if money is the issue...

Buy third-party RAM. Apple charges maybe three or four times more for RAM than the rest of the world think is reasonable.

4) Legitamate use. What would i use my G5 for? This only applies to me and not the rest of you but 99% of the time i'm gaming on my PC (WoW/HL2 etc) or surfing the web. While i think my wife could appreciate the iLife tools i cant think of a use for the mac that my PC doesn't fufill
Click to expand...

"Need" is irrelevant. "Desire" and "funds" combined with a pinch of "reason" (not the audio software) are what matters. There are very few things a Mac can do that a Wintel box can't, and the opposite is also true (well, HL2 is one thing, I guess). That's completely beside the point, though. The reason Mac is superior* is not that it can do things a Wintel box can't; it's that it can do it in style! And no, that doesn't mean that the Mac is just pretty eye candy. Style goes way, way, deeper than that!

"It's the user interface, stupid!" ;)
 
if he really does do 99% of his gaming on a console like he said, he would be much better off going G5. And since Ati announced yesterday that the X800 is now a reality the 6800 cards are now passe, at least for me. The X800 is twice as small and half as loud, yet faster than even the Ultra, not to mention 100 dollars less than the Ultra. And I dont think anyone could call a Dual 2.5 G5 with a X800 a bad gaming machine. What if they speed bump the line on the 20th?

I'm really thinking about dropping my PC and going 100% Mac. If EA and Dice commit to making Battlefield 2 come out on the Mac, I'm gonna do it. Playing that series is the only thing I use the PC for anymore.

The cost of admission to the club is steep, but you forget that the resale is about 4X on a Mac what a PC is. You still cant get a decent later G4 thats over a Ghz for less than around a grand on ebay, but you can buy gig athlons all day long for 150 bucks. Macs are worth more than PC's, and they dont become obsolete nearly as fast. I bought a 733 quicksilver new when they came out with it, decided it was not for me after almost a year, put it up on ebay and got just under 55 bucks what I paid for it - the only upgrade was 1.5 Gb of ram I put in it, and that was not that much.

You just cant do that with a PC.......any PC.
 
Well there is a viable solution now since the rumors have been confirmed... Buy the headless ~600 Mac and stick with your PC instead of dishing out 4k or so for a workstation.
 
synergyo1 said:
Well there is a viable solution now since the rumors have been confirmed... Buy the headless ~600 Mac and stick with your PC instead of dishing out 4k or so for a workstation.
Click to expand...

True to some extent, but if I wanted a slower Mac than the dual G5 I'd just use my PowerBook!

B
 
It seems to me that Macs having their OS written on a *nix platform would allow gaming code to be written easier, more stable and have better performance than on the code they write for the x86 platform.

Console gaming sucks except for the GTA series. Nobody can tell me that a joystick and 6 buttons can compare to a good mouse and keyboard.

If it wasn't for the endless amounts of porn I look at and gaming, I wouldn't even have a computer.
 
I use both and own both. Ive been a mac and pc user since the 80's!
I currenty own a 17" powerbook and a bad ass pc gaming rig. I have several other macs and pc's too. But i dont think i could ever get totally away from owning a pc since not everything is cross platform. It is a lot more now that osX is unix. As the years go on there will be more and more mac users and then it will be an even playing ground for gamers but until then if your a die hard gamer a pc is the way to be.

Still doesnt stop me from playing DC on my dual g5 at work :D
 
bellevegasj said:
Console gaming sucks except for the GTA series. Nobody can tell me that a joystick and 6 buttons can compare to a good mouse and keyboard.
Click to expand...

Maybe for a FPS but give me a console for anything else. Everyone has different tastes and opinions, but "sucks" is a bit strong. Of course being that GTA is your holy grail... Ah, nevermind.
 
I only mentioned GTA because it's the most recent console game that I played and actually enjoyed. Cmon, early 90's West Coast gangsta style. You can't beat that. Tribes1, Counter-Strike, Ultima-Online, Doom2(modem to modem), Atari 2600 Combat and now World of Warcraft are my all-time favorite games. Ok, so there is 1 other really good console game, but that goes back 20 years and came free with the system :p

Sux is a bit strong, would lame be better? j/k :cool: But like I said, you can't compare a joystick with a few buttons with a multi-button mouse and a keyboard that you can setup macros and hotkeys with. I wouldn't really say this has to do with FPS' since I use the whole keyboard playing MMORPGs and use about 10 keys playing an FPS.
 
bellevegasj said:
Sux is a bit strong, would lame be better? j/k :cool: But like I said, you can't compare a joystick with a few buttons with a multi-button mouse and a keyboard that you can setup macros and hotkeys with. I wouldn't really say this has to do with FPS' since I use the whole keyboard playing MMORPGs and use about 10 keys playing an FPS.
Click to expand...

To each his own... I sit in front of a PC all day at work, so that probably takes some of the PC gaming fun away for me. I've been gaming on PCs since I had an Atari 400 and the fun peaked probably with SLI'd Voodoo2's and Quake 2. I had a blast with Diablo2 and a few RTS games too. Now I just play the occasional RTS and the huge FPS games. Every thing else is on console for me. Even Doom3 and Half-Life2 didn't hold my attention for more than a few days each. Pretty much if I need to use more keyboard keys than a joystick has buttons I no longer consider it fun. I wouldn't touch a MMORPG with a 10' pole. Give me my couch, a wireless controller, and Gran Turismo 4 any day. Heck, even with this PC, I buy a multi platform game on Xbox if it's possible every time. Mostly though it's about comfort and the style of the games for me.

Wow, this thread=sidetracked!

B
 
bellevegasj said:
Sux is a bit strong, would lame be better? j/k :cool: But like I said, you can't compare a joystick with a few buttons with a multi-button mouse and a keyboard that you can setup macros and hotkeys with. I wouldn't really say this has to do with FPS' since I use the whole keyboard playing MMORPGs and use about 10 keys playing an FPS.
Click to expand...

And, for many games, a keyboard and mouse simply cannot compare to a good hand-held controller. Has there everbeen a third-person action/adventure game with a keyboard/mouse control system that isn't a pain? Playing Zelda is a breeze.
 
NightTrain,

How does DC play on your 2.5? I'm seriously considering upgrading my video card in my 1.8 to a X800 and dumping my PC gaming rig. Battlefield is all I play. I might miss a few months of playing when B2 come out, but the way EA is, all that time is spent fixing the bugs and getting the game stable anyways, so I wont be missing much. :cool:

I'm at that point where I feel like I have to go to 64 bit in the PC world, and my 9500 Pro is starting to be a bottleneck. No matter what, I'm going to spend 400 bucks +++ upgrading. What to do.....what to do.....
 
If you want a new PowerMacG5 and you can afford to wait, buy one after they are bumped-up, which should be some time before June.
 
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