To game on the mac or PC

[Metalshopteach]

I have a Mac Pro, bought in Jan 09, pretty standard, added extra superdrive, 500 gb hard drive, and the Nvidia Video Card option as I prefer it over ATI.

I want to use it for games and I have installed Bootcamp and windows, Played Halflife 2 on it recently, loved the grapichs and it ran sweet. As far as I can tell its just as good as my father in laws PC he built for gaming hardware wise and as I understand it when it is in bootcamp it is PC so I figure that its a pretty decent gaming machine for that reason. Please correct me if I am wrong, I am by no means an expert.

What I am wondering is I plan to play Call of Duty: World at war next and other games as they come out, and some games like Call of duty are available to run in mac or windows... In these situations, is there any reason why I should buy one over the other, will my machine run better in OSX for those games or Windows XP?

[Huntn]

The odds are the the Windows versions of those games (Boot Camp) will have better performance than the native Mac versions.

[Sambo110]

I'm sure you'll still get a decent frame rate in Mac OS X. Plus it's easier to game in OS X.

[SnowLeopard2008]

The odds are the the Windows versions of those games (Boot Camp) will have better performance than the native Mac versions.

However, if the games are designed to work with SL and the new tech in there, we might see a huge improvement in performance.

[Metalshopteach]

However, if the games are designed to work with SL and the new tech in there, we might see a huge improvement in performance.

Could you explain this a little, I am not sure of what you are talking about, are you saying that OSX uses SL and that if they are designed for it they would run better in OSX

[thegoldenmackid]

PC. The games are cheaper and there is a selection that is vastly larger. Also, you can make a sweet gaming rig much cheaper then anything that is going to be comparable on the Mac side.

[cluthz]

Could you explain this a little, I am not sure of what you are talking about, are you saying that OSX uses SL and that if they are designed for it they would run better in OSX

SL= snow leopard, OS 10.6

They will not run better in SL than windows, unless something amazing happen.

Direct X is what most games are designed for and DX isn't available for mac.
Most games that are real ports (not ciderized games) will although run comparably on macs (but a tiny bit slower).

Cider-ports do usually only run like 50% on the speed :(

[Miharu]

There is a good thread on the WoW Mac Support forum about Snow Leopard affecting game performance... Doesn't look too good :( Basically Snow Leopard brings many good things but doesn't affect gaming.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=18680003452&sid=1

[RITZFit]

Direct X is what most games are designed for and DX isn't available for mac.
Most games that are real ports (not ciderized games) will although run comparably on macs (but a tiny bit slower).

Cider-ports do usually only run like 50% on the speed :(

yup, this is the main reason I only game on the windows side of things. Most ports I've tried on osx have run just OK, but still ran a bit smoother on windows (I usually have probs w/ antialiasing and some odd ball probs w/ controls)

[Huntn]

However, if the games are designed to work with SL and the new tech in there, we might see a huge improvement in performance.

Nothing would make me happier than to be able to stop recommending Windows gaming to Mac users. :)

[txa1265]

Nothing would make me happier than to be able to stop recommending Windows gaming to Mac users. :)

Absolutely agree ... I sold off most of my Mac games I had on Mac & PC a few years back, and even now that I'm rebuilding again I understand the trade-offs ...

[Metalshopteach]

Prob the only thing I know is a downfall is I have Windows XP Home installed and it will only recognize the one processor, assuming I am correct in understanding that I get my 8 cores from two quad core processors

[Dmac77]

Prob the only thing I know is a downfall is I have Windows XP Home installed and it will only recognize the one processor, assuming I am correct in understanding that I get my 8 cores from two quad core processors

IIRC, XP home doesn't recognize more then one processor. XP Pro, Vista (except basic), and Windows 7 all recognize more then one processor.

Don

[Rodus]

Apparently XP Home does (http://www.handaware.com/multiprocessor_XP.html) support multicore cpu's

[Dmac77]

Apparently XP Home does (http://www.handaware.com/multiprocessor_XP.html) support multicore cpu's

Yes, XP Home does support dual core processors, but XP Home does not support multiple processors.

Don