Life left in G4s for gaming

[8thMan]

My iMac G5 1.8 *sucked* on WoW -- inadequate video card I am told. Anyway, I had a Digital Audio G4 in storage and I took the upgrade plunge. RAM was already maxxed out so I installed an OWC 1.47GHz CPU (thanks MacRumors members for advice) and found a used Radeon 9800 on ebay. Now this thing blows the doors :eek: off the iMac G5 in gaming. Satisfying gameplay can still be had on these old powermacs, and I confess that I am a sucker for the G4 acrylic-graphite-Jetson's look. G5 design strikes me as merely business-like.

[2nyRiggz]

Great, glad you was able to play on it. post a vid so we can see the speed.


Bless

[jrk07]

If you don't mind me asking, how much were the upgrades?

I agree, I was rather disappointed by my iMac's performance in WOW when I played for a week as a trial period. It was playable, but to think that the only way I could upgrade this system for better performance was to max my ram out from 1gb to 2gb. Oh well, I like the system otherwise (other than the fricken noise it makes).

[8thMan]

The CPU was $349.00 (new), but I've seen whole G4 Powermacs on eBay with this CPU already installed selling for less. The Radeon card was $125.00, on eBay.

I know his seems like a lot of $$ to throw into an aging platform (I don't know how many times I was told to "save the money for a refurb G5 powermac") but the results were so impressive that I find myself not regretting the investment.:D

[TDM21]

With this recent announcement, I hope to see the G4s live several more years: http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=4914

This announcement from Powerlogix about the new 7448 processor also makes the PowerMac G4s worth keeping around: http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:_SFwmv1iDUQJ:www.powerlogix.com/press/releases/2006/060110.html+&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=firefox-a
For some reason all the 2006 press releases have vanished from Powerlogix's site. Might be due to OWC buying the company out.

[Dagless]

I'm only playing 2 PC/Mac games right now. Cave Story and Counter Strike Source. My guess is that this PB would run CS so well. going off that this machine runs Doom 3 better than my laptop, and CS ran really well on my laptop. yea.

G4's all the way :) I've had this for more than a year and it doesn't feel old and decrepit yet. Unlike my previous laptops that survived for only 10-12 months. Hopefully I'll be keeping this machine until Feb 2007. Splash out on a latest rev MacBook Pro. Doubt Cave Story will get a UB release though

[socamx]

XFX to offer Mac Compatible Nvidia Graphics cards? - Kevin posted a note that according to a Hexus.net page, G4 Macs are set to be accelerated by XFX GeForce graphics cards, with initial offerings being an XFX GeForce 6600 GT AGP card, with other/more powerful and higher-end versions to follow. See the linked page for more details. (If this pans out, hopefully PCI-Express models will follow. I had about given up on any retail Mac Nvidia cards... guessing that Apple had some sort of exclusive license.)

This should also add a bit to it like TDM21 said.

[jrk07]

The CPU was $349.00 (new), but I've seen whole G4 Powermacs on eBay with this CPU already installed selling for less. The Radeon card was $125.00, on eBay.

I know his seems like a lot of $$ to throw into an aging platform (I don't know how many times I was told to "save the money for a refurb G5 powermac") but the results were so impressive that I find myself not regretting the investment.:D

Thats about how much I know I've spent on videocard upgrades on old PCs so I think the investment was definitely worth it. All that matters is that you got what you wanted and don't have to deal with a brand new system quite yet.

[Rocksaurus]

I think we need to make a rather huge clarification. Is your iMac G5 running on a Geforce 5200? If it is, there's your answer. The G4 is NOT a bad chip, but, you know what? The Geforce 5200 is. It's miserable. Even if you have an iMac with the Radeon 9600 in it the 9800 is a much better card, so your results aren't really surprising...

[jamesi]

I have a 9800 (non pro) video card in my pc, but is there a way to flash it to work in a powermac G4. i have a 17" PB and a ok PC but i am in love with the quicksilver case and everything powermac G4 so i want to get one of those to replace my PC. in everyone's honest opinion, is it a good money investment to get a quicksilver and try and flash the 9800 into it?

[Rocksaurus]

Your games will run better on your PC and when you flash your PC card to Mac you're taking a risk. If all you use Windows for is games, you should be a-okay, right?

[GFLPraxis]

I think we need to make a rather huge clarification. Is your iMac G5 running on a Geforce 5200? If it is, there's your answer. The G4 is NOT a bad chip, but, you know what? The Geforce 5200 is. It's miserable. Even if you have an iMac with the Radeon 9600 in it the 9800 is a much better card, so your results aren't really surprising...

The Geforce 5200 isn't a 'bad' chip; I actually found it to have extremely good performance, for the price. The problem is, the price is EXTREMELY low. At launch, a 128 MB Geforce FX 5200 was $99 with 128 MB of RAM, and could be overclocked a good 20-30%. I use a slightly overclocked, non-Ultra, Geforce FX 5200 in my PC even today. It can play Star Wars Battlefront with decent settings (though no AA).

I'm sure today it probably costs like $50 or less.

Apple's got an FX 5200 Ultra (a bit faster) with a PATHETIC amount of RAM. They really got the cheapest solution they could find.

[applekid]

Last year at CeBIT, XFX's exhibition booth was rigged to appear like a garage or workshop, and presumably the messaging to visitors was to 'have the right tool for the job'. This year XFX has created what seems to be a boxing or training gym; complete with punch-bags and kit-lockers (though most attention seems to be focussed on the charms of two, er, 'fit' looking, scantily clad XFX frauleins; both of whom look well up for it - 'training to win', we mean...) but in giving the game away of its involvement with Apple, XFX has resorted to almost sublimal messaging. As can be seen above, a 30in Apple monitor with a live demo of the 3D shooting game F.E.A.R has been set against a plain wall upon which is a large grey Apple logo.

Assuming that's a PowerMac G4 powering that machine, does that mean XFX's 6600 GT for the Mac can power a 30-inch Apple Cinema Display and F.E.A.R is on its way to the Mac?! :eek:

[Lord Blackadder]

I already have an XFX GeForce 6800GT card in my G4 tower - flashed it myself (not too hard - click on the card in my sig and read). it is an outstanding card with 256MB VRAM, twin DVI ports and more performance than the G4 could ever handle (it really shines in the G5 though). And it cost me $220 shipped - try THAT price with a real Mac Edition video card!

My 2 cents on this issue:

- The G5 Towers are great gaming machines, and are much better than a G4, all else being equal (RAM, video card etc).

- A G4 with a faster CPU (~1.4+GHz), a newer video card and plenty of RAM can still hack it for just about every game out there.

- In about a year or so we will start seeing games being released as Universal binaries that will require a G5 or Intel Mac for decent performance....the G4 is rapidly becoming a legacy chip and the slow FSB is becoming an insurmountable problem for those trying to stay up to date, even though companies like Powerlogix continue to bring out new versions of the G4...

I love my G4 tower, and right now it's a great platform for anything you could want to run (after the proper upgrades). But Doom 3 is probably one of the last big new 3D games for the Mac that will play nice on a G4 (Call of Duty 2 may be doable as well, but we'll have to wait and see). If you want to game and are shopping for a Mac, spring for any G5 tower you can get your hands on - even the single 1.6GHz model - in the long run it will have a much longer life and better performance than any G4 tower.

As to the idea of XFX actually manufacturing cards for the Mac...I hope so, but I'll believe it when I see it. It's interesting to note that the card they mentioned in the linked article as the first to be available (the 6600GT) is the only card you can currently order a la carte from Apple for the PCI Express G5s....I suppose it's possible that XFX does the manufacturing for Apple with respect to all its nVidia card needs. At any rate it makes sense that Apple would go with an established board manufacturer. So perhaps (and this is all pure speculation) XFX is already making video cards for the Mac - they're just Apple branded, not sold retail and marked way the **** up just like every other overpriced, hard to get Mac video card. :mad:

[Rocksaurus]

The Geforce 5200 isn't a 'bad' chip; I actually found it to have extremely good performance, for the price. The problem is, the price is EXTREMELY low. At launch, a 128 MB Geforce FX 5200 was $99 with 128 MB of RAM, and could be overclocked a good 20-30%. I use a slightly overclocked, non-Ultra, Geforce FX 5200 in my PC even today. It can play Star Wars Battlefront with decent settings (though no AA).

I'm sure today it probably costs like $50 or less.

Apple's got an FX 5200 Ultra (a bit faster) with a PATHETIC amount of RAM. They really got the cheapest solution they could find.

Uh I think part of the reason you're seeing "good" performance is that you're using it on a PC... I had one of these in my old G5 tower - it got lower FPS than the Radeon 9550 Mobility in my laptop (iBook) - and this thing's only got 32MB VRAM.

[jrk07]

I just tried playing the C&C Generals demo with my iMac G5 rev. A with the horrid geforce 5200. Needless to say, it was not smooth at all. Very sad being that the game had come out before this iMac did. That being said, I didn't expect to play games on my iMac when I got it, but nowadays I really wish that it could. After just over a year of having this iMac I am really feeling the burn of it underperforming. I still use it for Final Cut Pro (which it handles surprisingly good) but I just feel like it is lagging behind and without any upgradability options, i feel like I made a wrong decision in getting this over a G5 Powermac.

That being said, this computer was less than half the price of what the powermac I would have gotten was at the time. I am just trying to stress the fact that a Powermac and its upgradability would have been a lot better suited for me as I am finally getting anxious to get back into some PC games after a year without them since switching.

[Lord Blackadder]

I bought a Rev.C 266MHz iMac G3 back in 1999. With its 6MB Rage Pro Turbo video card it was a great gaming machine when it came out. Besides using it for my B.A. undergrad work I played Myth I & II, Diablo II and Virtual Game Station on it.

But the all-in-one computer is a flawed design from a gaming standpoint, since upgradeability is the No.2 priority for gaming (behind performance). Your Rev. A iMac was an OK machine when new but it will always be stuck with that video card, as I was with my iMac.

PowerMac towers are still the only answer for the Mac user interested in a high-quality gaming experience over the long term. It's the same thing in the PC world.

[jrk07]

PowerMac towers are still the only answer for the Mac user interested in a high-quality gaming experience over the long term. It's the same thing in the PC world.

Quoted for truth and for any potential mac buyers to consider. I really had the opinion of, "I can just play my ps2/xbox/ect. instead of using my computer for gaming." Now, I really wish I could play some games on my mac, but I also pray that the intel switch will appeal to more games being ported to mac. I think I would be FORCED to buy a powermac if they ever ported battlefield 2 to mac. I play it on my brothers pc when I can, and it is amazing.