Gamespot doesn't know about graphics cards...

[Voidness]

... well, maybe that's a big title, but they actually made a stupid mistake in their article about Boot Camp, from Gamespot:

The release of Boot Camp doesn't change our opinion of the iMac as a gaming system. No matter which OS you run, its weak ATI Radeon X1600 graphics chip, which shares memory with the system itself, isn't going to deliver high frame rates. The iMac Core Duo performed better under Windows than under OS X (25.9 frames per second vs. an even less playable 16.2), but we still don't recommend it for serious 3D gaming.
Which shares memory with the system? What are they talking about? First, Apple specifically mentions in the iMac page that the ATI Chip has dedicated 128MB GDDR3 memory. Second of all, if they're refering to Hypermemory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypermemory), ATI doesn't mention anything about Hypermemory in the X1600 specs page.

[PlaceofDis]

why would anyone bother to look up the facts, its at their fingertips with the Internet, but its too much trouble.

[MacsRgr8]

Do they also judge an X1600 in a PC as a weak grfx card? Or is the iMac's one the only one that shares the memory... :rolleyes:

IMHO, it has a very good price / performance ratio.
Ofcourse a X1900 XT, or nVidia's 7900 GTX will outperform the X1600 easily, but you also pay alot more for these cards.

Can't wait for the conroe / woodcrest Mac Pro's to arrive.... I hope today's highend cards will be available, and that Boot Camp will support them!

[GFLPraxis]

WEAK? X1600 is weak? It's third in line after X1800 and X1900, ATi's flagship model, and can play ANY game on the market today; not to mention that it blows away my Geforce FX 5200.

Retards.

Can you link to the article?

[Voidness]

Oh, sorry, forgot to link to the article:

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6147437/index.html

and yes, the X1600 is by no means weak (at least right now). I don't know how Gamespot considered it a "weak" card that "shares memory with the system".

Also, notice how they picked benchmarks to make Mac OS X look slow and stupid:

How does Adobe Photoshop have any relevance to a gaming site?
Why are they using the PowerPC version of Doom 3 on the Core Duo iMac (Notice the 2.7FPS)?
Why are they comparing a Core Duo based Mac to a Pentium D based PC?

Oh, of course, Gamespot is part of Cnet! :rolleyes:

[risc]

Other than the error regarding the video card using system RAM what is actually wrong with that article? It is a gaming site you don't really think they would give a mid-range video card a good review? They explain that Photoshop was slow because it was using Rosetta, the benchmarks also show OS X being faster than Windows for somethings, and slower for others. Sorry it hurts you to know that Apples aren't all that great, but hey they are PCs now what did you expect people to benchmark them against? Is it GameSpots fault because the developers haven't released universal binaries of certain apps yet?

[greatdevourer]

Is it GameSpots fault because the developers haven't released universal binaries of certain apps yet? No, but it is their fault if they use a PPC version of summat that's out in UniBin

[Voidness]

Other than the error regarding the video card using system RAM what is actually wrong with that article? It is a gaming site you don't really think they would give a mid-range video card a good review? They explain that Photoshop was slow because it was using Rosetta, the benchmarks also show OS X being faster than Windows for somethings, and slower for others. Sorry it hurts you to know that Apples aren't all that great, but hey they are PCs now what did you expect people to benchmark them against? Is it GameSpots fault because the developers haven't released universal binaries of certain apps yet?
I'm not saying Apple don't make mistakes at all and any criticism towards Apple is unacceptable, but I'm saying there are some odd things about Gamespot's article:

1- It IS Gamespot's fault that they aren't using the Universal Binary version of Doom 3, which has been available for some time now.
2- It's true that they did mention that Photoshop was slow because it had to use Rosetta, but the point is, why would they have Photoshop benchmarks on a gaming site? How is Photoshop related to gaming? (other than making textures for games)
3- It's also true that Intel Macs are just PCs that use EFI and a TPM chip to run Mac OS X. So now, logically, you would compare it to similarly equipped or priced PCs in the market, right? Wrong! you compare it to high-end gaming PCs, according to Gamespot logic. (The Dell PC in the Gamespot article costs $2000 with a 20" monitor)
4- As mentioned above, although the X1600 is not the best graphics chip out there, it is by no means considered weak by today's gaming standard.

Barefeats did some benchmarks to compare Mac OS X and Windows XP on an iMac, here are the results: http://www.barefeats.com/bootcamp.html

[risc]

The review is 3 weeks old and seriously why are your knickers in a knot the review ends like this "The iMac running Windows, though, takes out HP's newest Media Center PC, 214 to 200 on the Overall test. In short, anything Dell or HP can do, an Apple iMac Core Duo can do almost as well, if not better.". Maybe they are clueless about OS X and universal binaries. I've seem some pretty clueless stuff on this forum myself "Windows sucks, and crashes all the time!" yeah sure it did in 1997. If you have a problem with it why not post in the forum or email the writer with your complaints? You sound like a little kid "Mommy someone picked on my toy!".

[Voidness]

The review is 3 weeks old and seriously why are your knickers in a knot the review ends like this "The iMac running Windows, though, takes out HP's newest Media Center PC, 214 to 200 on the Overall test. In short, anything Dell or HP can do, an Apple iMac Core Duo can do almost as well, if not better.". Maybe they are clueless about OS X and universal binaries. I've seem some pretty clueless stuff on this forum myself "Windows sucks, and crashes all the time!" yeah sure it did in 1997. If you have a problem with it why not post in the forum or email the writer with your complaints? You sound like a little kid "Mommy someone picked on my toy!".
I know this article is pretty old, but I just saw it yesterday. So I thought I'd share my thoughts, this IS actually a forum, right?

The original point of my post was to point out what I thought was such a stupid mistake made by one made by one of the most reputable gaming sites on the internet, in an area very much related to gaming. So, then you came and asked me to point out other things I found wrong in the article. In what sense does that sound like a little kid nagging?

actually, my iBook is my only toy, a toy for a 19 year old kid!

[bousozoku]

It is a bit haphazard but if you haven't noticed, all of c|net's reviews are that way. It looks as though they took that review and added some gaming information and called it finished.

I'm sure that supposition is much easier than actually doing research, so they mixed up the Mac mini and the iMac and put it on the web.

I wouldn't worry too much. I seriously doubt anyone else cares. Most people who have any interest won't go there for valid information--they'll go to Consumer Reports instead. :D

[Soulstorm]

The review is 3 weeks old and seriously why are your knickers in a knot the review ends like this "The iMac running Windows, though, takes out HP's newest Media Center PC, 214 to 200 on the Overall test. In short, anything Dell or HP can do, an Apple iMac Core Duo can do almost as well, if not better.". Maybe they are clueless about OS X and universal binaries. I've seem some pretty clueless stuff on this forum myself "Windows sucks, and crashes all the time!" yeah sure it did in 1997. If you have a problem with it why not post in the forum or email the writer with your complaints? You sound like a little kid "Mommy someone picked on my toy!".
This is a forum. Gamespot isn't. When they are writting a review, they must take into consideration every factor.

Also, windows DO crash. they may have improved since 1997, but if you use windows for more than just play games, you will see that they crash all the time, even if they don't show a blue screen.

Example: I have managed to crash the entire system, just by making a very simple endless loop in a test program in Microsoft's visual basic 6. My test program crashed, and it drew all the system with it. I know that this is my fault, but no other system would crash using just 5 lines of code (i mean it -- the main program program was 5 lines long)!! Windows DO crash, and have many security holes. Even more, they tend to get slower after many hours of use. OS X's apps don't do that (except azureus :) )

And, I think you should read more carefully the other users' posts. No one behaved like a child, and no one tried to point out the Ultimate Domination of Macs in the world. Everyone here pointed out some facts which you refuse to see, for some reason I can't explain.

Cnet's reviews are the worst reviews that I have ever seen. No one must take their results seriously, even when they do manage to eventually say something good. It's always better to look into another site, just to be sure.