Crossover or PC ?

The best thing to purchase is a PC for gaming.

A simple config:
- AMD Athlon II X4 260
- 4 GB RAM (however RAM is very expensive now, where I live)
- 500 GB HDD
- Radeon 4670 or even better a Radeon 4770
- Windows 7 Home

if you are only going to game, then obviously the PC. If you are also going do general stuff (web,photoshop, etc....) then get the mac.

Dont really like to say it but yes, for gaming the PC is the machine for that

With Win7 home or pro


Cheers

Crossover is a crapshoot. I have used it (or wine) to run various games over the last couple years. To be honest, the performance of games through Crossover on my MP (ATI 4870, 4G memory, raid 0) is pretty good. For example Neverwinter Nights 2 runs better with the PC version through Crossover then the native mac port does and the new Wolfenstein game runs great through Crossover. But then there are disappointments, Dragon Age Orgins runs but I get graphic glitches and shadow problems w/ my ATI card, The Witcher runs good but again w/ graphics glitches. So I keep a windows partition just for games I can't get to work through Crossover or wine. I usually install my games patch them up (no-cd them) on windows, boot into OS X, try to install via Crossover and then actually copy the completed patched version into the install location on OS X. Then start tweaking to get the game to run right... usually some ini file and setting up direct3d through regedit on Crossover. Sometimes I have great success and sometimes not.

Lately a lot of time has been spent booted into windows playing Dragon Age... adding a bootcamp partition will cost you unless you have a retail version laying around...

I am not a real fan of all-in-one computers for a few reasons. If something breaks the whole computer is down... I can't upgrade video cards (I have upgraded my video card in my MP twice)... no internal expansion for hard drives etc...I don't like stacks of hard drives and cables laying around.

Believe it or not, if I was to do it again, I would have a Mac-mini for regular computing sitting on top of a custom gaming rig running windows with periphs running through A/B switches. It's either that or build a Hackintosh (imo is a pita to maintain OS X on a Hack though).

Just get what you think will serve you best. I got to admit, the new iMac is really nice nice rig right now... and all the PC's I look at are clunkers. The new win7 however (after switching from Vista on my MP bootcamp and on my son's game rig to 7 Ultimate 64bit) is hands down better then anything MS has put out in years (but not worth their asking retail price). Ok rambled enough.