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12 core and bootcamp XP pro/ gaming

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bigmat1201

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 21, 2008
65
0
Houston
If I bootcamp a 12 core MP using win XP pro, will XP see and use all 24 threads?


Does anyone know of high-end games that could possibly support all 12 cores in bootcamped XP? do any mac compatible games support all 12 cores?

What I'm getting at, would it be worth paying $5,000+ for a 12 core MP to mostly use it as a gaming PC?

Thanks alot :)

Mat
 
I'm not a gamer but read some gaming forums on hardware and from what i know most games aren't optimised for multi cores etc.

You'd be a lot better off building a gaming rig out of components and running windows natively.

you'll be wasting a lot of money other wise
 
Games will not run well on that machine due to the GPU.

Most modern games will only take advantage of 2 cores and the GPU options on the Mac Pro are pretty low end for the gaming market.
 
bigmat1201 said:
If I bootcamp a 12 core MP using win XP pro, will XP see and use all 24 threads?


Does anyone know of high-end games that could possibly support all 12 cores in bootcamped XP? do any mac compatible games support all 12 cores?

What I'm getting at, would it be worth paying $5,000+ for a 12 core MP to mostly use it as a gaming PC?

Thanks alot :)

Mat
Click to expand...
No. A number of games use four cores, but no game that I'm aware of will use twelve.

If you're mostly going to be gaming, build yourself a PC (or buy one if you don't want to build). For $5,000 you can get an incredible gaming machine.
 
Mackilroy said:
If you're mostly going to be gaming, build yourself a PC (or buy one if you don't want to build). For $5,000 you can get an incredible gaming machine.
Click to expand...

I agree 100%. With Macs, the best GPU you can get is ATI 5870. That's not that good anymore.

If I were building a gaming PC, the maximum I would spend would be 2000$. Anything over that starts to be useless because 1) games can't take advantage of the faster hardware 2) everything is already maxed out with good FPS. You don't get much bang for the extra bucks anymore. Save the money for future upgrades.

Furthermore, as you're spending thousands on a gaming computer, remember that you need a monitor with 2560xSomething resolution. It's nothing else but ridiculous to spend thousands on the computer and then use a 20" monitor. You need the 2560xSomething to take advantage of your hardware. Otherwise you could just get a budget PC for 1000$ as it would run all games maxed out on that 20" monitor.

All in all, if gaming is your main thing, then don't think about Macs, especially not the 12-core MP. If you seriously want a Mac, then 3.2GHz quad with 5870 is the best choice IMO. A PC is still a lot better choice though
 
Well you could always crossfire two 5870's in windows.

However a 12 core MP just to game in windows is a waste of money. The games won't use all the cores. I would say either go with a homebuilt PC or a cheaper MP.
 
What I'm getting at, would it be worth paying $5,000+ for a 12 core MP to mostly use it as a gaming PC?

Thanks alot :)


Get a PC if you just want to game

@Hellhammer you don't need to run out and buy the latest GPU to play todays games, the 5870 is a awesome card and it will play any game just fine.
 
skyline r34 said:
@Hellhammer you don't need to run out and buy the latest GPU to play todays games, the 5870 is a awesome card and it will play any game just fine.
Click to expand...

I didn't say it's a bad card but there are better cards out there. It just sounds a bit ridiculous that OP is thinking about spending +5000$ on a computer for gaming and then it will have a single 5870. Sub-1500$ PCs have that. It's a good card for 1080p gaming but when you make that 2560x1600 and add some AA, then more horsepower would be nice.
 
bigmat1201 said:
If I bootcamp a 12 core MP using win XP pro, will XP see and use all 24 threads?


Does anyone know of high-end games that could possibly support all 12 cores in bootcamped XP? do any mac compatible games support all 12 cores?

What I'm getting at, would it be worth paying $5,000+ for a 12 core MP to mostly use it as a gaming PC?

Thanks alot :)

Mat
Click to expand...

Multicore will have no effect on gaming. Games are too hard to make as it is let alone to make them to take advantage of multicore technology. Most games only use 1 core, some can use 2.

Also XP is pretty outdated. I'd suggest upgrading to 7 to take advantage of the newer DirectX versions.

Also no, paying $5k for a mac as a gaming machine is not a good idea. Gaming machines are usually best if you build them yourself.

skyline r34 said:
I have windows 7 Ultimate on my 12-Core Mac Pro and it recognized all 24 virtual cores but I don't know about XP, Below is a link to my video on youtube showing all 24 cores in windows 7, You have to skip the video to 9:29


http://www.youtube.com/user/34skyline?feature=mhum#p/a/u/1/dYun8pR4B7Y
Click to expand...

The OS will recognize the cores, but the game cannot take advantage of them.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
OP, you're asking yourself the wrong questions. Don't by a multicore machine and then wonder if the OS and games will use all these cores. You just need to know if games NEED all these cores to run fine. The answer it a resounding NO. Don't forget that gaming at more than 60 fps is useless with most monitors, which are 60Hz.

As the others said:
- You don't want a Mac Pro if your main use of it is gaming. Definitely NOT. If you have $5000 to waste, you could send them to me. I will have good use of a new Mac Pro. :D
- You don't want xp to play games, of to do anything for that matter. XP is outdated and insecure. I will only address 2 GB or RAM in a Mac and it won't support the most recent games.

What you want is a beefy (custom-made) PC or a console.
 
chrono1081 said:
Wow sorry I posted. I ended up getting a warning over it for...I really don't know what.

Careful with your quotes guys!
Click to expand...

I guess it's because you didn't use multi-quote in your previous posts.

chrono1081 said:
Last edited by annk; Today at 19:05. Reason: Post merge - please use the multi-quote function
Click to expand...

I doubt it's nothing serious but warnings are mods' way to remind people about the rules.
 
Some games such as World in Conflict will not open in Windows 7 at least if you have over 8 cores/16 threads. It appears to be a bug with DirectX. To be able to play those games, I've had to turn off hyper-threading.
 
bigmat1201 said:
If I bootcamp a 12 core MP using win XP pro, will XP see and use all 24 threads?

Does anyone know of high-end games that could possibly support all 12 cores in bootcamped XP? do any mac compatible games support all 12 cores?

What I'm getting at, would it be worth paying $5,000+ for a 12 core MP to mostly use it as a gaming PC?
Click to expand...

No, that would be a complete waste on several levels. Most games are GPU limited, so adding CPUs isn't going to help.

If you mostly want to use it as a gaming PC, buy a gaming PC. If you really want it to be a mac, the fastest MP for gaming would be a 2010 hexacore with a 5870.
 
bigmat1201 said:
If I bootcamp a 12 core MP using win XP pro, will XP see and use all 24 threads?


Does anyone know of high-end games that could possibly support all 12 cores in bootcamped XP? do any mac compatible games support all 12 cores?

What I'm getting at, would it be worth paying + for a 12 core MP to mostly use it as a gaming PC?

Thanks alot :)

Mat
Click to expand...

All due respect my good friend, but you have way to much dosh to spend if you are going to use Server Grade kit for a gaming PC.

For a start, virtually NO games take advantage of 4 cores, let alone 12, you will be limited by GPU power for the Mac & most of all bootcamping XP!? Bootcamp 7 to take advantage of such tech!

If you want to spend 3K on a gaming rig then spend 3K on a gaming rig, custom configured and built by yourself, not 3K on a professional machine.
 
bigmat1201 said:
If I bootcamp a 12 core MP using win XP pro, will XP see and use all 24 threads?


Does anyone know of high-end games that could possibly support all 12 cores in bootcamped XP? do any mac compatible games support all 12 cores?

What I'm getting at, would it be worth paying $5,000+ for a 12 core MP to mostly use it as a gaming PC?

Thanks alot :)

Mat
Click to expand...

It's worth paying $5000 plus for a Mac Pro, it's not worth paying $5000 plus for a Mac Pro to only play games on.
If you search You Tube you will see some people who have built mega games rigs with dual 6 core overclocked Xeon CPU's BUT they also have 3 or 4 high end graphics cards linked together in crossfire or SLI.
Your best bet if you want to play games is IMO the 6 core Mac Pro and then follow the guides to getting two graphics cards working under Windows in crossfire or SLI. If you really want a Mac Pro.
Otherwise the best option is to get a games rig with a quad or six core CPU and a pair of high end graphics cards with good expandability.

Of course if your nuts enough you can get a 12 core Mac Pro AND try and get two graphics cards running on it.
 
I think your best best will likely be the standard 6 core 3.33ghz Mac Pro, with a 5870 video card. Maybe 8GB ram - or even 12gb.

I don't think the twelve core option is worth the expense. As some others might have suggested, Windows 7 64-bit is a must. I use the Ultimate version.

Just a 3.2ghz Xeon Nehalem Mac Pro 5,1 is fast. Another thing you should consider is adding an SSD for the drive(s) where you will run games from.
 
Thanks for the overwhelming response. After having time to think through my situation, i'm thinking a $2500 2.8GHz quad core with a ATI HD 5770 would be more suited to my tasks, which i probably should have been more specific about in the first place, while i love gaming and would love to just do that on this beast, most of the time i'm going to be using it for transcending media to play on my HD LCD and for editing HD videos, which I hope will go alot faster on this high-end quad core rig than it does on my 13" MBP. And BTW, the reason i want a MP and not an Imac is bc I'd like to be able to upgrade it and thats not really possible with an Imac w/o voiding the warranty.

But i have to ask, do yall really think that win 7 64bit is the best way to go?

I built my cousin a gaming rig once and bought and installed a 64bit version of Vista. It took 3-4 hours to load, and weighted about 15 GB. He loves to play counter strike, so i loaded steam and DLed CS. I played it for about 2 hours (to test it out ;) ) next day he comes to pick it up, takes it home and the rig was NEVER able to play CS again, in fact he couldn't even get steam to load. He tried to load C&C Generals, could never get it to work. Finally he got fed up with vista 64 and told me to dual boot XP 32 on it, so i did and all the games worked fine on it. Is 7 64bit more backward compatible to 32bit software then Vista bc i don't want to run in to these same problems.

Thanks all

Mat
 
Ok as most are debating on MP with Windows. Here is something to recap as people thing that running Windows on Mac are as easy as it is but most forgot that one importing thing that Windows dont do is FAN CONTROL as windows wont control the fans that on your Mac via Bootcamp and if ur are going to stress the processors and one thing you will notice is that ur fans wont speed up and will only spin as its default speed. So to say if ur are going to stress 4 of ur CPU core and ur core will boil and eventually fried at the end and you wont know what's hit you at the end.

I myself had experience this and was doing video transcoding via bootcamp and all my core are utilize at 90-100% and within minute the processor temperature shoot to 100' Celsius and i have to stop the process to save my processor from frying.

Think again there before decide.
 
This thread makes me sad.

This is yet another case where the consumer has more money than he has brains.

If you want to game as your primary hobby; FORGET Apple altogether.

Steve Jobs is has no intentions of improving your gaming experience on desktops or even the Macbook line for that matter; he would rather you purchase an iPod/iPhone and buy games on the Appstore.
 
phaedarus said:
This thread makes me sad.

This is yet another case where the consumer has more money than he has brains.
Click to expand...

When someone posts something like this I think of the poster as a kid with no money, just hoping to win the lottery and is speccing out the greatest system.
 
bigmat1201 said:
Thanks for the overwhelming response. After having time to think through my situation, i'm thinking a $2500 2.8GHz quad core with a ATI HD 5770 would be more suited to my tasks, which i probably should have been more specific about in the first place, while i love gaming and would love to just do that on this beast, most of the time i'm going to be using it for transcending media to play on my HD LCD and for editing HD videos, which I hope will go alot faster on this high-end quad core rig than it does on my 13" MBP. And BTW, the reason i want a MP and not an Imac is bc I'd like to be able to upgrade it and thats not really possible with an Imac w/o voiding the warranty.

But i have to ask, do yall really think that win 7 64bit is the best way to go?

I built my cousin a gaming rig once and bought and installed a 64bit version of Vista. It took 3-4 hours to load, and weighted about 15 GB. He loves to play counter strike, so i loaded steam and DLed CS. I played it for about 2 hours (to test it out ;) ) next day he comes to pick it up, takes it home and the rig was NEVER able to play CS again, in fact he couldn't even get steam to load. He tried to load C&C Generals, could never get it to work. Finally he got fed up with vista 64 and told me to dual boot XP 32 on it, so i did and all the games worked fine on it. Is 7 64bit more backward compatible to 32bit software then Vista bc i don't want to run in to these same problems.

Thanks all

Mat
Click to expand...

Ok i'm a little lost. At first you contemplated spending $5000 on a Mac Pro to be able to play a lot of games, but now you won't even spend the money to upgrade the graphics? I understand that you won't only be gaming but if it is still important to you and you would have spent $5000 initially, then why not spend the extra $200 to upgrade your GPU to the 5870 which is 2x stronger than the 5770 (Which would give you much more gaming performance than a 12 core with a 5770 since, gaming today doesn't take advantage of that many CPU cores.) Just thought you might want to do that since obviously gaming is important to you and it sounds like you can definitely stomach the upgrade.
 
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