Gamer looking at Mac Pro vs. iMac

[lasuther]

Buy a windows box for gaming and connect it to a low end iMac 27 inch Or get a high end iMac and when it is slow for gaming buy a windows box.

This is exactly what you should do. Buy a 27" iMac i7 with 2TB hard drive upgrades. Build a sweet gaming PC and plug it into the 27" iMac and a 27" Dell display. You'll get the best of both worlds, a PC with dual 27" monitors for gaming and an iMac for everything else.

 

[psingh01]

If money isn't an issue get the Mac Pro. You'll be able to upgrade the video card later on if you want so you can keep playing the latest/greatest bootcamp games.

 

[efstuck]

I'm really see sawing here, and now i'm leaning towards a mac pro because:

1) I don't want 2 systems on my desk

2) I am thinking of selling my iMac which is at the end of it's 3 years on applecare - i just don't want to choose between having to pay $$$ for a simple repair or have a broken iMac.
I think i can still get soething around $1000 for my 2.4ghz, 4gb ram, 500 gb 24" imac? which i would put towards a mac pro. I will sell this iMac regardless i think and if i buy a windows system, i won't have a mac desktop for my everyday things. Yes i -could- buy a macbook but i really don't need one...i have an iphone and that is good enough when im sitting in front of the tv or for traveling.

3) I am just thinking of my new pc system from the past that had problems with crashing on counter strike or warcraft 3 for unknown reasons frequently.

4) I'm on my 3rd external HD for time machine, HD movies etc.

BUT I'm really having a problem grappling with how long it will actually last me. Is it purely the video card that is going to be outdated and need replacing? how about the CPU? And for my purposes - gaming, movies, surfing, email, chat etc - I will NOT be using all the cores - ie I am wasting a lot of the processing power, yes? I want to know that in 3 years, when my MP starts having problems running newer games, can i pop in a new apple-approved Graphics card and it will be good to go for another 3 years? Or is my CPU going to drag me down (which i heard is not replaceable? - your stuck with the one you buy in the start)?

I don't mind dropping down ~4000$ (esp if i sell my iMac which i plan to regardless because I don't want to deal with any premium repairs afterwards and i still have applecare for another 4 months which can help it sell I would think) if i know it will last me 6+ years with a new GPU halfway. Can anyone tell me the bottlenecks of my system in the future? Again, I don't need to play ultra settings on the newest games, but smooth medium would be great. Is the processor going to be a problem down the road for my needs?

Thank you guys so much, it's really helpful as i have never looked into a MP and i spent 80% of my free time in front of my computer!

 

[tomscott1988]

your onto a winner

Exactly my thoughts on your situation. The thing about you not using all the cores is that its a great multi-tasking machine an 8 core machine is now taking full advantage of apples software running 64 bit and apple are leading the way in software development and everyone is catching up even adobe!!! lol, plus you will run more programs more smoothly here is an example this is the same as my mac pro and it is 2 years old, some guy showing off what it can do (not even the nahelem) :


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXq5gsUS_4s


So in other words you will find browsing, watching video, itunes, iphoto, encoding video and playing games a breeze simultaneously! like i can encode 1080 video while gaming without dragging the experience down significantly! plus you have to remember that if your looking toward the future then hardware is always way ahead of software, 64 bit has been around for 10 years or more on the mac and only just being put into practise and worthwhile for general mac users.

In terms of the processors you have server grade processors in a desktop, they are designed for high usage and longevity. The mac pro is not like an imac, the original mac pro quad 2.66 is still extremely fast and is 5 years old people get carried away with benchmarks etc, and technology moves so fast, but this is an investment that will pay, it will last you at least 7 years of service without you thinking of upgrading the processors. But its the quantity and the quality of these processors! they have enough power to literally run anything! they are not designed like normal desktop chips say the core2 or i range, benchmarks may be similar but when you get down to doing some serious multitasking the xeon chips are the top trump everytime.

This is why pro's use them not iMacs, the core and i range is designed to have a shelf life, so intel makes more money the server grade chips do not sell like hot cakes unlike the desktop chips, and are not refreshed as quickly. If they did then companies wouldnt pay the premium of a high end server because it would be trumped and need replacing quicker. Mac pros are not as consumable like the more affordable iMacs, companies have to make money and upgrading them incrementally helps do this.

In terms of replacing the processors i dont think youl need to worry about this, 3 years! I think you can upgrade them but this will set you back nearly as much as the computer i seem to remember being curious about mine and finding it would cost me £1200 for 2x 3ghz quad core xeons. This is why they are so expensive they are designed for the future in mind. Professionals buy these and only get rid of them when they are literally on their last legs if that ever happens and in terms of them not being powerful enough, gaming is only going to get better, games will soon take advantage of more cores so even tho the computer is still old, in 5 years say, it will still feel fast. The games will be written to take advantage of the multiple cores! Pentium 4 chips are still good as dual or quads if the system is built with plenty of ram, just because the games arnt optimised for the multiple CPUs.

Mac pros are apples top of the line machine and hence the price and why they are the least popular computer apple supplies. But if you think you will change your computer every 3 years then a pro will survive at least 2 of these lifetimes if not 3, and at the end of the day it has the latest slots for expandability so you can add future tech anyway, like USB3 etc.
And on the graphics card front like i said earlier the future looks bright in terms of gaming, ipad iphone, steve seems to be coming round to the idea and with the best available gaming community/supplier steam now coming to mac, i see a new war on the gaming front. Manufactures will start developing cards because gaming is now viable!

We have seen in the last 3 years a huge step forward in the graphics development for mac because of bootcamp! also with the new open cl apple is trying to take power from the GPU (graphics) and so need faster cards so more and more powerful cards will become available, and i only see it growing! A mac pro is just like a pc you can chuck any component in it like any pci express card as long as it has mac software if its a music device say or if its an expandable card like firewire or usb there is no problem, same with the hard drives any will go in as long as they are SATA or SATAII.

Graphics cards still have apples firmware on them tho so unfortunately the graphics will be more expensive but as soon as third parties start making them and being competitive i see the price coming down dramatically!
hope this helps
tom

 

[efstuck]

Thanks Tom!

That is a pretty awesome post for tipping me over the edge for the mac pro! I am going to get a Mac Pro ! When apple lets me (refreshes)!

Looking forward to it very much, and if it can last me as long as people say...the money will be well spent!

Now time to join the threads where everyone waits impatiently and guesses the date of the new Mac Pro!

Thanks everyone for helping me with both sides of the coin!


-Ken

 

[macsmurf]

Thanks Tom!

That is a pretty awesome post for tipping me over the edge for the mac pro! I am going to get a Mac Pro ! When apple lets me (refreshes)!

In the end, I think you'd really like to buy a Mac Pro, which is an awesome machine. I don't think your decision is rooted in fact but that doesn't necessarily make it a bad decision. Not wanting to have two computers or just plain liking a Mac Pro is just as valid reasons as anything else.

Anyway, around 3 years ago I bought a PC with a quad core 2.40 GHz CPU (overclocked to 3.25 GHz) & 2 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT etc. 6 months ago, I added an additional 4 GB RAM.

This machine cost me around $1000 and still runs games well on medium settings. When it comes to stuff other than games it handles everything I can throw at it. At some point, I'll probably upgrade the graphics to something like a Geforce GTX 260 which will set me back $200 and will probably last a couple of years.

I forget what the RAM cost but let's make the total cost 1500$ for 5 years. I'll probaly be upgrading again after that, but let's say I buy a new machine for $1000 and upgrade it for $500 over 5 years. That's $3000.

Now let's say I buy a completely new machine for $1000 again.

A this point, you've spend $4000 + $$$ for upgrades and your machine is 10 years old. I've spend $4000 including upgrades, my machine is brand new, and my PC has never been older than 5 years.

Now, one might argue that a Xeon quad 2.66 is much more powerful than a Q6600 2.4@3.25. Unfortunately, that isn't true. Gamewise, it is simply a cheaper option to buy a PC.

 

[kellen]

I say mac pro. It is upgradeable, mainly in the graphics card area. Having a quad or octo core will make this thing last longer than 3 years.

Yeah a pc or imac can be had for less, but for me it was worth it for os x, upgradability, warranty and ease of use. Getting it when they were on clearance was icing on the cake.

 

[koruki]

Don't be silly buying a Mac Pro for gaming, there is no way to warrant it.

 

[efstuck]

DirectX games on Mac Pro?

So i kind of decided to get a Mac Pro but after valve has released Steam and i have read about portal's poor fps even on high end mac systems because of directx or something? Is this something that I should be worried about? If this will be a problem for a lot of games, than it might be a deal breaker and i will have to jump ship to the windows machine reluctantly.

Basically, am I going to have problems with running games because of some games are optimized for directx or something along those lines?

 

[jiminy]

I think that you still have to consider that steam is still relatively new to the mac platform, just a couple of months old.

Ive read news that steam has been working with apple, nvidia, and ati to get better graphics drivers for the mac, so that is better for the long run.

 

[kaheiyeh]

I had a case like this previously and it was a no brainer. I'm a PC gamer playing all the latest like MW2, BC2, L4D2 and the likes. I contemplated switching to Mac but the price just doesn't cut it.

I spent less than AU$1000 buying parts and building my own gaming PC, complete with a nice 1080p 22" Samsung to go along with it (Specs in sig). It plays all my games beautifully at all high and from what I can see, I'll only be upgrading the graphics card, maybe at the end of the year for around AU$200 more.

For my other daily needs, I bought myself a 15" MBP for AU$1979. Plus, I get the added mobility of being able to move around with it to university as well.

Compare this to a Mac Pro which costs AU$3600 here. The default Nvidia GT 120 that comes on the Mac Pro is horrible and you'll have to spend another AU$200 - AU$300 to get something more decent.

So really, you can get your own Gaming PC + MBP for ~$3000 or get a Mac Pro and upgrade it for almost $4000. It's about $1000 extra for a Mac Pro and, in general, you only have to spend $200 on upgrades every two years to keep your PC up to scratch with the latest games (that's how much I spend).

However, if you really want a Mac, get a Mac Pro and not an iMac since you cannot upgrade the components inside an iMac with industry standard parts like a Mac Pro.