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I need some numbers before I buy, please contribute.

K

krunk

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 29, 2004
236
0
So, looks like apple will be content to sell last year's technology for a while more. I'm alright with that. I need some numbers to see what I'm losing before I buy old tech, so if you have a Mac Pro with the 1900XT, please list your FPS in windows for the following games at max and moderate settings with this info:

CPU speed: xxx
Ram: xxx
Resolution: xxx
OS: (vista or xp)



Far Cry
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
World of Warcraft
LotR Online
Command and Conquer
EQ2
Oblivion
Battlefield 2142
City of Heroes

If you don't have all of them, no worries, just post what you got. Basically, if it can run all of these at a sustained 60+ fps I'll probably bite and upgrade my card in a year when the 1900 goes the way of the dinosaur.

I'm told though with Vanguard, it absolutely crushes old cards like the x1900..., might be a bad harbinger for the last gens.
 
May I ask why you want to buy a Mac Pro when gaming is so important to you? As you suggest, you can get a better windows gaming rig for less, so why isn't that your approach?
 
I must admit I don't quite follow your logic either.

Why are you looking at a workstation machine when you should be looking for a gaming PC?
 
the mac pro was designed for professional audio/visual-intensive work along with other science oriented processing apps; NOT for games. You will be much happier with a much cheaper windows system that you can build yourself with OEM parts from tigerdirect.com or newegg.com
 
Perhaps, like many others, he needs a workstation, but also would like to play games on it. $250 for a GPU is alot cheaper than a whole other dedicated gaming machine.
 
Dollar for dollar the mac is cheaper. If you just bought a mac pro and installed windows on it you could use any video card for pc in it and it works great. Mac pro is a best buy whether you run os x or Windows. :apple:
 
You can find many benchmarks for game FSP with the current Mac Pro vid cards on the internet. Just search for the video card name and 'benchmarks'. The mac pro video cards are okay, but not up to par with most intense gamers.

But I agree with others: For $500 you can build a Shuttle PC that will play games better. And have more video card options.

As far as I know you cannot just throw in ANY video card into a Mac Pro.
 
This was a pretty straight forward question, yet it incites a bunch of debate instead of some simple numbers.

Does someone really have to justify why they might want the convenience of gaming and work in a single machine? Alright, here it goes:


1) I have a apple student developer discount to burn, which means the mac pro would cost about 2300'sh with after market ram.
2) I have a Powermac G5 with 2.5gb of ram, an x850XT, blah blah that will most likely sell on craigslist for about 1500'sh
3) I've spec'd out a custom built PC with the 8xxx series card, C2D, P35 mobo, etc, etc. and it weighs in at around 1500'sh. . . maybe a bit more
4) I wouldn't mind getting into the "sell old mac pro every 2 years and put toward latest and greatest" cycle
5) The mac pro is amazingly fast and since we all know vid games are all about the GPU, I will be able to upgrade the vid card when the dx10 games really start taking over the market (pcie is probably here for a while)
6) I like the simplicity and convenience of only owning a single machine

So when it's all said and done, I'm looking at a mac pro for about 800 or a extremely upgradable pc for about 1500'sh. At that price, the mac pro is an excellent deal I would not pass up *unless* it is incapable with its current video card to play current video games adequately.

Not sure why it's necessary to write a novel justifying what is really a very, very simple question: "Hey, you guys that game on mac! What kinda fps you get on the latest and greatest games?"

I'd also reinforce what macenforcer said: Dollar for dollar, the mac is the cheapest in its class. . . just wondering if it can game too.
 
scottlinux said:
But I agree with others: For $500 you can build a Shuttle PC that will play games better. And have more video card options.
Click to expand...

$500 will about cover the vid card...maybe a little left over if you don't go top of the line.


You can find many benchmarks for game FSP with the current Mac Pro vid cards on the internet.
Click to expand...

True, but the mac pro has some quirks like the RAM bottleneck with FBDIMMS that makes it not quite an 1 to 1 comparison. Also, most of the games I mention above are MMO's and RPG's while most benchmarks focus on the FPS games.

Why does this have to devolve into some metaphysical debate over the Tao of Macs and whether their cosmic energies are in tune to gaming. . . sheesh, if you play games and own a mac pro I'd be appreciative of some anecdotal response with some spec's and fps rates for reference.
 
krunk said:
$500 will about cover the vid card...maybe a little left over if you don't go top of the line.
Click to expand...

Yeouch. Sounds like you are a serious gamer. Why not build a PC? And keep that Powermac. It's not a slow computer by any means.
GIYF for benchmarks on video cards. If you are a gamer you know that the video card makes a big difference. And apple doesn't offer top of the line video cards for the Mac Pro like what is available for the PC world right now.
 
scottlinux said:
Yeouch. Sounds like you are a serious gamer. Why not build a PC? And keep that Powermac. It's not a slow computer by any means.
GIYF for benchmarks on video cards. If you are a gamer you know that the video card makes a big difference. And apple doesn't offer top of the line video cards for the Mac Pro like what is available for the PC world right now.
Click to expand...
Maybe he simply doesn't want Windows defiling his home? I do all my gaming on Mac and Linux machines...more so on Mac as I've found that games such as WoW are more stable on OS X than Linux + WINE.

I'm actually planning on purchasing a new MacPro (disgustingly overspec'ed!) when I return home from Iraq. And, I WILL be gaming on it as well as working.
 
scottlinux said:
Yeouch. Sounds like you are a serious gamer. Why not build a PC? And keep that Powermac. It's not a slow computer by any means.
GIYF for benchmarks on video cards. If you are a gamer you know that the video card makes a big difference. And apple doesn't offer top of the line video cards for the Mac Pro like what is available for the PC world right now.
Click to expand...

Hehe, it's really not that outlandish. The x1900 XT's that the Mac Pro's use are so old they're not made anymore. They've been long ago replaced by the x1950 Pro's. These are a minor upgrade and go for about $250. That's 1/2 the cost of our supposed 500 dollar gaming machine for very little improvement over what the mac pro offers.

Ok, so if one were to take on the added cost and hassle of maintaining two machines it would only be to actually upgrade performance which means going for the 8xxx series of cards and most likely the 88xx cards since the series less then that really aren't that impressive.

The 88xx series weigh in at about 280 minimum if you get the 320mb models. However, a lot of the bottleneck's in MMO's and RPG's is the need to load a ton of textures into video memory, making the 512mb of the x1900 xt more desireable in some cases so you want to at least match that.

The next rung up is the 640mb cards for the 8800's and those *start* at $380 + tax.

My 500 quote was a tad of an exaggeration, but not by much.

When you look at it this way then toss in the tons of benefits that you get with a Mac Pro over the power mac (great virtualiztion thru parallels for those windows only applications without the need to reboot, access to a modern, intel arch multi core platform for us developers, and a few other things I could go on about) and all you need is for the Mac Pro to be able to hang in there with the games, not necessarily be *the best*. . .

thus the incentive for this post and asking those Mac Gamers out there for some real life testimonials. Which, oddly enough, I have yet to get. >.<
 
That's about the normal reply for gaming on the Mac - "get a gaming PC", "get a gaming console". Basically, us true Mac gamers have to duck and cover. You get quite a bit of surprise on gaming servers when you pound a PC gamer into the dirt with a Mac, though. There are a few of us that don't want a PC for gaming and a console STILL hasn't been created that can handle FPS games as good as a computer (with a mouse and keyboard) in my opinion. I found that out when I bought xBox 360 this winter - I'm still reserving my judgement on it, Crackdown was a different way of doing a FPS game. And of course, why should you get a gaming PC when you can do both Windows and MacOS on one machine and you're likely going to use your Mac for something other than gaming.

Unfortunately, unlike you, I don't game in Windows, I game in MacOS, so I don't play the games you've listed. So I can't give you numbers. Most of those games, my guess, should run great.
 
Kosh66 said:
Unfortunately, unlike you, I don't game in Windows, I game in MacOS, so I don't play the games you've listed. So I can't give you numbers. Most of those games, my guess, should run great.
Click to expand...

I'm always open to suggestions, what games do you play?
 
I play C&C 3 at 1280x960 with full in-game effects. I may be able to crank it up to 1600 but I'm too lazy to adjust my CRT.

It rarely gets 'chunky', and when it does, it's because I'm fielding about 100 infantry units (each has like 5 guys individually rendered).. not many computers wouldn't chunk at that.

Edit: By the way, I play games via bootcamp in Windows XP
 
I upgraded from a 1ghz pIII (with a 32mb pci radeon) to a macpro 2.66, 1900xt. Right now I've been playing all the games I've wanted to play in the past 5 years, which my old computer couldn't run (Half-Life2, Halo, Civ4). I haven't got around to the "newer" stuff.

But it stands to reason that any game, which wasn't released today, will run incredibly well. Most of those games listed were released either while the 1900 was still near the top of the pile, if not the top and with the case of Far Cry I'm pretty sure it predates it.
 
Last October I had Oblivion installed. This is what I got:-

At 1680x1050 with everything set to max, while outside fighting monsters and casting as many spells as possible I got the frame rate down to 15fps. The average fps seems to be around 35 outside, when there's no grass (in towns) the fps hits 60fps (due to v-sync being on).

I also have WoW (OS X install), and at 1680x1050 with all settings maxed it seems to stay above 50fps. Though this is in an area without lots of people casting, also I can't test it for long as I get glitches when I run fullscreen.

I can't do any more tests as I don't have Windows installed at the moment.

Though I did also play Half-Life 2 and FEAR with the settings maxed without any problems (at-least that I can remember), though I can't give you any numbers on it. I played Far Cry as well though I can't remember the settings.
 
krunk said:
I'm always open to suggestions, what games do you play?
Click to expand...

If you're a serious Windows gamer, most of the ones I play are probably old news to you.

Here's my list my Mac Pro:
Command and Conquer:Generals + Zero Hour Expansion
UT2004 (I play on an active ONS Clan Server that's been updating the maps with new vehicles - ever see a fire tank or a bio tank?)
Quake 4
Star Wars: Empire at War

On the G5 Power Mac:
Halo - thinking I may get the Universal Binary of this for the Mac Pro.
Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

Then I'm waiting on Epic to release UT 3.


My setup:
Mac Pro Dual 3.0 dual-core
4GB RAM
150GB Raptor HD, 500GB HD
Radeon X1900XT
Logitech Z-5500 Speakers
30" Apple Cinema Display

(I went all out with my recent Mac Pro purchase in April.)
 
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