Mac Pro 2.8 + XP + Gaming (?)

[ErikAndre]

I really don't mind at all shutting the bad boy down and loading Windows to play a game. I mean, after all, if its a graphic intense game, don't we usually shut all apps down so as to give the game all the resources?

Shutting the system down, while its a small inconvienience, isn't that big of a deal, especially when I've never had that luxury before, and being I can now walk down the gaming isle and don't need to look on the back of every SW label to see if it has a Mac logo... i can just pick up whatever i feel like... even if I feel like picking up Monopoly or Battleship (which can probably run in Fusion).. i can pick it up now... and yet still have an amazing Mac on the side.

For me, having to shut down OS X is reason enough to not want to use it for gaming. =/

I have a 3Ghz/2GB ram dell xps I game on, but I've been playing less and less games as I migrated more and more to a mac book. Can't wait to get the MP 8800GT! Maybe it's finally shipping... gonna go hit refresh on the order page,lol. bye

 

[AnotherPCGamer]

WOW has a mac client. I run it on my mca mini.

Great thread! But, has anyone installed and tried running a game like HL2 or CSS or WOW or something in Parallels?

For me, having to shut down OS X is reason enough to not want to use it for gaming. =/

I have a 3Ghz/2GB ram dell xps I game on, but I've been playing less and less games as I migrated more and more to a mac book. Can't wait to get the MP 8800GT! Maybe it's finally shipping... gonna go hit refresh on the order page,lol. bye

 

[bilbo--baggins]

WOW has a mac client. I run it on my mca mini.

Just what I was thinking. Seems pointless running WOW on a Mac running Windows.

 

[GangsterTalk]

Just what I was thinking. Seems pointless running WOW on a Mac running Windows.

Well - I'm getting Civ4 for Windows even though it has a Mac version. Reading through the support forums at Aspyr, made me think twice about getting the Mac version...plus it was a little cheaper.

 

[ray_uk]

Check out youtube there's a video of Quake 4 being run from within Parallels, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWU4DTOP9ys it seems to be playing decently, not absolutely smoothly but still playable, I would imangine the new Mac Pro with something like the 8800GT should be able to cope quite well.

 

[elvisizer]

Gaming in virtualization? Not gonna happen, unless it is a 10 year old game. I think you know gaming will be fine with a 512MB video card...

Actually, I play civ 4 on my macbook in VMware all the time. that's not 10 years old.

But in general, most games will not run well virtualized at all. Defcon, Darwinia, and Civ4 are the only ones that run well on my mac book.

On my 2.8 8 core (that arrived yesterday, WOOO!) in vista 64, everything runs great. I played the crysis demo last night at 1920x1200 with every option set to high except for shaders, shadows and physics set to medium, no AA. ran very well.

 

[andy721]

runs perfect

Hi, could you tell me at what resolution and graphics settings you were playing Crysis?

Because I have a thread on the first page about how surprisingly well it runs on the stock ati with almost max settings, and I was expecting the 8800 to blow it away.

Is it choppy? Low frames per second?

Thanks

I ran a lot of pc games on my 2.8ghz 8 core mac pro with the 8800 and crysis I have it all on very high along with the resolution cept for the shadows to high instead of very high and it runs like a dream single player and online. Whoever told you guys different, they have something wrong with their mac pros because I only have 2gb ram installed.

 

[tom.]

The 8800GT will future proof you slightly, but for a gaming machine you've really got to hope Apple will try and make these machines accept newer and newer cards.

At the end of the day, my plan is, if i can't game on this machine in >18months time, i will build a PC with a dirt cheap C2D/C2Q, plenty of memory and the most mammoth graphics card I can find.

I use mine for gaming atm, CSS/COD4/WoW/C&C3 and i have no problems. Don't underestimate the 8800GT, it's a very powerful card, and will be for some time. I have seen several benchmarks where the GT is comparable to the GTX, which i used to own. Also, as others have said, always boot camp for gaming, virtualization is not really an option. Just take 60 seconds to reboot, I know how annoying it can be to [1] be in windows and [2] have to move from your messy but also organized OS X session, but it's worth it.

 

[ildondeigiocchi]

Listen People get the Mac Pro it handles games great. When the new Mac Pro will come out then you can get the top of the line video card and install it in your Mac PRo 08. PCI 2.0 will be the standard 4 quite a while.

 

[pastrychef]

Well, if you're going to be playing in Bootcamp, you can use any video card you like.