Mac Switch??

barefeats

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My MBP 17" Santa Rosa plays many games of both mac and pc well. Of course, it won't beat the latest desktop gaming machines, but it's fine for most games. Currently playing TF2, occasionally I even get the top score of the team, running on the MBP only with keyboard and mouse (no external monitor, waiting for next generation apple cinema display, although external monitor will probably have faster refresh rates than any laptop display).

In addition, you have to take into consideration that the MBP

- Can boot into windows and Linux (it's like having 2 computers, if not 3)
- Actually sleeps / hibernates (Safe sleep) when you close the lid
- Does not have to be shut down when transporting
- Is thinner and weights less than wintels of similar specs
- Has a smaller power supply (1/2 size of typical wintel) with better cord management, so that reduces the weight / bag space needed even further
- Has better battery life when running OSX
- Does not have fans on the bottom blowing hot air into your lap
- Quieter for daily non-intensive usage
- Does not slow down even if you install tons of apps (windows slows down if even if you install programs without using them)

 

People say Macs aren't very good for gaming because there's not as many games available for them. You can however install Windows on the Mac (you'll have both Windows and Mac OS X available) and play all your games that way.

 

You can get either Parallels or Boot Camp (the latter is free and is apple) for these purposes and all will work even better than on PCs.

 

mac os x runs games at low framerates
so that's why so many mac users get a console

 

Gaming

The macbook with the GMA 950 is awful for gaming. The MBP has a very good graphic card and is really good for gaming in the laptop category, only a few monsters, can beat the MBP in gaming. But nothing from Apple can beat a window custom built desktop with dual graphic cards for gaming.

The offering in the desktop category from Apple is weak if you like gaming.

 

In fact, few people can afford MBP - but this machine is really awesome! It runs most complicated apps very well (such as games, or Parallels and Windows. Vista runs very well on MBPs in Parallels Desktop)

 

That is just wrong. There are more Mac games that plays fine. In addition there are more mac games out there than I have time to play them, and if you buy a decent computer, then you can play them.

Same thing, if you get a low end windoze machine, you'll get low framerates too.

On a Mac, you can always use boot camp to play windows games too.

 

MacPro is weak? Just because it's out of your budget doesn't mean it's weak. MacPros runs vista extraPaymentTimate with all the features better than most windoze machines (even under VMWare emulation).

 

If youre a True gamer just stick to PCs. If youre casual go with Macpro or imac.

 

CoH:Opposing Fronts, World in Conflict, and LOTRO all look pretty good on my MBP.

 

If you want to do a lot of PC gaming, then you'll want a PC desktop anyway, probably one you have built yourself, as most PCs from OEM's that don't cost thousands of pounds aren't great for Gaming. For fairly serious gaming, an iMac, Mac Pro or Macbook Pro will be OK for now, especially if you boot into Windows. And a Mac Mini/Macbook will be OK for playing games like WOW, and CS Source under Windows.

 

If you'd read the full sentence you would have noticed that I said for gaming the MAC Pro is weak and don't argue it, come on, it's using a 2 year old GPU. For everything else though, the Mac Pro is great. Now if Apple could add the option for a GeForce 8800 Ultra or GeForce 8800 GTX with 1 GB of onboard VRAM and support SLI, it would be an awesome machine for all tasks. Specifically for gaming, I can build for 2000$ a machine that will be a LOT better than a Mac Pro (again I am only talking about gaming on a PC).

Though the target audience for the Mac Pro is not gamers and in itself the machine and what it can do is great.

 

If your a casual gamer you should use a 'Macpro'?

You're joking right? The base Mac Pro is $2500!

You can run recent windows video games very well on a MacBook Pro and the 2.4GHz iMac runs games nicely as well.


It's called Dual Booting, Boot Camp is a negligible performance difference between a Dell with the same specs as a MBP running the same copy of windows on both.

 

Well, in July I was tossing up between the 17inch dell and MBP, and decided that the latter would be a nice change. (although the price difference with education discounts was $1500 between the two). Early this month, I got my sister the dell I was planning on buying for her 21st (which has exactly the same specs, but with 3Gb ram instead of my 2gb).

Personally, I cannot see a difference when it comes to playing games (with bootcamp), though the mac version of games might be a touch slower. Aside from this, my mac is thinner, smaller, lighter, boots up the OS in 30 seconds (shuts down in 10-20s) (as opposed to around 2min with dell), is awesome for uni assignments and presentations (if you have iwork), is easy to transport, small power adapter, and crashes very rarely, has a giant trackpad that is more logical to use (two finger scrolling etc), doesnt have an exhaust vent blowing hot air into whatever may be sitting next to your compouter (possibly uncomfortable for lefties), has really good speakers, backlit keyboard, and has that awesome remote..

Downside; expensive, if the charger is not grounded my mac lightly electrecutes my forearm after a while, playing games for too long (5+ hours day after day) makes my wrists ache, sometimes freezes while watchin some DVDs (the movie keeps playing, just cant adjust volume etc), after using OSx using vista does not look so attractive, people will try to argue that macs suck, you will fall in love with it.

If I went back in time, and was to choose between a desktop gaming PC and this MBP, I still would stick with my MBP.


N.B. I've always been a hardcore gamer, and I am very happy =)

 

That's what i was talking about! Mac Pro is very expensive and few can afford it. But it gives absolutely great performance for both VMs and Dual-booting. I think that games will work fine even in Parallels Desktop on Mac Pros... I'd like to have one, but it costs too much!

 

Well, maybe you're right, hardcore gamers should choose PC. But I would prefer a Mac Pro in any case. I haven't tried to play on it, but I believe it will be not much worse than PCs

 

I've been a PC user for so many years and I finally choose to switch to the Mac. I had the same questions about gaming on OSX because I like to play games like Battlefield, Company of Heroes or The Settlers-series.

A few weeks ago I bought a new iMac 20-inch and tried a few games for OSX and the performance was most of the time below playable. So I've installed Windows XP (SP2) through Bootcamp and now everything runs like a charm !

I have no problems running Windows XP with Bootcamp and I can put the video settings for most games to High or even Ultra. Display resolution can be up to 1280x1024 or 1440x900. The native resolution 1680x1050 seems too high for my Radeon HD 2600 PRO.

Anyway: just buy a Mac and use Bootcamp to play your favorite PC games !