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MP 2.8 Oct for games

M

multimania

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 2, 2007
129
36
Hi guys, I know that alot of people don't want to use their MP for games, but I want to give it a go as well!

Do you think a Oct 2.8 will be fast enough or is a 3gig + really going to improve frame rates. I am obviously going to put in the 8800 video card.

Many thanks
 
if gaming is primary concern build a pc. The Mac Pro is a workstation, i think this has been mentioned more then once :). You would be wasting money as in you wouldn't be utilizing the power to its full extent.
 
multimania said:
Hi guys, I know that alot of people don't want to use their MP for games, but I want to give it a go as well!

Do you think a Oct 2.8 will be fast enough or is a 3gig + really going to improve frame rates. I am obviously going to put in the 8800 video card.

Many thanks
Click to expand...

Are you seriously asking if 8 cores will be fast enough? You won't see a difference between the 2.8 and 3.0
 
No gaming isn't my primary concern. I am going to be using Logic Pro, CS3 and I want to learn Final Cut etc, so I really want an all in one machine which I can play Flight simulator with too (Love my flightsims!!) aaronw1986 that's what I wanted to hear, I just wondered if I would see much of a difference - I don't think I'd see £500 difference.

Its on order anyway. Do you guys know if I get vista for the pc side if i should be getting the 32 or 64 bit version.

Cheers
 
I was going to buy a MP for strictly gaming but luckily i decided not to. I bought an iMac and a gaming rig instead. To answer your question, octo will not improve your fame rates. Most games at the moment can't even take advantage of a quad core but they are beginning to. Most games are GPU dependant.
 
Mac.Jnr said:
I was going to buy a MP for strictly gaming but luckily i decided not to. I bought an iMac and a gaming rig instead. To answer your question, octo will not improve your fame rates. Most games at the moment can't even take advantage of a quad core but they are beginning to. Most games are GPU dependant.
Click to expand...
So for your gaming rig, what vid card do you have and processor. Surely a 2.8 is going to be comparible?..
 
multimania said:
No gaming isn't my primary concern. I am going to be using Logic Pro, CS3 and I want to learn Final Cut etc, so I really want an all in one machine which I can play Flight simulator with too (Love my flightsims!!) aaronw1986 that's what I wanted to hear, I just wondered if I would see much of a difference - I don't think I'd see £500 difference.

Its on order anyway. Do you guys know if I get vista for the pc side if i should be getting the 32 or 64 bit version.

Cheers
Click to expand...

It depends on how much RAM you are gonna have in your machine...32 bit version of Windows can only recognize 3GB's of RAM...so go for 64 if you plan to have more than that.
 
multimania said:
Its on order anyway. Do you guys know if I get vista for the pc side if i should be getting the 32 or 64 bit version.
Click to expand...

If you go/went for the Octo:

"While all editions of Windows Vista can support
multiple core CPUs, only Windows Vista Business,
Ultimate, and Enterprise can support dual processors."

http://preview.tinyurl.com/24nzur

So you'd probably be looking at a choice between
Ultimate and Business if you want to use both CPUs.
The Ultimate retail package (not the OEM version)
apparently comes with both 32 and 64 bit versions.
If you went for Vista Business, you could order a
64-bit version here:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/38w66y

Not that I'd necessarily recommend installing any
version of Vista ;)
 
Go for a 3.2 system. The problem is simply that games do not use more than one core unless they are made to use them and 99% of the current games won't. So for ultimate speed you need the fasted single core machine and the fastest video card.
 
AnotherPCGamer said:
Go for a 3.2 system. The problem is simply that games do not use more than one core unless they are made to use them and 99% of the current games won't. So for ultimate speed you need the fasted single core machine and the fastest video card.
Click to expand...

Or use the $1600 that it costs to upgrade from 2.8 to 3.2 to build a gaming PC.
 
multimania said:
Its on order anyway. Do you guys know if I get vista for the pc side if i should be getting the 32 or 64 bit version.
Click to expand...

If you are going to install Windows, your best bet would be to install XP 32-bit. Vista is not really ready for gaming prime time. It does support DX10, but you are likely to take a performance hit from Vista which will be more than any gain from DX10.
 
You shouldn't have too much of a problem finding benchmarks that show the difference in frame rate you would get from .2GHz for any desired game. Comapring any core 2 duo processors of similar specs with different speed should be adequate for a reference.
 
aaronw1986 said:
Or use the $1600 that it costs to upgrade from 2.8 to 3.2 to build a gaming PC.
Click to expand...

^ Yeap!

My gaming rig is pretty solid. It might get raped in every aspect but at gaming it could hold it's own against the new MP. My rig is a Q6600 overclocked to 3.0ghz with a old 8800GTS 320mb card. When the new 9800's come out I'll upgrade. My 8800GTS is overkill for my screen's resolution, but when I upgrade to a 24" Monitor I might go SLI. Imagine SLI 9800GTX :)

Also going from 2.8 to 3.2 won't give you much of a boost in terms of frame rates.

I'd choose XP as it is proven that you sometimes get 10-15% advantage in fps over vista. Also XP is more stable. If you go XP, make sure you get XP Professional as it can use dual sockets.
 
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