Need Help with Colors and a (PC)

[isgoed]

Hey, DHM, lost your faith? I often read your posts about iMacs and i agreed with you all the time. I am also waiting for an iMac G5 gaming system and for Doom III.

For advise I would say that the Graphics Card is the most important since you will be gaming. The nVidia 5900XT and radeon 9800SE are real good price/performancewise. They can perform (overclocked) just as well as their brothers (costing only half), but if you go for the max you should get the 9800XT or 5950u. Or wait for the NV40 (13 april) and Radeon R420, these card will really perform twice as good as the current generation. A $300 card is not something that you just upgrade. On colors i have no advice.

Personally I would still wait for upgrades. Doom III isn't even released. I intend to wait for Doom III. If it is out I just buy a Budget Athlon and save my money for the iMac. Look what my money can buy me.

35.58 DDR RAM 256MB (400MHz)
35.58 DDR RAM 256MB (400MHz)
122.00 Ati Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB
111.00 AMD_Athlon_XP 2800+ (2.25 GHz ; 333 FSB)
81.00 Asus A7N8X (motherboard)
71.48 Maxtor DiamondMax 80GB-7200RPM-8 MB
48.00 Q-Tec 6052MDL (casing)
504.64

This will play Doom3 just well, and by the time it is out I can probably get some more for the same ammount. (I already have a CDRW, OS, keyboard, etc…). 500$ is still a bit much only for gaming, i think. It would be nice if i could use the graphics card in the iMac also and cut the total price to $400. That would bring the extra costs to just $300. That would make it real sensible.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

Thanks JSW, I really do want to get a Apple game Machine but you are right they refuse to make one. Imac is such a wonderful design its just to bad its so handicapped by Apple in hardware.(G4&5200)
Now with talk of special discounts till WWDC on Powermac & displays I dont see any new Powermacs anytime soon. If im not mistaken when Imac CRT came out it had a slight overlap of the powermacs and then the powermacs got bumped up. This jump started Imac Crt sales.
The Alienware Silver & Blue ice with AMD64 3400+ and 5700 ultra nvidia is what i think ill go with. The configuration Im looking at is $1889 but thats with a combo drive.
Performance of the Imacs arent even close so this gives me only the option of the 1.6 single G5 and again according to MacAddict/Macworld its performance is a lot less then the 2.2 ghz AMD cpu with a bus speed of 1600. AMD also has a memory controler on the chip. pretty impressive.
Ill have to get a Crt since the wife gets my studio display so ill get a NEC 17" Total cost for this screamer&crt is $2028.

As a side note i bumped up my quicksilver last year to 1.47 hoping that would get me by until rev B Powermacs or new Imacs showed. well it looks like it will still be awhile. Think i should wait or bite the bullet and jump ship? ill still have a mac(wife's)

 

[thatwendigo]

Yeah, the posts have been a bit trollish, but give DHM a break. He wants a gaming machine, and Apple won't make one. Not his fault. He just wanted to get an Apple to do it for him, and he can't. I don't need a better gaming machine than I have, given my limited gaming and complete gaming ineptness, but I understand his desire for something better - "better" meaning better for him.

A little bit? I see you weren't arround for my arrival, where I was routinely called a number of names by our good friend with the ship-jumping complex. Regardless, of that, and of my feelings on buying any machine for that price only to play games on it, I can't really argue that he's going to get more support for gaming from the PC market. I told him that about five months ago, though.

Thanks JSW, I really do want to get a Apple game Machine but you are right they refuse to make one. Imac is such a wonderful design its just to bad its so handicapped by Apple in hardware.(G4&5200)

Jesus Christ, how many times do I have to say this, DHM?

The iMac is not handicapped, though it is intended to fit a certain niche market. The machine is a wonder of engineering in an industry that doesn't tend to value aesthetic design very much. The form factor is tiny for what they pack in, and pushing the components much harder than where they're at would result in a machine that melted.

Performance of the Imacs arent even close so this gives me only the option of the 1.6 single G5 and again according to MacAddict/Macworld its performance is a lot less then the 2.2 ghz AMD cpu with a bus speed of 1600. AMD also has a memory controler on the chip. pretty impressive.

The "bus speed" is not a traditional bus, but Hypertransport. You're misreading/misunderstanding something. Again. Also the on-die controller means a couple of things you might not have considered, and one of those is the limitation of what you can use with the system. Lets say that DDR500 becomes the new standard in six months... You're SOL on using it, unless you buy a new chip, because that on-die controller won't be able to access it, while someone else could just buy a new motherboard.

There are tradeoffs everywhere.

 

[isgoed]

The Alienware Silver & Blue ice with AMD64 3400+ and 5700 ultra nvidia is what i think ill go with.

I think you should really look into the FX5900XT. I can't say this with certainty, but the FX5900XT is just a clocked down version of the FX5900. I think I have read reviews where the FX5900XT performed much better than the FX5700 Ultra (you should confirm this). I believe the FX5700 Ultra has 4 pipelines and the FX5900XT has 8. From a dutch camparison site (www.prijsindex.net) i see that the FX5900XT is cheaper.

€ 182.43 - Nvidia GeForce FX5700 Ultra 128MB
€ 179.00 - Nvidia GeForce FX5900XT 128MB

 

[jsw]

well it looks like it will still be awhile. Think i should wait or bite the bullet and jump ship? ill still have a mac(wife's)

Get the Alienware. It suits your needs much better, and you still have access to a Mac. I love Macs, but the real truth is that I love OS X, and the dual-2 is the best platform currently available for running OS X (and it's perfectly fine for it; I don't need more speed to play with OS X). I like tinkering with it, I like the fact that it's based on UNIX, etc. But if I were looking for a system to use for gaming - as opposed to a system I could occasionally play games on - I would get a PC. No question. Not a shadow of a doubt. It is by far the better gaming platform.

I wish Apple would make more gaming-friendly platforms, but, in truth, the hardware isn't all that far behind. Yeah, it's behind, but not terribly. The fact that the ports are few and far between and of unequal quality is what makes the PC the standout here. A technically superior Mac will still lose to a PC because the software is optimized for the PC.

Have fun. I'm jealous. If I could afford a PC for games, I'd get one. But, given the inevitable resulting divorce, the overall price is a bit too high for me.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

When i say gaming machine its not like im buying this only for that, I want a machine that can do everything including running the newest releases at fantastic rates with everything on. I still use a machine for business,music & photographs but when iam ready to play I want to play & enjoy not turn thing down,turn things off run at low resolutions put less cars on the track or whatever.
Thatwendigo your memory comment makes little sense, its not like faster memory comes out and you can plop it in a mac? Also a G4 thats being pushed? I have a 1.47 G4 almost a year old so a 1.25 G4 Imac is hardly pushed. that has no bearing at all.
hypertransport is hypertransport call it what you want but its still pushing data at 1600. Apple could make this very easy by UPDATING ITS STUFF! am i suppose to wait a year? not a good business model if you ask me.
Please remember Game Machines do it all,because if they can handle these stresses they can handle whatever else you throw at them.

 

[jsw]

A little bit? I see you weren't arround for my arrival, where I was routinely called a number of names by our good friend with the ship-jumping complex.

Don't get me wrong here - I think the anti-Mac posts were too extreme. I think the Mac hardware is great for my needs, and I'm not going to buy a PC just to play games bc I don't have the time or the money to do so.

I think DMH's posts were either intentionally inflamatory or just overzealous.

Not having been insulted, though, I'm inclined to give the guy the benefit of the doubt and assume he was just p.o.'d that Apple didn't make a good gaming machine. And, really, they don't. They make an adequate one. I've got the fastest one they make, and even though I've got the 9600 instead of the 9800, my brothers sub-$800 HP routinely spanks me on performance. However, that's in my mind more of a SW than a HW issue.

On the other hand, had Apple gone after the gaming market instead of basically snubbing it for so many years, the games available now might be a lot better. So, I guess, I don't so much think Apple's current HW is to blame for game performance deltas - I think it's the fact that they ignored gaming for so long. And, as much as I love the Mac, I wish there were better gaming options on it. Not so much bc I'd use them, but bc it would bring over more people, upping the market share, and therefore improving the 3rd party HW and SW options available to the Mac community.

The Macs I have - in particular the G5 - are perfect for me. But I agree, at least in spirit, with DHM's rants because I sincerely think a better gaming Mac (which might be impossible, given the SW/game developer angle) would help us all.

 

[jsw]

When i say gaming machine its not like im buying this only for that, I want a machine that can do everything including running the newest releases at fantastic rates with everything on. I still use a machine for business,music & photographs but when iam ready to play I want to play & enjoy not turn thing down,turn things off run at low resolutions put less cars on the track or whatever.

Well, then, I think the Alienware will be great for games, but, for me, I'd hate to use it as my only system. I think OS X has substantial advantages, but, of course, that's my opinion based on what I like.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

I think you should really look into the FX5900XT. I can't say this with certainty, but the FX5900XT is just a clocked down version of the FX5900. I think I have read reviews where the FX5900XT performed much better than the FX5700 Ultra (you should confirm this). I believe the FX5700 Ultra has 4 pipelines and the FX5900XT has 8. From a dutch camparison site (www.prijsindex.net) i see that the FX5900XT is cheaper.

€ 182.43 - Nvidia GeForce FX5700 Ultra 128MB
€ 179.00 - Nvidia GeForce FX5900XT 128MB

yeah i have seen the benches only i figure next year i can upgrade to the next generation and save myself $300 on a new machine now. then next year that 5950ultra may cost under 200 bucks. Prices will be dropping on all cards when the next line up is introduced.

 

[adamjay]

As a side note i bumped up my quicksilver last year to 1.47 hoping that would get me by until rev B Powermacs or new Imacs showed. well it looks like it will still be awhile. Think i should wait or bite the bullet and jump ship?

not to get off subject... but might i ask which Upgrade CPU you purchased to bump your Quicksilver?
OWC Mercury Extreme? Gigadesign? i'm shopping for a 1.4ghz upgrade for my Sawtooth and the best price i've found is $435 for the Sonnet ST/G4, though i can't find any user reviews for this particular chip.

as for jumping ship... i think you've already decided. And yes the fact is, with the exception of Quake3 (my favorite game), a PC at half the price smokes a Mac for playing the latest games. Has it been a long or short while since you've used PCs extensively? My tips for all PC users, use a web-based POP email client to check your email (NOT Outlook), keep your virus definitions up to date, do not look at porn!!! (ahem spyware) - do that on a mac if you must. If you can run at least 2 virus detection programs. AVG is a free one, and found stuff on my old PC that Norton didn't. Defrag at least once a month. you probably know most of this stuff already but hopefully theres a tip or two in there that would help.

 

[adamjay]

oh yea and i do stand by my earlier post that i think the Alienware cases look way to trendy. Is it possible to just buy the innard's ? i'm sure Alienware makes a chunk of their money with just the case.

you can get a Mirrored Drive Door case on eBay for $50, at least that's what i would do, of course i'm the kind of person that would buy one just to hold 3 hard drives and nothing else.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

Been watching a lil Nascar ya All! anyways i picked up a few photo's of the machine at gamebanshee. I will admit the Powermac is a cleaner design as far as the inside engineering.

 

[titaniumducky]

we have a lot of knowledgeable people here that use both machines thats why. Im looking for people with open minds and comments not comments from there is only my Mac World and nothing else exist outside of it though 90% of the world uses those other machines everyday.

I don't blame you at all for wanting a gaming machine; it seems like everyone here is attacking you....

However, if I were you I wouldn't waste my money with Alienware. I would build a powerful gaming-only WindBlows! box for under $1000 and use my Mac for everything else. I switched last June, and I'm sure you don't really want to use a PC for anything excluding games (unless you have suddenly decided that you don't like OS X anymore in which case something is seriously wrong...). If you don't want to build your own box, go with a smaller-scale company who will build you a better or equal system for considerably less money.

Check out http://www.abspc.com/gamezone/desktop.html for awesome gaming boxes on the cheap. They let you pick from awesome cases, Intel or AMD.

 

[jumpman25]

If I were you I would probably go black and silver. It is easier to get components to match it plus I think black and silver just look cool. I usually build my PC's, and recently built one for a friend. I would first reccomend that you build one if you know what your doing. You can get really good looking cases from Lian-Li and Cooler Master. A black cooler master waver master case looks really sweet. If you don't want to build one then I would say get the alienware with a decent processor,P4 3.0GHz, or Athlon 64 3200+ for the best price/performance, and get the cheapest video card you can. Then buy a ATI Radeon 9800 Pro from newegg.com

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-102-286&depa=0

It is only $232.00 and is a killer card. The computer I built for my friend had this card with a 3200+ and 512MB of corsair XMS PC-3200 LL. The FarCry demo ran like butter with highest settings at 1280x1024. I played on an LCD monitor so I couldn't go higher than that. The DOOM E3 demo ran smooth at 1280x1024 as well as long as you were not doing intense shooting. (It looks awsome by the way) The final copy of doom will run much better than the E3 demo so I would expect you to be able to run doom at full settings and any res like butter with a rig like this.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

not to get off subject... but might i ask which Upgrade CPU you purchased to bump your Quicksilver?
OWC Mercury Extreme? Gigadesign? i'm shopping for a 1.4ghz upgrade for my Sawtooth and the best price i've found is $435 for the Sonnet ST/G4, though i can't find any user reviews for this particular chip.

as for jumping ship... i think you've already decided. And yes the fact is, with the exception of Quake3 (my favorite game), a PC at half the price smokes a Mac for playing the latest games. Has it been a long or short while since you've used PCs extensively? My tips for all PC users, use a web-based POP email client to check your email (NOT Outlook), keep your virus definitions up to date, do not look at porn!!! (ahem spyware) - do that on a mac if you must. If you can run at least 2 virus detection programs. AVG is a free one, and found stuff on my old PC that Norton didn't. Defrag at least once a month. you probably know most of this stuff already but hopefully theres a tip or two in there that would help.

its a OWC 1.4 I have beeen running it at 1.47 for 6 months but i did some cooling mods to my quicksilver to allow better airflow.Mercury Extreme has a nice heat sink design but you can improve in it. The Quicksilver is a little restricted stock. removed 2 of the 2 power supply fan guards. Why you need 2 Apple? also doubled the airflow holes for the video card. anyways its a stable machine (now) running a Geforce 3. I wil admit i couldnt get a stable clock at 1.47 without cooling the machine better. Its been a good machine. IBM drive with never a hitch. Il give Apple just a little more time, the price of all technology is going down all the time. the 1.47 was for a year on Quicksilver. next month is a year. Then its time to replace and those Alienware machines with AMD are potent. Dont like the Intel stuff at all.

 

[thatwendigo]

Don't get me wrong here - I think the anti-Mac posts were too extreme. I think the Mac hardware is great for my needs, and I'm not going to buy a PC just to play games bc I don't have the time or the money to do so.

I think DMH's posts were either intentionally inflamatory or just overzealous.

Okay. As long as we're on the same page...

However, that's in my mind more of a SW than a HW issue.

Lacking DirectX9 can do that to a platform, as can poorly optimized OpenGL code.

On the other hand, had Apple gone after the gaming market instead of basically snubbing it for so many years, the games available now might be a lot better. So, I guess, I don't so much think Apple's current HW is to blame for game performance deltas - I think it's the fact that they ignored gaming for so long. And, as much as I love the Mac, I wish there were better gaming options on it. Not so much bc I'd use them, but bc it would bring over more people, upping the market share, and therefore improving the 3rd party HW and SW options available to the Mac community.

Apple did deliberately snub gaming for an awful long time, and suddenly started trying to do damage control when it was far too late. The market had embedded itself in consoles and the PC, and we're a step or two behind, only remaining that close because the new hardware kicks some major ass. I guess what gets me more than anything else in DHM's rants is the idea that, somehow, the gaming benchmarks mean that the x86 chips are somehow superior, when they're pretty well different, but not at all clearly superior.

The Macs I have - in particular the G5 - are perfect for me. But I agree, at least in spirit, with DHM's rants because I sincerely think a better gaming Mac (which might be impossible, given the SW/game developer angle) would help us all.

Probably. I'm still on the fence about that.

 

[thatwendigo]

I don't blame you at all for wanting a gaming machine; it seems like everyone here is attacking you....

As childish as it sounds... He started it!

 

[Freakk123]

Get the Black one... I've been oggling that for some time now, I just wish I had the means to get it. The black with the blue lights is just awesome.

Also, I'd say processor speed is more important than videocard speed in many cases, so I'd go with the AMD64 3400+/Nvidia 5700 option. You won't regret it. That machine will kick behind.

 

[solvs]

I don't blame you at all for wanting a gaming machine; it seems like everyone here is attacking you....

I don't know, I think most people are being pretty fair considering.

I'd have to agree about the console vs. PC for gaming. But I'm cheap, and don't game a lot. Guess if that's your thing and you can afford it, go for it. I built my own PC for a couple of hundred bucks. Had to use Windows, and VPC is too slow on my aging G3. You think G4s are slow! Installed Win2000, using an AMD. I use XP at work on a P4 and it ain't great.

So does this mean no more "iMac G4 sucks and is too expensive" posts? Not that I disagree, but, you know...

Enjoy Windows.

Wouldn't it be funny if Apple introduced a G5 for like $1000.

 

[Danrose1977]

Wouldn't it be funny if Apple introduced a G5 for like $1000.

That wouldn't be funny, it might be enough to make me believe in a God though. I would probably have to become a "Jobhist Monk" or perhaps if the machine was an iBook I could be a "Devotee of the Glowing Apple!"

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

I have lost my faith, I think. black? or silver? both with blue ice. only 1 thing. new videocards are coming so i might as well keep waiting on Apple to see what they do and ATI & Nvidia are coming out with new stuff in April. should help drive prices lower on the current crop of video cards. Whats the hurry?

 

[wowser]

They look like 50s cars, not computers! Perhaps the white. That is going to be quite a beast!

 

[clr900]

See I would really like a pc just for gaming because truthfully the Mac just doesn't cut it. Even the high end models really are not fast enough. Not to mention games don't get ported as fast, os x version of ventrilo hasn't been released yet, and game selection is usually a little small but actually I think there is a pretty good selection of the most popular games. But the problem is, I really can't afford to buy a new G5 after rev b and a 2k gaming machine. So I too have thought about buying a windows box but I really can not justify it because gaming is just one thing that I do with my computer. Everything else is just so much better on OS X and slick Macs. I guess after I buy my rev b G5 after I get some extra cash I could build a real cheap windows box just for gaming which is probably my best solution. However, I really do believe that very soon consoles are going to replace gaming on the PC. I do not think that games look that much better on high end comps, especially after the next consoles are released(ps3 xbox2) these will have very comparable graphics even on tvs compared to pcs, not to mention its on a tv which can be very big. The only thing that seperates gaming on pc and console gaming is the thrill of multiplayer which is becoming so much more common on consoles and I'm sure it will be pretty standard in the next console update. Theres also the keyboard/mouse thing but you can already hook up keyboards to consoles and controllers really are just as good as a mouse. It really just makes sense to just have your Mac for all of your computing needs, except gaming, and buy a console thats sole purpose is for gaming. This is what I am going to do. Why buy a computer because ONE thing is better on it than on my Mac which does everything else so much better? Well anyways this is just my opinion.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

Looks like the Aurora AMD64 3200 & 3400 motherboards have only 2 slots to hold ram. The top Aurora has 4 as do all the Intel Machines-Area-51. Another Tuesday? Apple? those Auroras all have 128 mb Videocards or better. even the low life fx5200 is a 128 mb card. 9600xt is a $30.00 upgrade but i would like a 9800 All in Wonder. so maybe the base unit and rip out the stock card and go shopping for one. Interesting this isnt a option on Aurora's or Area-51 machines. you would think they would let you install a All in Wonder as a option. THE PLOT THICKENS!!