Poll: Would You Appeal an Gamer Mac based on nMP?

[kennyisalive]

Which OS would you use for gaming?

Windows is currently the only option for gaming

 

[Botts85]

No PC gaming is growing and PC gamers are not the most cost conscious bunch out there

As a percentage of marketshare it absolutely is shrinking. It is just keeping up with inflation in terms of total revenue as well.

PC gamers are certainly more cost conscious than the typical Apple customer, which is why we see such vitriol of "MACS ARE OVERPRICED" from the PC crowd.

I don't see any benefit of Apple redirecting R&D spend from existing priorities to PC gaming. If any more R&D gets devoted to gaming, it should go towards mobile gaming.

Is there any benefit to a Mac gaming rig? I mean, enclosure-wise the PC market isn't short on options, and on the logic board side there isn't a shortage of options either. I don't see a scenario where an Apple gaming rig is competitive with a custom built PC.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

What about an upgradeable Mac desktop which is aimed at anyone who wants upgrades, and can be customized for gamers?

Surely you've been around long enough to remember the mythical "xmac"; only spoken of in hushed tones?

Today I'd just like an updated Mac Pro tower & Xserves to coexist with my cylinder. Idle thoughts here: what if they were to resurrect Apple Computers? This would be the enterprise grade hardware. Leave the existing Mac lineup as is (external expansion only). Now Apple Computers introduces the Apple 4 (or maybe just the Mac):

- tower form factor
- up to (2) redundant 1500W PSU
- configurable up to 4 CPUs
- at least (4) PCIE 3 x16 slots
- Lights Out Management
- reasonable RAM capacity
- fast and copious internal storage options
- Thunderbolt 3 out the wazoo

And do something on the enterprise front with these new relationships with Cisco & IBM. They could start by resurrecting the Lithium network monitoring suite - bring elegance and power back to the data center.

 

[jblagden]

Surely you've been around long enough to remember the mythical "xmac"; only spoken of in hushed tones?

Today I'd just like an updated Mac Pro tower & Xserves to coexist with my cylinder. Idle thoughts here: what if they were to resurrect Apple Computers? This would be the enterprise grade hardware. Leave the existing Mac lineup as is (external expansion only). Now Apple Computers introduces the Apple 4 (or maybe just the Mac):

- tower form factor
- up to (2) redundant 1500W PSU
- configurable up to 4 CPUs
- at least (4) PCIE 3 x16 slots
- Lights Out Management
- reasonable RAM capacity
- fast and copious internal storage options
- Thunderbolt 3 out the wazoo

And do something on the enterprise front with these new relationships with Cisco & IBM. They could start by resurrecting the Lithium network monitoring suite - bring elegance and power back to the data center.

By XMac, do you mean Hackintosh?

 

[Joe The Dragon]

Surely you've been around long enough to remember the mythical "xmac"; only spoken of in hushed tones?

Today I'd just like an updated Mac Pro tower & Xserves to coexist with my cylinder. Idle thoughts here: what if they were to resurrect Apple Computers? This would be the enterprise grade hardware. Leave the existing Mac lineup as is (external expansion only). Now Apple Computers introduces the Apple 4 (or maybe just the Mac):

- tower form factor
- up to (2) redundant 1500W PSU
- configurable up to 4 CPUs
- at least (4) PCIE 3 x16 slots
- Lights Out Management
- reasonable RAM capacity
- fast and copious internal storage options
- Thunderbolt 3 out the wazoo

And do something on the enterprise front with these new relationships with Cisco & IBM. They could start by resurrecting the Lithium network monitoring suite - bring elegance and power back to the data center.

Needs to be rack mount at least in the dual PSU system and needs at least 2 10G-E ports.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

By XMac, do you mean Hackintosh?

No, I think it started on http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewforum.php?f=19&sid=2e77ca293c73caddd634b7ace86b9cfe the ars technica boards. Everyone lamenting that the cMP was too expensive, and Apple needed to introduce a slightly scaled down, enthusiast model. Single socket CPU (not necessarily Xeon), and PCIe slots primarily for GPU upgrades. Head over and whisper about xmac and see what happens 😀
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Needs to be rack mount at least in the dual PSU system and needs at least 2 10G-E ports.

Agreed for the Xserve. You know there were rumblings a few months back about Apple possibly manufacturing their own back end hardware again - to guard against infiltration by NSA and component suppliers. I'd love it.

 

[shaunp]

I have a nMP (6-core with D700's) and have tried it both natively and in bootcamp, and I can honestly say my ageing i7 3770K with a GTX 980 Ti kicks it's ass as a gaming platform at 1440p. A single D700 isn't that fast, and Cross Fire is a bit it and miss in terms of performance - it jerks a like a 2$ whore in Skyrim for example. The nMP does make an excellent photo editing platform and VM lab though.

I used to dream of gaming on the Mac, but it's just not worthwhile. The performance is crap compared to a PC half the price and hardly any new titles get released on Mac. Sure have a Mac as your every day computing platform, but for games you'd be better off getting a slightly lower spec Mac and spending the difference on a console, the performance would be much better and all the latest titles would be available and work in full HD.