Upgrading older PC to allow you to buy a MAC.

[Gunga Din]

Scenario: I have a 3 yr old PC and its about time to upgrade to either a new one or keep it for gaming and buy a MAC. But whats a good upgrade to keep my PC for gaming so I can purchase a new MAC?

There are 2 things I did that will now allow me to still enjoy high end games like LOTRO and FPS shooters, without having to get a new PC.

To pull this off you need to have at least a 3.0ghz pentium 4. Not sure how many of you PC users looking to switch to apple have that as your PC but for me its gonna allow me to pickup a MAC. My PC for gaming and a MAC for everything else.

If you have a PC with an AGP videocard interface, I recommend Vison Tek's Radeon x1950Pro XGE AGP card. This is the best of the remaining AGP cards on the market. My 3.0ghz Pentium 4 with 2gb of ram can handle any game out there (crysis is a bit tough), but every other game is fine. LOTRO runs flawlessly and some other MMORPGS i've played have no issues at all.

The upgrade to 2.0 gb of ram was the other upgrade. Thats all I had to do.

I just wanted to give some advice to anyone worried about picking up a MAC with an aging PC that you use for gaming. I hope this helps. Those 2 upgrades were all i needed to give me the confidence to make the switch. Oh, and dont upgrade to vista, i use Windows XP Pro.

 

[SaSaSushi]

Scenario: I have a 3 yr old PC and its about time to upgrade to either a new one or keep it for gaming and buy a MAC. But whats a good upgrade to keep my PC for gaming so I can purchase a new MAC?

There are 2 things I did that will now allow me to still enjoy high end games like LOTRO and FPS shooters, without having to get a new PC.

To pull this off you need to have at least a 3.0ghz pentium 4. Not sure how many of you PC users looking to switch to apple have that as your PC but for me its gonna allow me to pickup a MAC. My PC for gaming and a MAC for everything else.

If you have a PC with an AGP videocard interface, I recommend Vison Tek's Radeon x1950Pro XGE AGP card. This is the best of the remaining AGP cards on the market. My 3.0ghz Pentium 4 with 2gb of ram can handle any game out there (crysis is a bit tough), but every other game is fine. LOTRO runs flawlessly and some other MMORPGS i've played have no issues at all.

The upgrade to 2.0 gb of ram was the other upgrade. Thats all I had to do.

I just wanted to give some advice to anyone worried about picking up a MAC with an aging PC that you use for gaming. I hope this helps. Those 2 upgrades were all i needed to give me the confidence to make the switch. Oh, and dont upgrade to vista, i use Windows XP Pro.

Or you could just toss out the PC and use your new Mac in Boot Camp to play games. I play Counter-Strike:Source, HL2, Bioshock and Crysis with no issues on my 24" 2.4GHz iMac.

No, it is not a cutting edge gaming machine but it will play the games you mention fine.

 

[macguymike]

Just a pet peeve (I'm surprised anyone still does this.): Mac is not written in all caps. It's "Mac", not "MAC". Mac is short for Macintosh. It's not an acronym, like PC (personal computer).

 

[Yvan256]

Just a pet peeve (I'm surprised anyone still does this.): Mac is not written in all caps. It's "Mac", not "MAC". Mac is short for Macintosh. It's not an acronym, like PC (personal computer).

And MAC is already reserved/used for the MAC address anyway.

 

[Gunga Din]

Or you could just toss out the PC and use your new Mac in Boot Camp to play games. I play Counter-Strike:Source, HL2, Bioshock and Crysis with no issues on my 24" 2.4GHz iMac.

No, it is not a cutting edge gaming machine but it will play the games you mention fine.

I'm sure the IMac can play games well. But you might not have to buy a higher end Mac if your PC can still suit your gaming needs. You will be less concerned about which Mac to purchase and maybe save yourself some money. It could give you the option to pick up a Macbook to pair with your PC desktop. Its just some advice if your in my position.

Plus you wouldnt have to use Boot Camp .

 

[evillageprowler]

Gunga Din,

The differences between what you suggest and the bootcamp/parallels/fusion method are roughly this:

1) not having to pay for another XP license if you upgraded your old PC (~ USD100 for XP Pro OEM)
2) have to pay for the upgrade components (in your example, ~ USD400 I guess)
3) have two computers, which can be nice if you can afford the desktop real estate (if you buy a Mac Mini, then you can also use a KVM switch and save on desktop real estate), if you choose the upgrade method
4) bootcamp means having to reboot into specific OS; parallels and fusion means having to bulk up the Mac a bit (at a minimum, need more disk space) to accomodate the guest OS

EVP

 

[Gunga Din]

Gunga Din,

The differences between what you suggest and the bootcamp/parallels/fusion method are roughly this:

1) not having to pay for another XP license if you upgraded your old PC (~ USD100 for XP Pro OEM)
2) have to pay for the upgrade components (in your example, ~ USD400 I guess)
3) have two computers, which can be nice if you can afford the desktop real estate (if you buy a Mac Mini, then you can also use a KVM switch and save on desktop real estate), if you choose the upgrade method
4) bootcamp means having to reboot into specific OS; parallels and fusion means having to bulk up the Mac a bit (at a minimum, need more disk space) to accomodate the guest OS

EVP

Good pts. For me I think its gonna move me towards a Mac Notebook Pro. Desktop pc when sitting at home and the mobility of a laptop.