Apple Computers

[Sejull]

Im buying a new computer that i will be using for just games and the internet ill be mainly playing WAR and TF2 and i really love macs and my friend was telling me about this program that you can get on a mac that lets you play PC games. i know people say macs arent very good for gaming but i wanna get one and i cant seem to find one around my budget ($660) that would be able to run WAR on atleast medium settings. it doesnt have to be a super computer that can run any game on High. so if anyone could throw me some links to something i could buy that would run the games i wanna play fairly well i would really appreciate it.

[Chrismorris]

i agree with you partly, apple do make some nice looking stuff.

Love the look of my ipod and to me the new Macbooks are sex on legs.

Tho it think it will be hard to find a Mac that cheap for the spec you want being from the UK cheapest Mac i have seen is around £600 for the lowest spec going. Not sure what that is in dollers but i do know its well over $660

[Ojike]

600£ is like US 1229$.. so no not at all around 660$ :P

[Rime]

Yeah, i guess the Intel will run PC games. You just switch from Mac OS to Windows.

But you're probably gonna have to spend at least $2000...I don't know maybe not quite that much, but still a lot.

I used to play WoW on an IMac that cost about $1500 in early 2005 (it was a before they switched to Intel) and would get obscenely low FPS (less than 5) in raid situations.

edit: oh yeah, that 5FPS was with all settings set to minimum

[Obby]

For $660, you won't be able to find any computer capable of running WAR, unless that money is used on upgrades to an existing machine or you use parts from another machine in addition to what you buy.

That, and the fact you want to use an OS that can't even run WAR at all, does not bode well for you.

[Sionagnis]

The program that you are talking about is Bootcamp, it allows the computer to start up in a mirror windows mode without even opening the mac os, its some really cool stuff and will hopefully open up the gaming market to mac users =P

[Fyaniz]

Possibly he's talking about Cider, which is a program like Wine. Incidentally, running programs* under Linux (with Wine) gives you a very nice performance boost compared to running it in actual Windows.

Or, you could boot up windows on it of course. Regarding prices/availability I have no idea outside my own country.


*Like World of Warcraft for lack of a better example :p around 7 extra fps at any given time.

[mongoose]

Im buying a new computer that i will be using for just games and the internet ill be mainly playing WAR and TF2 and i really love macs and my friend was telling me about this program that you can get on a mac that lets you play PC games. i know people say macs arent very good for gaming but i wanna get one and i cant seem to find one around my budget ($660) that would be able to run WAR on atleast medium settings. it doesnt have to be a super computer that can run any game on High. so if anyone could throw me some links to something i could buy that would run the games i wanna play fairly well i would really appreciate it.

While I applaud your wish to have a Mac the sad reality is you would need to spend a lot more to get an Apple machine with the power to run WAR (or any other graphically intensive game for that matter). About the only thing within your price range is a Mac mini and the integrated GPU that comes with it is only good enough for simple graphics.

Even if you were to go to say the lowest iMac, the Graphics card that comes with it (ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT w/128 megs of ram) is still not up to par. You might be getting closer with the ATI Radeon HD2600 Pro with 256) but even that is highly suspect to be able to run something like WAR at minimum settings.

To run WAR effectively you would have to go to either the MacbookPro or Mac Pro tower. Both of which are 3-4 times what you are willing to spend. For those prices you would be much better off just getting a PC (especially if its primarily just a game machine.) Im a Mac user but this it what I will also be doing. For about 1200-1500 bucks you can get a dedicated machine that will run WAR as well if not better than a Mac Pro. :p


I know and agree this sucks rocks but until Apple wakes up and is willing to sell systems with the component capability of PCs, you just arent going to find a cheap Mac gaming machine.:|

[SirSeptin]

Mmmm....having just got a macbook pro recently ($3000AU or there abouts). It rocks my face. Really I've never had a problem paying more money for a mac, considering as far as I'm concerned the experiance is much more freindly, aesthicly pleasing and less likley to explode in your face. That and the built in webcam, built in mic, backlit keyboard and schmick magnetic power plug are just really cool. Its the polish I like in apple products:)

But yeah, its all about whether you think its worth it or not. You can't simply dismiss the more expensive thing when it comes with alot of extras and generally higher quality....

Unlike some people who have fancy cars I have a fancy computer. I mean you don't really question if somones going to buy a BMW as opposed to a ford....both go a to b.

Finally, huh? 256mb of gfx RAM not going to be enough to run WAR on min settings? wth are you people smoking......I'm going to bet 256mb runs it EASILY.

Not to put a dampner on the OP but I'm highly doubtful of being able to get ANY gaming machine (mac or otherwise) for your budget....

[mongoose]

Finally, huh? 256mb of gfx RAM not going to be enough to run WAR on min settings? wth are you people smoking......I'm going to bet 256mb runs it EASILY.

The OP said medium settings, not minimum. We really have no idea what will will be able ot run WAR smoothly atm but I do know the cards Apple uses arent all that great (especially in comparison with whats available)

[Athenys]

Depending on where you live you may save quite a bit of money by putting together your own gaming rig. I'd budget spending about 800-900 USD however. If you want a nice looking case for starters the endless PC customization options blow Apple right out of the water. OSX is decent (unlike OS9), but I am not dumb enough to fork over 1-2K extra for their over-hyped *yawn* hardware. Another thing you can do is to get a mid-range computer on sale and upgrade RAM and video card. I live close to a Fry's so I can buy everything I need in one visit...

[Xenos]

Idk, I would not get a Mac unless doing Graphic Work or Editing. If you got money to shell out but an Alienware, its like the Ferrari under the PCs. If not, there are many more Firms, or its always possible to custom build it.

[erloas]

Finally, huh? 256mb of gfx RAM not going to be enough to run WAR on min settings? wth are you people smoking......I'm going to bet 256mb runs it EASILY.

Not to put a dampner on the OP but I'm highly doubtful of being able to get ANY gaming machine (mac or otherwise) for your budget....

As for the first part, how much RAM a video card has has little to nothing to do with how powerful it is. I can find 1000 cases of video cards with more RAM performing exactly the same or much much worse then cards with more RAM. Video RAM is one of the least important aspects of a video card now.
The video cards in the Macs have plenty of RAM (a lot of the cheap Macs use a combination of dedicated video and shared system RAM though which isn't a great design) but they are lacking video processing power.

$660 isn't going to get anything great, but if you build a system yourself for that price you can get a machine that I would expect would handle WAR at medium settings at very least. You can also get a decent pre-built system for that so long as you are willing to do a bit of upgrading yourself. Wal-mart just today has a full system listed at $500, and for the extra $160 in aftermarket you could pick up more RAM and a decent video card and still have a bit left over. Again its not going to be anything amazing, but it will get the job done on a budget.

[silex]

The OP said medium settings, not minimum. We really have no idea what will will be able ot run WAR smoothly atm but I do know the cards Apple uses arent all that great (especially in comparison with whats available)

If a ATI Radeon HD2600 Pro (256MB) is not enough to run the game on medium settings, Mythic is going to fail at trying to pick up the WoW crowd. People run that game on god awful machines and it still cranks out Medium graphics with great framerates (except at AH/raids) just fine.

[Nastu]

If you build your own system its quite possible to buy a system capable of running WAR on decent settings. You need to shop around for parts and find what you can salvage from your current rig, that would deffinatly help. But even if you have nothing you can move over, I built a high end gaming system with a Quad-Core, 4 GB of RAM, and a 8800 GTX Ultra for $1000. I'm sure you can cut almost $400 off just dropping down graphics card and RAM.

[Nastu]

Idk, I would not get a Mac unless doing Graphic Work or Editing. If you got money to shell out but an Alienware, its like the Ferrari under the PCs. If not, there are many more Firms, or its always possible to custom build it.

Dell owns alienware and it's better to buy the Dell desktops and get much more for the money especially now that their cases are pretty comperable.

[Aes]

I just recently upgraded my pc with the following parts for about 460 pound sterling

asus mn32 deluxe motherboard with all the extras:7.1 surround 2 lan ports wlan, etc.
2.4 Ghz amd athlon 64X2 dual core processor
2 Gb ddr2 ram
400 GB SATA harddrive
Nvidia 7600GS geforce
a new 400W PSU (about 40 pounds because it was a super quiet cool and efficient one)

The only feature in it that is likely to need replacing in the next 5 years or so is the graphics card because it's quite a cheap one and it's not dx10 compatible, however for 45 pounds it gives amazing performance, TF2 runs at 50 fps average with no compromises. It'll definitely last me until the dx10 graphics cards like the 8800's drastically fall in price.

If you already have a display, mouse, keyboard, hard drives and dvd drives, then 600 quid will get you a very nice gaming pc, provided you build it yourself or have a friend do it. If you spent your entire budget I can pretty much guarantee you'll be able to run WAR on maximum settings, as long as you spring for an 8 series equivalent graphics card and extra RAM if you're running Vista.

If you look at the prices for the mac pro and all the upgrades, you'll see that you're getting absolutely robbed. The best mac book pro can be assembled from individual parts as a PC for about a quarter of the price. the IMacs are a pretty good value for what they are, but they are not a good long term investment if you are capable of upgrading the individual components yourself because most stuff is soldered into place.

[mongoose]

If a ATI Radeon HD2600 Pro (256MB) is not enough to run the game on medium settings, Mythic is going to fail at trying to pick up the WoW crowd. People run that game on god awful machines and it still cranks out Medium graphics with great framerates (except at AH/raids) just fine.

As I said, I have no real clue. Im not even in the beta so I dont know what the current requirement is. We do know however that WAR will be a step up in system requirements from WoW standards and you cant keep catering to the lowest possible demonitar forever. Either move forward with better graphics (not best mind you like Vanguard requires) or have the game look subpar compared with other MMOs.

People are going to have to by a new(er) system eventually and WAR is as good a reason as any (I know thats when Im getting a new system :cool:)

[Obby]

Idk, I would not get a Mac unless doing Graphic Work or Editing. If you got money to shell out but an Alienware, its like the Ferrari under the PCs. If not, there are many more Firms, or its always possible to custom build it.
Sorry, Alienware is not the "Ferrari" of PCs. Unless you think Ferrari's are sub-standard cars that are extremely over-priced, then by all means, continue using the analogy. But the sad truth is, Alienware, even before they were bought out by Dell, always has been an under-par computer company. I could build an equally powerful system that you can buy from Alienware for roughly 5% to 25% less than what you would pay to them.

Also, most of the people I know that own or have owned an Alienware swear that they will never buy one again, they'd much rather build their own. The tech support sucks, so if you have a problem, you're better off troubleshooting it yourself. The hardware they use routinely fails at or around the one year mark, which (surprise!) is right when the most-purchased warranty expires.

The same arguments could be said for most computer companies like Dell or HP or Gateway, but I find Alienware to be the biggest reason I won't ever buy a pre-built machine.

[Bonkey]

I kind of hope that the OP's post was a joke.

I bought a Mac Powerbook in Nov 2003. It was the top of the line then. When I first started playing WoW I would basically freeze up when I rode a wyvern, and see like 3 different frames until I landed (running no programs in the background). I switched out a 256MB memory stick for a 1GB one, and that helped a ton. Until I started raiding.

Below 5 fps is bad? I regularly got below 3 and often below 1. Vaelstraz was brutal for me; I blew everyone up once because I was lagging so bad I couldn't move. And phase 3 Nef? I froze and couldn't do anything until the skeletons were dead, which was unfortunate since I was supposed to be hitting them with AoE.

However, none of that is as painful as using Windows, so you can bet when I buy a new computer for Warhammer it will be a Mac with bootcamp for the sole purpose of playing WAR.

[Athenys]

If your prefer OSX for daily use but want to use Windows at full throttle for the sole purpose of running certain apps you can dual boot off of a PC. While not flawless that setup will get the job done and save you a good chunk of change.

[Aes]

I don't understand people who can't handle different operating systems, you spend almost all of your time in whatever apps you're using and the OS however bad never really interferes with that. Every operating system that is available and up to date right now gets the job done and really isn't a huge deciding factor when deciding what computer to buy/build. My personal aversion to macs is that the hardware is overpriced in general, difficult to upgrade and not geared towards my wants (video editing and gaming). Not liking Windows is not a valid reason for wanting a mac specifically for gaming when they are so horribly suited for the task. Get a pc and a linux distro and you can download Wine or purchase Crossover and save craploads.

[Vegetta]

I kind of hope that the OP's post was a joke.

I bought a Mac Powerbook in Nov 2003. It was the top of the line then. When I first started playing WoW I would basically freeze up when I rode a wyvern, and see like 3 different frames until I landed (running no programs in the background). I switched out a 256MB memory stick for a 1GB one, and that helped a ton. Until I started raiding.

Below 5 fps is bad? I regularly got below 3 and often below 1. Vaelstraz was brutal for me; I blew everyone up once because I was lagging so bad I couldn't move. And phase 3 Nef? I froze and couldn't do anything until the skeletons were dead, which was unfortunate since I was supposed to be hitting them with AoE.

However, none of that is as painful as using Windows, so you can bet when I buy a new computer for Warhammer it will be a Mac with bootcamp for the sole purpose of playing WAR.

Windows isnt painful -I actually have no problems with my pc but my G5 on the other hand is always having problems - The whole Apple is better/just works schtick is BS my new G5 had a bad firewire port on it out of the box. We also had a brand new macbook pro that had a dead airport card after having it for a week (And unlike the rest of the known world apple buries the wireless card inside instead of making it easily accessible)

[mongoose]

Windows isnt painful -I actually have no problems with my pc but my G5 on the other hand is always having problems - The whole Apple is better/just works schtick is BS my new G5 had a bad firewire port on it out of the box. We also had a brand new macbook pro that had a dead airport card after having it for a week (And unlike the rest of the known world apple buries the wireless card inside instead of making it easily accessible)

So you personally had a bad run of luck. Thats unfortunate but thats not representative of the the general population. People are more satisfied with Apple (i.e. less problems) than they are with PCs. Does that mean that thee are no problems? Of course not, just less problems.

And yes I do find Windows painful. When people are referring to Apple being better its because of the OS and not necessarily hardware. I have fought with XP and all the stupidness that it brings probably 4x more than I have ever fought with OS X. Unfortunately, I cant justify spending 2500 bucks to upgrade my Mac just to play a game though. My Mac performs quite well for what I need to do right now so I will be buying (another) a component PC just to play WAR.

[Rabbit Slayer]

Despite what the adds say PCs are not buisness machines and Macs are not for fun. Macs do not make good gaming machines unless you are going to invest a lot of money into them.

I have both a Mac and a PC. I use my mac for my work (video editing and rendering) and my pc for fun. If you are a gamer don't get a mac for games. For your budget you could build a damn good windows gaming machine. If you don't know how to build a comp then you could get a mid to almost high range computer built for you.

I strongely suggest sticking with a PC if you want to play games.


edit oh yeah as for OS x being a better system ehh I can't say that it is I find them about the same. I have never had any big problems with windows ( never had windows crash on me I have had games but never windows) and I have only had OS X freeze up on me once or twice while I was doing 20 things at once (the only thing that pisses me off with it is I get the stupid red light of death where the whole system locks up on you at least with windows you can usualy crtl alt delete out of any problems.)

Sorry, Alienware is not the "Ferrari" of PCs. Unless you think Ferrari's are sub-standard cars that are extremely over-priced, then by all means, continue using the analogy. But the sad truth is, Alienware, even before they were bought out by Dell, always has been an under-par computer company. I could build an equally powerful system that you can buy from Alienware for roughly 5% to 25% less than what you would pay to them.

Also, most of the people I know that own or have owned an Alienware swear that they will never buy one again, they'd much rather build their own. The tech support sucks, so if you have a problem, you're better off troubleshooting it yourself. The hardware they use routinely fails at or around the one year mark, which (surprise!) is right when the most-purchased warranty expires.

The same arguments could be said for most computer companies like Dell or HP or Gateway, but I find Alienware to be the biggest reason I won't ever buy a pre-built machine.

I think the anaolgy still stands. Yeah it is a bit overpriced however I have mine for about 3 years and it still works like a champ. I havn't had a single problem with it and well its a beautiful machine.

Yes you can get a cheaper computer if you build it your self sort of like if you take a Honda and mod it up so it is a rice burner. Then its just as fast as the ferrari.

I probably wont' buy an alienware because now I know how to build my own computer. Unless I buy a laptop then I might get an alienware if I had the money plus they are the only company I have seen that can do 2 cards in SLI for a Laptop.

As for Alienwares tech support well I can't say cause I have never had to call them.

If you have the money Alienware is not a bad company but watch them for a while because they give some really nice deals every now and then. I got a 19" NEC moniter and logictech 5.1 surround sound system for free when I bought mine. The moniter itself was a $500 value (and it has convinced me to only buy NEC moniters)