Enough power?

john.outwaterjohn.outwater
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
I was wondering if a 20inch iMac with the following specs would be able to handle Halo, or the UTK04, and when I say handle I mean, could I play it like it was intended to be played.



? 512MB DDR333 SDRAM - 2 DIMMs

? 80GB Ultra ATA drive

? Keyboard/Mac OS X - U.S. English

? 20-inch flat-panel LCD

? 1.25GHz PowerPC G4

? 4x SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)

? NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 11
    sonofsylvanussonofsylvanus Posts: 579member
    First thing: More RAM. AS much as you can afford, in fact (not Apple RAM of course because it costs only just a little less than californium-252 -- ah Google...).



    But I will say, as your post indicates that you might be aware of, the iMac is not a heavy-duty gaming machine.
  • Reply 2 of 11
    cosmonutcosmonut Posts: 4,872member
    I hope there's more you want to do with it than play two games. If not, why not buy a gaming console or a PC?
  • Reply 3 of 11
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    The graphics card will prevent you from playing these game "the way they were ment to be played"...



    You would want a ATI Radeon 9600 Pro or XT.



    Looks like a G5 is your best bet... or just build a cheap Gaming PC...
  • Reply 4 of 11
    messiahtoshmessiahtosh Posts: 1,754member
    Thats total BS, I play games like Warcraft and Unreal, Ghost Recon, and more. All with full graphics shit to the max, and I have a Rev A flat panel iMAc 800 G4 with a superdrive and 512 MB of RAM and a 32 MB Geforece 2MX card. It runs like a dream.
  • Reply 5 of 11
    wrong robotwrong robot Posts: 3,907member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Messiahtosh

    Thats total BS, I play games like Warcraft and Unreal, Ghost Recon, and more. All with full graphics shit to the max, and I have a Rev A flat panel iMAc 800 G4 with a superdrive and 512 MB of RAM and a 32 MB Geforece 2MX card. It runs like a dream.



    UT2k4 and halo are NOT games like those(hog factor)
  • Reply 6 of 11
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    Yeah, I play Warcraft, Unreal, and Ghost Recon on my four-year-old dual 450 with a Radeon. They play fine (not "like a dream" unless you dream at 640x480 and 20 fps). Playable at least. Of course, if you take an iMac from the same time period - say, a G3/400/Rage128, you'll see pretty awful performance in anything more demanding than Quake 2.



    If you want games, build a gaming PC (less than $1000), or buy a console. If you insist on playing games ON YOUR MAC, then get a PowerMac G5 with a Radeon 9800. Don't settle for less.



    Of course, you could just buy a cheaper Mac that won't be used for games, and use the money you save to buy two or more consoles and a buttload of games.
  • Reply 7 of 11
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Messiahtosh

    Thats total BS, I play games like Warcraft and Unreal, Ghost Recon, and more. All with full graphics shit to the max, and I have a Rev A flat panel iMAc 800 G4 with a superdrive and 512 MB of RAM and a 32 MB Geforece 2MX card. It runs like a dream.



    Excuse me?
  • Reply 8 of 11
    jwri004jwri004 Posts: 626member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by \\/\\/ickes

    Excuse me?



    I think what he was trying to say is that is total BS. Whether or not is true or not - who knows



    Personally I could care less, I would just buy a PS2 and keep my machine free of clutter.
  • Reply 9 of 11
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    I knew what he was implying... I was just letting him know I don't take it too kindly when he calls my judgment BS.
  • Reply 10 of 11
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by jwri004

    I think what he was trying to say is that is total BS. Whether or not is true or not - who knows



    Personally I could care less, I would just buy a PS2 and keep my machine free of clutter.



    Gran Turismo 4!



    Anyway, I play War3 on a TiBook 1Ghz OK. medium/medium/1280x1024. 1GB RAM and 64MB Radeon 9000. Other than that, it's mostly EV Nova or RockNES/SNES9X. . . or, of course, GT4! I think Unreal and those other games would stress the crap out of it, though, based on the benchmarks I've seen. A 9800 or 9600 with a G5 will kick ass though.
  • Reply 11 of 11
    ionyzionyz Posts: 491member
    My Power Mac G4 DA can play those games acceptably but NOT "as they were intended to play". (+40 FPS constant, with all graphics loaded)



    1.33 GHz G4 (2MB L3) / 1.5 GB RAM / Radeon 9800 128 MB / WD Raptor



    Sure I don't have DDR, but IIRC the internals of the G4 chips only run at 133 MHz. But thats fine, why? Because I use my Mac for everything including making money as well as playing some games. But soon I'll be building a SFF gaming PC and coupling it with an IOGear Multimedia KVM.



    My Mac is the best creative tool I own, but for gaming its easier (and cheaper, and faster) to build a PC. That or consoles. Both good choices.



    If you had the money for a G5 go that route. AFAIK ATI Still doesn't have 3D Overrides for the BTO cards so it may be better to go with a lowend card, sell it off, and pickup a retail 9800. The ability to anti-alias and anisotropic filter any application that uses 3D (including modelers, screen savers, hell even iTunes visualizations) is a major plus.



    Heard eventually ATI would migrate the 3D Override functionality to BTO cards, but that isn't their target (they make less money that way). And forget about any possibility for Nvidia equivalents.
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