The Intel Switch and Games
You know, I was just thinking about how Apple has always lagged in games and how PC gaming is a huge market.
Now that they are going with processors derived from the Pentium M family (Yonah and its successors-dual core), it all makes sense. The Pentium M outperforms the fastest P4 and fastest Athlon 64 FX chips in many benchmarks. Specifically, though, the GAMES.
The CPU switch will allow Apples vision of Open GL 2.0 to become reality and with the whole world supporting it.
Game performance on Macs will now meet or exceed PC levels.
Marketshare should rise dramatically.
Doom 3, todays most demanding game, runs best on a Pentium M
Link:
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050525/pentium4-11.html
I think the Intel move is the right one for games. As far as Photoshop and such, it will prove to be a good move as well as the Intle CPUs will be thrashing whatever IBM was wiling to muster this time next year.
HAlf-Life 3 on a Mac should be sweet.
Now that they are going with processors derived from the Pentium M family (Yonah and its successors-dual core), it all makes sense. The Pentium M outperforms the fastest P4 and fastest Athlon 64 FX chips in many benchmarks. Specifically, though, the GAMES.
The CPU switch will allow Apples vision of Open GL 2.0 to become reality and with the whole world supporting it.
Game performance on Macs will now meet or exceed PC levels.
Marketshare should rise dramatically.
Doom 3, todays most demanding game, runs best on a Pentium M
Link:
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050525/pentium4-11.html
I think the Intel move is the right one for games. As far as Photoshop and such, it will prove to be a good move as well as the Intle CPUs will be thrashing whatever IBM was wiling to muster this time next year.
HAlf-Life 3 on a Mac should be sweet.
Comments
Originally posted by 9secondko
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The CPU switch will allow Apples vision of Open GL 2.0 to become reality and with the whole world supporting it.
How?
I don't understand this thread...
Originally posted by THT
If it ain't got DirectX, game ports will still be difficult. Not as difficult as Windows/x86 to OS X/PPC, but still hard to do.
And Direct X isn't comming to Mac OS anytime soon that we know of.
Originally posted by 9secondko
The CPU switch will allow Apples vision of Open GL 2.0 to become reality and with the whole world supporting it.
Game performance on Macs will now meet or exceed PC levels.
Marketshare should rise dramatically.
Now that's just crazy talk!
An Intel Mac is still a totally different platform to Wintel PC.
Game development for the majority of games is barely profitable, and royalties are everything. The small market size of Mac makes it quite unattractive for games development - I'd expect a typical Mac game port would sell in the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands.
Such low sales would only justify a few man months of porting time.
Moving code from Visual Studio to XCode (for Power PC) is just the same as moving code from Visual Studio to XCode (for Intel).
The big expense is porting dis-similar graphics API code. If the game is written for OpenGL - which is getting quite unusual - then the port is fairly straightforward. Code written for D3D is much less easy to port.
There is a possible plus for gamers, which is improved driver support and more likelihood of active support from the graphics chip companies. This might help, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting.
Carni
I wonder if Apple's move to x86 is the reason why Id didn't develop the OS X version of Doom 3 in house? Originally Id were going to develop both the Wintel and Mac versions of Doom 3, even going so far as including a Mac version of the Radiant level editor/creator or whatever its called now. But then all Mac development mysteriously stopped. It would make some sense finally if the reason for no Mac development was that Jobs told Carmack of Apple's future plans, and so instead of trying to hit a moving target, Id farmed out Doom 3 for Mac development, and decided to concentrate on the Mac version of Quake 4 instead.
All in all, x86 Macs can only mean more game titles for Mac - hell more software titles over all - since porting is less onerous. Finally, Apple is kicking ass again.
it would be great to walk into a store and pick up a game and not worry about what system it works for "mac/pc" take it home and load it onto whatever and not have to worry about it,with apples switch to intel i hope that day will soon be here.
are we really any closer to that at all???? with this switch???
for my own selfish reasons ill say it in 4 words... STAR WARS GALAXIES FOR MAC..................
Originally posted by Catman4d2
it would be great to walk into a store and pick up a game and not worry about what system it works for "mac/pc" take it home and load it onto whatever and not have to worry about it,with apples switch to intel i hope that day will soon be here.
are we really any closer to that at all???? with this switch???
No, we are not closer to this and this switch does not mean that there will be PC and Mac binaries. This switch by Apple and the Fat Binaries means that we will have executables, in this respect games, that run on a PowerPC based Mac and an Intel based Mac.
I doubt that we will ever see a situation where we have PC (meaning Windows) and Mac compatible binaries.
Originally posted by kwsanders
No, we are not closer to this and this switch does not mean that there will be PC and Mac binaries. This switch by Apple and the Fat Binaries means that we will have executables, in this respect games, that run on a PowerPC based Mac and an Intel based Mac.
I doubt that we will ever see a situation where we have PC (meaning Windows) and Mac compatible binaries.
executables.. like exe? Think again. That's not intel dependent it's dos, and MS dependent isn't it.
Originally posted by onlooker
executables.. like exe? Think again. That's not intel dependent it's dos, and MS dependent isn't it.
I did not say exe's... I said executables. Anything that you run on your system that is in a native binary form is an executable application. it does not have to have an exe file extension.
My point was is that we are not going to have any universal binaries that run on PC and Mac. They will run on Mac (Intel) and Mac (PPC).
Sweet indeed.
Originally posted by kwsanders
I did not say exe's... I said executables. Anything that you run on your system that is in a native binary form is an executable application. it does not have to have an exe file extension.
My point was is that we are not going to have any universal binaries that run on PC and Mac. They will run on Mac (Intel) and Mac (PPC).
But what is the difference between these executables that you speak of and the ones we have now in OS X? What is the purpose of all this?
http://www.insidemacgames.com/features/view.php?ID=355
I'll be buying the Powermacintel as a server/gaming machine/desktop for the first time in a lifetime. I'll be buying one of the fastest laptops in a lifetime. All because of the intel deal.
So STFU and stop complaining that the Intel deal is the worst thing to happen to Apple. It's actually one of the greatest things to happen and will finally make Apple competitive with the PC world (yeah, go ahead and STFU about 15 year old talking points if you're gonna respond).
I think the new XBox and Playstation should hold most gamers for at least 2 to 3 years. Then games may come back to the personal computer depending on development.
From a Mac perspective the real question is can a subsidized XBox be hacked to run Mac OS X and how will it run Photoshop or Final Cut Pro?
Originally posted by Silverdog
Why play games on PCs or Macs when the new game machines are based on the PowerPC with multicores or Cell and terraflops of processing. The games should just work, no tweaking, no new drivers. The icing on the cake is that they will also be subsidized by future game sales.
I think the new XBox and Playstation should hold most gamers for at least 2 to 3 years. Then games may come back to the personal computer depending on development.
You could have said the same about Playstation2 and XBox when they came out. Gaming on PC's is fine and will continue to be. The consoles lack
- input devices
- networking
- community: messaging, websites, private servers, etc.
- addons, mods, fan/3rd party content
- indie games
The next generation of consoles promises to deliver some of these. So did XBox, and PS2 to a lesser extent. My answer is still the same: I'll believe it when I see it.
The thing is: people say you don't NEED gaming cards in macs because there are no games.
However, it's also true that THERE ARE NO GAMES BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO PAY $2,000 TO GET A MAC WITH A HALFWAY DECENT CARD!!!
That REALLY bugs me. At least now my "G6" will be able to run windows games and windows video cards. Should be interesting.