Optimum G5 for gaming
Hello folks.
As I like to do a bit of gaming, I'm hoping my Christmas present will be one of these two configurations.
i) PowerMac G5 2.0GHz with Radeon 9800XT
ii) PowerMac G5 2.5GHz with Radeon 9600XT
Which will be better for throwing those polygons around in C&C Generals? I can't afford 2.5GHz with 9800XT. :=(
Cheers,
Dave.
As I like to do a bit of gaming, I'm hoping my Christmas present will be one of these two configurations.
i) PowerMac G5 2.0GHz with Radeon 9800XT
ii) PowerMac G5 2.5GHz with Radeon 9600XT
Which will be better for throwing those polygons around in C&C Generals? I can't afford 2.5GHz with 9800XT. :=(
Cheers,
Dave.
Comments
Originally posted by Eugene
I'm being dreadfully honest here, but if you want to play games, get a cheap PC with a decent graphics card...
Yeah, spending $3000 on a DualG5 to play games on seems like a horrendous waste of money. You could instead pick up an iMacG5, a cheap gaming PC, a second monitor that you could attach to either machine, and still have enough money left over to buy a PS2 and XBox, just for the hell of it. Or get that iMacG5 and every console made, and you'll still have about a thousand bucks left to buy games with.
Originally posted by Towel
Yeah, spending $3000 on a DualG5 to play games on seems like a horrendous waste of money.
Nooooo.
I've already got a Shuttle gaming rig but I am looking at moving AWAY from PCs, chaps! Gaming is not my main activity - it's something I enjoy a few hours a week. Many moons ago I used to play games every day but lately I don't have the time. I've got Doom 3 and many others sitting here which I haven't got round to playing yet.
My main reasons for getting a Mac are i) break free from Windows and ii) to learn Cocoa/Java development. The fact that there are less game titles on the Mac is a good thing for me as it means I can probably finish a game before a new one arrives.
I hope "The Longest Journey" will work on Virtual PC 7. That's one I never finished.
If the Mac is a good system then the Shuttle will go and I will consolidate my computing on OS X. I don't really have the room for more than one computer due to power issues and the dimensions of this cell I am in.
Read this thread to understand the issues facing Mac gaming performance.
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/threa...2&p=1#post5902
How can you *not* have space for a Shuttle chassis and a DVI/USB switch box? OTOH if your power is truly not enough for running two computers, you can just sleep the Powermac before waking the PC and vice versa.
You consider it a plus to have less game titles available, because that means less time spent in gaming. I'd say people in general have an easier time keeping fun and productivity separate if those happen on separate computers. You can't eliminate timewasting habits one by one, there are too much potential timewasters. Instead you just have to do what is important.
Originally posted by ic1male
My good man, you are right. I have been thinking about this a lot these past few days. I am going to keep my Radeon Shuttle for gaming (how could I give up on Half-Life 2!) and probably buy a PowerBook for my day-to-day work. That way, as you say, things are kept separate. I'm going to buy the 15" PowerBook. I cannot see the need for dual-processing G5s at this moment in time.
Also, the PowerBook is more than enough to code in Cocoa/Java. I've been doing this for the last year on my latest PowerBook and since 2001 on my Titanium 500MHz PowerBook.
Originally posted by Gon
Gaming is so much better on the PC, I don't understand why you want to do things the hard way. Even if you'd have to upgrade it (you don't say how fast/new your PC is), the upgrade price is probably offset by not having to get the graphics card upgrade to the Powermac. Future upgrades are cheaper. You get 10x more choice in game titles, and if you buy your software vs pirating it, they will be half the price. There are no administration worries on a gaming PC since HD contents are disposable.
-snip-
Originally posted by Eugene
I'm being dreadfully honest here, but if you want to play games, get a cheap PC with a decent graphics card...
Originally posted by Towel
Yeah, spending $3000 on a DualG5 to play games on seems like a horrendous waste of money. You could instead pick up an iMacG5, a cheap gaming PC, a second monitor that you could attach to either machine, and still have enough money left over to buy a PS2 and XBox, just for the hell of it. Or get that iMacG5 and every console made, and you'll still have about a thousand bucks left to buy games with.
*sigh* This is one of the problems with Mac gaming; so many Mac users have this attitude of "play games on a Mac? Icky, no, never! Buy a PC/Console!" Is it any wonder that the Mac gaming industry is not in better shape?
Truthfully, there are hundreds of games out for the Mac, and the G5 Towers will give you a great gaming experience.
If we want gaming to be better on the Mac we need to support the companies that make Mac games (i.e., buy the games and encourage others to do so).
If you ONLY want to play games, and will use your computer for nothing else, then a PC is the way to go. But if you want to get your work done on a Mac, the 2.5 GHz G5 tower is an awesome machine, and when teamed with a good video card it will give you a wonderful gaming experience.
The Mac laptop and PC gaming rig is another way to go (it is the setup I'm currently using). You will be surprised by the number of fun games that will play well on the laptops, which will let you have fun on the go.
I'm hoping the Mobility Radeon 9700 can cope with the likes of KotOR and Rise of Nations as those are two games I've not bought for PC yet and would like to buy for OS X.
Originally posted by Res
*sigh* This is one of the problems with Mac gaming; so many Mac users have this attitude of "play games on a Mac? Icky, no, never! Buy a PC/Console!" Is it any wonder that the Mac gaming industry is not in better shape?
[...]
If we want gaming to be better on the Mac we need to support the companies that make Mac games (i.e., buy the games and encourage others to do so).
Thank you! I was beginning to wonder if I was doomed to be a lone voice in the wilderness on this subject.
If you want Mac games, buy Mac games. If you don't buy them, don't complain that there aren't any.
Originally posted by Res
*sigh* This is one of the problems with Mac gaming; so many Mac users have this attitude of "play games on a Mac? Icky, no, never! Buy a PC/Console!" Is it any wonder that the Mac gaming industry is not in better shape?
Truthfully, there are hundreds of games out for the Mac, and the G5 Towers will give you a great gaming experience.
If we want gaming to be better on the Mac we need to support the companies that make Mac games (i.e., buy the games and encourage others to do so).
If you ONLY want to play games, and will use your computer for nothing else, then a PC is the way to go. But if you want to get your work done on a Mac, the 2.5 GHz G5 tower is an awesome machine, and when teamed with a good video card it will give you a wonderful gaming experience.
Blame Apple for killing Mac gaming, not the people who point out that they have done so. If OS X was a competetive game platform, people wouldn't need to "support" it. The core problem is marketshare, and that Apple can only grab by cutting margins and building cheap boxes with reasonable graphics power. They are not interested, else they would have done so already.
Looking from game developer viewpoint, it's awfully hard to choose the OS X platform. Developing on OS X from scratch is not very cost effective compared to developing on Windows and getting a *huge* customer base for the same investment, so it's obvious that a niche platform has to survive mostly with ports. Porting is hampered by that most Windows games make extensive use of DirectX, which is not found on the Mac. Especially significant is Direct3D vs. OpenGL, since they are strongly tied to the renderer and a big part of it has to be rewritten if the game wasn't OpenGL originally. The G4's are weak processors, unless the code is Altivec optimized and optimized well. All this is a lot of work. You can't "just" port if the game is originally targeted for 2+GHz Windows PC's and the port is to run on G4's. The GPU's suck on the G4 machines *and* the new iMac, with the exception of new larger Powerbooks and some older towers. It isn't much of an option to target only the towers - if OS X is 4% of the market to begin with, the towers probably aren't more than 0.4%. Factor in the amount of gamers among the tower owners, and you have no one left.
By all means, buy Mac games - if they are good ones. Don't support companies that cut corners making a poor port of a Windows/XBox/whatever game, that'll just encourage them to do more of the same. It's also okay to recommend Mac gaming to others, but keeping a level head, I wouldn't tell anyone to expect to be able to play any certain game X. If you are not picky about getting to play that one specific game that is out on another platform, you can certainly find good games among the ones that do come out for the Mac.
Originally posted by Gon
Blame Apple for killing Mac gaming, not the people who point out that they have done so. If OS X was a competetive game platform, people wouldn't need to "support" it. The core problem is marketshare, and that Apple can only grab by cutting margins and building cheap boxes with reasonable graphics power. They are not interested, else they would have done so already.
As you acknowledge in your second paragraph, that isn't the problem.
The technical problems are software-based, and they're only problems because of low sales.
Looking from game developer viewpoint, it's awfully hard to choose the OS X platform. Developing on OS X from scratch is not very cost effective compared to developing on Windows and getting a *huge* customer base for the same investment, so it's obvious that a niche platform has to survive mostly with ports.
This is the business owners' argument, not the developers' argument. Cross platform game development is not that much harder, it's just that you have to learn the tricks - just like Windows-specific development or Mac-specific development or anything else. id's codebases are 95% - 99% portable code. Any developers arguing against cross-platform development probably only know Windows development, and so they're (not unreasonably) looking at the learning curve required to learn cross-platform development.
Porting is hampered by that most Windows games make extensive use of DirectX, which is not found on the Mac.
And this decision is made, again, largely because the decision to target Windows has already been made. OpenGL is cross-platform, of course. MS also showers developers with help for their proprietary technologies.
Especially significant is Direct3D vs. OpenGL, since they are strongly tied to the renderer and a big part of it has to be rewritten if the game wasn't OpenGL originally.
Not really a problem at this point: All the porting houses have DirectX->OpenGL libraries in place.
You can't "just" port if the game is originally targeted for 2+GHz Windows PC's and the port is to run on G4's.
Which is not to say that that doesn't happen anyway. Besides, most porting houses are skeptical of AltiVec's benefits for gaming code. Omni got farther factoring code out and threading it for dual processors, but they're not porting games any more because there's hardly any money in it.
The problem always comes back to money, which comes back to sales.
The GPU's suck on the G4 machines *and* the new iMac, with the exception of new larger Powerbooks and some older towers. It isn't much of an option to target only the towers - if OS X is 4% of the market to begin with, the towers probably aren't more than 0.4%. Factor in the amount of gamers among the tower owners, and you have no one left.
Which is why id targeted the iMac for Quake 3. Carmack noted that the incredibly consistent hardware of the iMac made it an easy platform to target. The downside of the custom rigs that hardcore gamers love so much is that they collectively make a hardware platform that's almost impossible to target, or test for, or optimize for.
Any vendor who wants sales finds a way to target low-end graphics cards on Windows, too, because that's what most retail Windows PCs have.
By all means, buy Mac games - if they are good ones. Don't support companies that cut corners making a poor port of a Windows/XBox/whatever game, that'll just encourage them to do more of the same.
Poor ports are almost always a symptom of the porting house not being given enough money to do the job right. They weren't given much money because the publisher anticipates low sales. The publisher anticipates low sales because the last hurried port didn't sell, and the last port was hurried because the Mac gaming market was too small to be a primary development target.
No matter how you spin it, it comes back to game sales always. "Mac gamers" aren't buying towers. They're buying or building PCs or using consoles and running games on those. That, not the lack of a low-end tower, is what's hurting Mac gaming.
So in 11 days time I should be the proud owner of a Mac made in Ireland. :-) I guess I shall have to keep it topped up with Guinness.
w00t!
Originally posted by Amorph
The technical problems are software-based, and they're only problems because of low sales.
...
This is the business owners' argument, not the developers' argument. Cross platform game development is not that much harder,
...
No matter how you spin it, it comes back to game sales always. "Mac gamers" aren't buying towers. They're buying or building PCs or using consoles and running games on those. That, not the lack of a low-end tower, is what's hurting Mac gaming.
I never tried to imply there was a big technological barrier for Mac game dev. Business owners' and developers' motives go hand in hand, that is not an issue either. My point is that the whole mess is a marketshare problem, can only be fixed by expanding the platform's marketshare, and indeed will fix itself when the root problem is fixed. Fact is, Apple is unwilling to limit their immediate profitability (margins) and to relinquish any sort of control over design or production to get marketshare. Apple is unwilling to design certain form factors and types of desktop computers, including the type a gamer prefers, the type average Windows PC buyers prefer, and the type that average office businesses prefer. Even though Macs are traditionally feature-rich, at the same time Apple has been willing to intentionally hobble many of their computers to force people to buy the oversized "pro" computer or to leave Macs altogether. Many have took the latter option.
It's absurd to expect the gamer to go with Apple, when a cheaper competitor delivers superior game selection and runs the same game better. Economy doesn't work that way. You have to have a competetive product, then people will come buy it. Only a fanatic would spend Powermac's worth, endure the worse selection and slower + more expensive games in hopes a horde of other fanatics doing the same and the Mac gaming market picking up because of that. Problem is, there aren't many such fanatics, and their numbers dwarf compared to the "average users" who'd be prepared to spend an additional $300 for their desktop Mac to get it to run games well.
I can't help thinking about Baron von Munchhausen, pulling himself out of a swamp by his own bootstraps. That's exactly your recipe to further Mac gaming.