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thebunny · Jan 26, 2005, 08:48 PM

Did anybody try this? How well does it work? It would be perfect in the living room with a wireless keyboard and mouse. Are there any game benchmarks at all? I am not expecting a whole lot but it would be nice if it at least ran...

Geoff Thompson · Jan 27, 2005, 12:33 AM

The 1.42ghz mini I bought performs good with UT2004. It gets around 20-35fps in various onslaught maps. AI seems to be the main cause of drag, I bet it would perform better if games were served from a different machine. The Battlefield 1942 demo from Aspyr had similar results. It might get better if I decide to purchase a 1GB DIMM for it, 512mb probably isn't quite enough for these newer games.

I am happy though, because all of these games are running faster on the mini than the machine it replaced, a Dell 700m laptop which used intel integrated graphics.

Simon · Jan 27, 2005, 02:39 AM

Interesting. I'm wondering how much the fast CPU can make up for the slow GPU. Has anybody tried MOHAA or CoD on a 1.42GHz mini?

voteforpedro68 · Jan 28, 2005, 02:05 AM

they'll probably run well at really low resolutions. Unfortunately the card in them is a 9200... which blows.

RonnieoftheRose · Jan 28, 2005, 08:50 AM

Originally posted by voteforpedro68:
they'll probably run well at really low resolutions. Unfortunately the card in them is a 9200... which blows.

It's better than my Geforce 4MX. Drop to 16bit color and everything will run fine at XGA.

Simon · Jan 28, 2005, 09:07 AM

This all sounds like the 9200 is really great or something. Hmm.

I play MoHAA and CoD with 16 bit and 800x600 on a 5200go with 32MB VRAM and believe me, it truly sucks. It stutters, drops frames, and that's with all other details set to a minimum.

Up to now I never considered a 9200 superior to a 5200go, but this thread has got me wondering...

RonnieoftheRose · Jan 28, 2005, 10:03 AM

I've got CoD running pretty well on a Rev. A PB17 at XGA/16bit. Geforce 4MX 64MB. Unless Apple disabled AGP texturing a 32MB card shouldn't be dog slow. You've got a faster GPU too. UT2003 runs on a PowerBook Ti800 with Radeon 7500 32MB in full widescreen if you lower it to 16bit. Graphically it's as demanding as CoD. I don't know about UT2004 as I haven't had much time for games in the last year.

Geoff Thompson · Jan 28, 2005, 10:21 AM

I downloaded the demo of CoD and played through a few levels. It runs okay, except that the quads displaying the gun/weapon on the screen were missing in places. It could have just been a bug maybe. I played Warcraft 3 and its the best performing game I have run so far.

A radeon 9600 or 9700 mobile would be an excellent upgrade for these systems when they are revamped, but the 9200 still runs reasonably well for now. Honestly when these were released I was hoping apple would have a higher priced model that wasn't focused on being the cheap replacement for a PC, so people who liked the style could use it as a suitable imac g5 replacement, or powermac replacement even.

elvis2000 · Jan 28, 2005, 01:17 PM

Originally posted by Simon:
This all sounds like the 9200 is really great or something. Hmm.

I play MoHAA and CoD with 16 bit and 800x600 on a 5200go with 32MB VRAM and believe me, it truly sucks. It stutters, drops frames, and that's with all other details set to a minimum.

Up to now I never considered a 9200 superior to a 5200go, but this thread has got me wondering...

The 5200 Go is a low-end laptop chip. The 9200 is a low-end desktop chip. I don't have benchmarks, but I'm assuming the 9200 wins.

voteforpedro68 · Jan 28, 2005, 01:36 PM

okay, look, the 9200 is a FASTER card, but it still sucks in comparison to the 7500. (talking powerbooks but it's basically the same system minus the screen and kb). The 9200 has more features, and it's indeed a faster card, but it performs WORSE than the 7500s. It has less bandwidth, and can render fewer polygons.

Basically, it blows. At 640X480 it should be OKAY, and that's about it.

- Rob

yikes600 · Jan 28, 2005, 02:21 PM

Originally posted by thebunny:
Are there any game benchmarks at all?

Barefeats has a Q3 benchmark

Simon · Jan 29, 2005, 12:45 PM

Originally posted by elvis2000:
The 5200 Go is a low-end laptop chip. The 9200 is a low-end desktop chip. I don't have benchmarks, but I'm assuming the 9200 wins.

This would be a really interesting benchmark. Of course the 5200Go is a notebook GPU, but since it belongs to the 5200 family I figured it might still be a tad better than the 9200 which seems to be about the worst desktop GPU (at least apart from any on-board Intel Shared Video solutions).

Awesome, a $499 mini could play MoHAA better than my $1800 PowerBook. I love tech progress. But, jeeze, it really hurts.

Geoff Thompson · Jan 29, 2005, 10:29 PM

The FX5200 series is a 2 pixel pipeline with 64-bit memory GPU, while the Radeon 9200 is a 4 pixel pipeline 128-bit memory GPU. Even worse, the core and memory are usually clocked slower on the FX5200, atleast on the PC side.

Even though the FX5200 does have programmable pixel pipes and more VRAM, the 9200 should win in most situations because it can render twice as fast and access memory twice as fast.

Now if only more games were ported to Mac. Maybe the mini will help make this happen. I spend $300 a year on mac games and still don't have as large a collection as my PC friends do...

Cadaver · Jan 30, 2005, 12:15 PM

Originally posted by Geoff Thompson:
I spend $300 a year on mac games and still don't have as large a collection as my PC friends do...

But you've got more money left over at least

Eug Wanker · Jan 30, 2005, 12:28 PM

I haven't played it on the mini, but my guess is it will run like crap. For gaming, the G4 1.42 isn't terribly fast, and neither is the 9200. And wireless mice and keyboards generally suck for gaming.

P.S. My "run like crap" is relative. People tell me that TiBook 1 GHz play certain games well, and when I try the same games, I think they're so slow I want rip my hair out. Luckily I don't play games anymore...

P.P.S. There is a gaming forum too, so you might want to check in there.

andreas_g4 · Feb 4, 2005, 06:04 PM

I have to say that I am sursprised how well my Mac mini (1.25 GHz, 1 GB RAM) performs in games. I must admit that I am not the greatest player of all times, I mostly play a demo once in a while, that's it. But I own Warcraft III and RTCWolfenstein and both are running really well IMHO. Processor speed makes a huge difference. I have also an iBook G3 (900 MHz, 640 MB RAM), which has a similar card (Radeon 7500) with equal VRAM and games run much much worse than on my new mini.