[ninahagen]

Owners of 1st generation Mac Pros (2006~2007) have a gaming problem: the current crop of vid cards is way behind the state-of-the-art, leading to a slower, less satisfying experience.

Threads all over this and other forums have gamers who can't conceive or implement a Windows-based gaming solution on their MP.

The concept:

1. Dedicated Hard Drive or RAID array. Windows OS and Windows gaming applications go here.

— Q: Which windows? A: Windows XP in its final release has far fewer problems than Vista.
— Q: type of hard drive & number of drives? A:

Good=a single fast SATA drive in one of the Mac Pros hard drive bays or (if you need all four bays) mounted with a bracket into the 2nd optical drive bay. The Western Digital 10k rpm 150GB Raptor is the best. This requires a wire harness from Newertech that allows drives to be connected to the two extra ports on the motherboard.

Better=Go with a 15k rpm SAS drive like the Seagate Cheetah 300GB, mount it in the 2nd optical drive bay, and connect it with this PCIe card: Serial Attached SCSI Adapter - ExpressSAS H308 | ATTO Technology

Best = Get the Apple RAID card which allows SAS drives and put 2~4 300 GB Cheetahs (or Fuji/Hitachi SAS drives) in a RAID 0 array.It may be that Windows has to go on a separate drive (may be risky to put the OS in RAID), once again PCIe and the 2nd optical bay.

2. Dedicated Windows video card.

Implementation:

Can any members with info on the current best windows vid card, installation tips, a source for optical bay HD brackets, how to designate the vid card and HD (or HD array) as exclusive to each other, any relevant details on booting, whether windows can be safely installed in a RAID array, etc., please add to this thread?

Caveat: Apple is widely expected to release the new MPs soon, which may come with great video cards, more HD bays, SAS drive compatibility standard. This thread is for those who have a 1st gen MP and don't plan to buy the 2nd gen anytime soon and also those who are waiting for the first gen to come down in price after the 2nd gen release. Most are strongly encouraged to wait until Mac World San Francisco later this month. Heck, even if they don't release the 2nd gen MPs, someone may launch a much better vid card for OSX, which would solve this for some.

[PaperNotes]

— Q: Which windows? A: Windows XP in its final release has far fewer problems than Vista.

If it is a gaming box you might consider Vista because of Direct X 10/10.1 support and with XP you have to keep updating security patches that are already part of Vista.

— Q: type of hard drive & number of drives? A:

Again for gaming you really don't need a Raptor RAID or 15K RPM drives. They just heat up the system, have less disk space and are more prone to developing bad sectors. A single 1TB SATA drive runs cooler, has much more space and is plenty fast because of the data density per platter is much higher than any other drive.

For graphics, hope the new Mac Pros have a Geforce 9600GT minimum. That card should be plenty good for gaming especially if paired with quad-core or eight-core 3.33Ghz Penryn systems and is already sampling.

[Drakino]

Windows can be installed to a RAID card, as long as drivers exist for it. Since the Mac Pro lacks a floppy drive, you would either need to use Vista, or slipstream drivers directly onto the Windows XP CD. (Vista is the first MS OS to allow storage drivers to be loaded off something other then a floppy or the install medium).

As for hard drives though, I have to agree, your suggestions are overkill. A "Good" drive to me would be a standard 7200 RPM drive with decent space, not a 15k raptor. SAS? Completely out there for what a "gamer" would need. My load times in Portal between levels were nearly instant on a 320 GB 7200 RPM 16MB cache drive attached via eSATA to my MacBook Pro.

[P]

Slipstreaming an XP disc to add storage drivers.

As for Vista: Don't go there. There are still no games that even look better or run better on DX 10, and with adoption rates as low as Vista's remain, I very much doubt that DX 10 will be a requirement for several years yet.

The 9600GT is still just a rumor, and not even the rumor has it launched by Macworld. A Radeon 3850 would be a nice floor though, with a 3870 or 8800GT as an option.

[PaperNotes]

Crysis and BioShock look better with DX 10 enabled but you're right that 10 isn't necessary at the moment. The 9600 GT isn't a rumor, it does exist and the 9 series is slated for unveiling by late February.

[gambo]

The 9600 GT isn't a rumor, it does exist and the 9 series is slated for unveiling by late February.

I hope it's available for all mac pros! Remember the 88 for awhile only worked on the latest model.