[CS_Mac_Sniper]

i looking for a gaming laptop ether a ibook or a powerbook which one is good but not burn a hole in my pocket

[Luca Rescigno]

I don't think you'll be satisfied with either one for gaming. The iBooks have a very weak graphics chip - just a 32 MB Radeon 9200. The 12" PowerBook has 64 MB of VRAM but it's still coupled to a fairly weak GeForce FX5200. Only the 15" and 17" PowerBooks have a really fast video chip, a Mobility Radeon 9700. But those ones are really expensive.

What games do you want to play? How well do you want them to run? Because there aren't a lot of new games that'll run really well on any Apple laptop, even the highest end ones. Mac games tend to run a lot slower than their PC counterparts. A better idea if you want to game is to buy either a gaming PC or a game console. Consoles are really cheap, and gaming PCs can be built to run all the latest games reasonably well for under $500. I'd say your money would be better spent on an inexpensive, low end iBook and a gaming PC. Don't sink lots of money into a Mac for gaming; you'll just be disappointed in the end.

[Scooterboy]

Maybe he goes to LAN parties and doesn't want to lug around a desktop system.

The 15" and 17" PowerBooks are quite good at running most of the current crop of Mac games. Quite good for a notebook computer. However, If I planned on doing a lot of gaming on a future PowerBook purchase, I'd wait for the next update which should be coming soon. Even if it's still a G4, I'd expect the video card to be updated to the Radeon 9800.

On the PC side, the Alienware gaming laptops should perform well, but they are very expensive, more so than the PowerBooks. Of course, there are zillions more games for the PC, providing you have zillions more dollars to buy them and zillions more hours to play them.

[hldan]

Originally posted by Luca Rescigno:
I don't think you'll be satisfied with either one for gaming. The iBooks have a very weak graphics chip - just a 32 MB Radeon 9200. The 12" PowerBook has 64 MB of VRAM but it's still coupled to a fairly weak GeForce FX5200. Only the 15" and 17" PowerBooks have a really fast video chip, a Mobility Radeon 9700. But those ones are really expensive.

What games do you want to play? How well do you want them to run? Because there aren't a lot of new games that'll run really well on any Apple laptop, even the highest end ones. Mac games tend to run a lot slower than their PC counterparts. A better idea if you want to game is to buy either a gaming PC or a game console. Consoles are really cheap, and gaming PCs can be built to run all the latest games reasonably well for under $500. I'd say your money would be better spent on an inexpensive, low end iBook and a gaming PC. Don't sink lots of money into a Mac for gaming; you'll just be disappointed in the end.

What planet did you come from? You can't custom build a PC for under 5 bills and expect it to run games well. This misconception has got to come to an end about Mac gaming being poor and PC gaming being stellar. I play UT 2004 and Halo on my 17" Powerbook along with my friends that have PC notebooks with equal graphics solutions and these games play fantastic on both platforms. Games aren't slower on the Mac, that's BS.
Hard core computer gaming on a PC has become a way of life for 2 reasons;

(1) Apple decided to no longer license the Mac OS to 3rd party PC companies which lessend distribution of the Mac which resulted in less software being produced.

(2) Apple also decided to make the Mac a proprietary system so unlike the PC side you can't custom build your own Mac with all the stupid see-thru cases and blue neon lighting.

Companies that sell GPU's get ton's more business from PC users as the real gamers tend to build their PC from scratch thus resulting in more companies producing more games on the PC.

The iBook and Powerbook have GPU's equal or better than what comes out of the box on a PC for the same money. Most PC's at low cost use shared memory for graphics and I have seen several PC desktops over $1000.00 with GeForce FX 5200 GPU's or Radeon X600's.

There are just far less choices for games on the Mac, gaming isn't poor on the Mac. Try and play UT2004 on a brand new Dell for $500.00.

[LORL]

Originally posted by hldan:
What planet did you come from? You can't custom build a PC for under 5 bills and expect it to run games well. This misconception has got to come to an end about Mac gaming being poor and PC gaming being stellar. I play UT 2004 and Halo on my 17" Powerbook along with my friends that have PC notebooks with equal graphics solutions and these games play fantastic on both platforms. Games aren't slower on the Mac, that's BS.
Hard core computer gaming on a PC has become a way of life for 2 reasons;

(1) Apple decided to no longer license the Mac OS to 3rd party PC companies which lessend distribution of the Mac which resulted in less software being produced.

(2) Apple also decided to make the Mac a proprietary system so unlike the PC side you can't custom build your own Mac with all the stupid see-thru cases and blue neon lighting.

Companies that sell GPU's get ton's more business from PC users as the real gamers tend to build their PC from scratch thus resulting in more companies producing more games on the PC.

The iBook and Powerbook have GPU's equal or better than what comes out of the box on a PC for the same money. Most PC's at low cost use shared memory for graphics and I have seen several PC desktops over $1000.00 with GeForce FX 5200 GPU's or Radeon X600's.

There are just far less choices for games on the Mac, gaming isn't poor on the Mac. Try and play UT2004 on a brand new Dell for $500.00.

My $2300 Powerbook runs World of Warcraft with significantly lower frame rates and significantly more video lag in more places than my friend's new $500 desktop.

Mac games run slower. It's not a misconception. It's not a marketing/licensing result. Want proof?

World of Warcraft ( a brand new game ) runs on an 800mhz PC with 256meg of RAM. Those are the bottom line requirements by Blizzard.

On a Mac? 933 mhz G4/G5 (which means you can't use a G3 according to Blizzard - so you have to have a newer processor than the PC world) with 512 meg of RAM (DDR recommended).

Always thank Blizzard for porting all their games, from beta to production. But, if you can afford a $500-600 PC to play your games, just do that. You will get better video and more options.

[Sn1PeR]

World of Warcraft has currently disabled hardware support on Macintosh computers, this support will not be put in until a future patch... at that point it would be fair to compare pc vs. mac on WoW, but until then it's a null point because WoW isn't using the horsepower of you graphic card on your mac.

[LORL]

Originally posted by Sn1PeR:
World of Warcraft has currently disabled hardware support on Macintosh computers, this support will not be put in until a future patch... at that point it would be fair to compare pc vs. mac on WoW, but until then it's a null point because WoW isn't using the horsepower of you graphic card on your mac.

Disabled hardware support? So that means WoW does not use my hardware? I would appreciate if you could clarify, because for me "disabled hardware support" is a sort of confusing term...

[Commodus]

That's not totally accurate - the disabled support is for pixel shaders in the rendering engine, which only show up occasionally (reflections on some cobblestone roads, the ghostly haze effect when you're dead).

And furthermore, that support was actually included in the most recent WOW patch, as Apple added the necessary driver support in the 10.3.7 update.

So in short, you're not missing anything visually in using a PowerBook for gaming - what you miss is frame rate. I'd personally wait until PowerBooks have either G5s or significantly-improved G4s before buying in.