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BTP · Jan 15, 2002, 08:59 PM

A friend has been bitten by the gaming bug and is buying a new desktop system. He really likes the Mac but asked me what kind if system or add ons he would need to buy to play games at a good (his words: kick ass) speed. First person games like Q3 are what he is measuring by and I have no gaming experience to speak of and I know little about it.

Could you clue me in on what, besides as much RAM as possible, would make a good gaming Mac? One constraint is that he wants to keep the cost reasonable, meaning that he'd like to pay a bit more, but somewhat reasonable. ( No dual 800's w/ 22" CD!)

Thanks..

rampant · Jan 15, 2002, 09:18 PM

My advice is this: Only get a Mac to game on if you absolutely positively must have a Mac and cannot stand or be near a PC under any circumstances .

I say this because cost is an issue, and macs just aren't that great for 3d gaming. The minimum he would be able to spend is $1499 on the mid range (new flatpanel) iMac, and that will only be able to play Q3 at 800 x 600 with decent fps. Even if you go all out and spend over $2400 on an ultimate mac, you will still be lagging behind very soon when the new games come to mac, like Halo. I really recommend you buy a PC for $1400 which will stay good for gaming for a few years. (www.alienware.com makes the best gaming computers on the market)

BTP · Jan 15, 2002, 09:41 PM

He is getting a Mac anyway, but his thought is that since he'll spend in the teens of $$ anyway, he'd like me to give him an idea of how much more he would need to spend to have a good gaming platform as well. This will not be a primary gaming system that will be secondary. There are just a few games that interest him, he won't be getting the latest releases. Right now, he loves the Q3 and Unreal games, kind of old really, but that's it.

Cipher13 · Jan 16, 2002, 02:10 AM

Good gaming Mac?

G4 Tower + AMD Athlon XP 1.4 w/GeForce 3 Ti and 768 megs of RAM.

But honestly... my G4/400 with 704 megs and a 16 meg Rage does fine.

People who think you need a 128 meg GeForce3 or whatever to play Quake 3 are idiots.

[ 01-16-2002: Message edited by: Cipher13 ]

BTP · Jan 16, 2002, 03:30 AM

Good to know.. In that case, I guess maybe he can go for the iMac stuffed with RAM.

A 700/800mhz G4 w/GeForce 2 should be able to fit bill, right?

roders · Jan 16, 2002, 03:33 AM

A new imac will be fine for those games.

iSoldier · Jan 16, 2002, 03:27 PM

I'd wait a couple of weeks until the G5 get released. The G5 is certain to kick arse. I'm sure that you will kick yourself in the arse if you don't wait. From all the rumors I hear it'l only be a couple of weeks.

When it does come out just get the low end G5 with a Geforce 3. That will kick , uh, butt.

Jan 16, 2002, 04:05 PM

I consider my computer to be a good gaming machine. I have a g4 466mhz with 640megs of ram and a geforce2mx400 64meg graphics card. UT runs great so does q3. I play red faction and that runs perfectly... I don't know hpow this computer will be able to handle halo or doom3

juanvaldes · Jan 17, 2002, 02:39 AM

Originally posted by <forck>:
<STRONG>I consider my computer to be a good gaming machine. I have a g4 466mhz with 640megs of ram and a geforce2mx400 64meg graphics card. UT runs great so does q3. I play red faction and that runs perfectly... I don't know hpow this computer will be able to handle halo or doom3</STRONG>

yeah, I get great fps in UT & Q3, and aside from such horrible ports as Tropico & Baldurs Gate 2 I have no grips. This is on a dual G4 @ 450 w/ 960RAM & Rage Pro 128 16meg. RtCW (MP demo, and I hear the final will be faster) FLEW!! on my system. So if Wolf is a metric of how intensive games will be for the next year my nearly two year old system is still kicking fine.

SteveJobs · Jan 17, 2002, 10:35 AM

If a 15" lcd is enough for him, he should do really well with an iMac. If he wants a bigger screen or an overall better performance (higher price) he will want a G4 Tower. Everything in there is good for gaming, like the graphics card, which is a Geforce 2 MX card. However, Apple did not introduce new towers for 7 months now, so the rev. is damn near.

Steve

Jansar · Jan 17, 2002, 10:59 AM

Originally posted by Cipher13:
<STRONG>Good gaming Mac?

G4 Tower + AMD Athlon XP 1.4 w/GeForce 3 Ti and 768 megs of RAM.
[ 01-16-2002: Message edited by: Cipher13 ]</STRONG>

An AMD Athlon XP inside of a G4 tower?

Leonard · Jan 17, 2002, 12:19 PM

If you want a Mac for 3D gaming, you definitely want a Mac with a G4 processor. The NEW G4 iMacs are good, but I still would like to see the graphics being upgradeable. If you buy an iMac you're stuck with a Geforce 2 MX which is 2 (?) years old now. As someone said it's good for current games, but future games may get slowed down by it. I'd say a low-end or middle G4 Tower... but wait for the new ones, they've gotta be out by the end of March. As other pointed out also, get enough RAM, 512 minimum.

[ 01-17-2002: Message edited by: Leonard ]

rampant · Jan 17, 2002, 07:53 PM

Id said that at the current state of development, Doom 3 will run at about 30fps max detail with a Geforce 3 on a P3 1ghz machine. You'll want to be able to play at 60 fps constant, and then you take optimizations before release into consideration... and then you realize you'll never be able to play it if you buy a mac right now, especially with the lack of mac upgrades.

Jansar · Jan 17, 2002, 07:56 PM

There's more power to a Mac than people think. My Cube seems to do great at high-resolution games. I'm just really curious.