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compsolver · Nov 21, 2003, 02:01 AM

hi there. i'm considering a computer mainly for gaming and some microsoft office useage.

will a mac with osx work great for this or would an ibm pc?
some games i like to play are warcraft 3, diablo 2, unreal tournament 2003, neverwinter nights, flight sims.

what about panther with the aforementioned games?

tia for any responses.

Horsepoo!!! · Nov 21, 2003, 08:24 AM

Originally posted by compsolver:
hi there. i'm considering a computer mainly for gaming and some microsoft office useage.

will a mac with osx work great for this or would an ibm pc?
some games i like to play are warcraft 3, diablo 2, unreal tournament 2003, neverwinter nights, flight sims.

what about panther with the aforementioned games?

tia for any responses.

I think most will say the same: get the PC.

Games are primarily created on a PC for the PC and then ported. In most cases, games will be more optimized for PCs and therefore run better on PCs.

If you want the best performance for the games you listed: Warcraft 3, Diablo 2, UT2k3, NWN...then for sure get a PC. I have yet to get a simple honest answer out of Blizzard as to what's so special about OS X that makes Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 performance suck so much. UT2k3 is simply more optimized for the PC...this is especially apparent in botmatches.

And you'll be doing Office work? Get the PC. Office v.X for Macs sucks even more than the Mac games' performance, IMO. It hasn't seen any upgrades in 2 years and is slow as a dog in Panther.

If you just want a cool user-experience though...get the Mac. I'm willing to live with slower performing games and use Office alternatives just to not have to throw a computer out the window in frustration (which is what I feel like doing everytime I have to use Windows.)

A lot of people try to convince me that Windows XP has come long ways and "isn't that bad"...it is *that* bad.

i am yujin · Nov 21, 2003, 12:30 PM

For gaming?

PC.

No competition whatsoever there.

petehammer · Nov 21, 2003, 12:49 PM

Originally posted by compsolver:
hi there. i'm considering a computer mainly for gaming and some microsoft office useage.

will a mac with osx work great for this or would an ibm pc?
some games i like to play are warcraft 3, diablo 2, unreal tournament 2003, neverwinter nights, flight sims.

what about panther with the aforementioned games?

tia for any responses.

Build your own PC (for around $5-600)

Use it for games and the Mac for work/productivity/other fun stuff.

PC games are cheaper and PC components are cheaper (by this I mean vid cards, sound cards, etc).

Peter · Nov 21, 2003, 01:56 PM

spend $900 or so and get a top spec computer with the 9800XT graphics card - it'll rock.

Cadaver · Nov 21, 2003, 02:47 PM

Nice Mac + Playstation 2

Honestly, it depends on which you want to do more of... spend $1500 on a game machine or spend $1500 on a computer for other things, plus occational games.

If its truly a high-end uber game machine, then I guess you should probably go PC, but keep in mind that most best sellers do eventually come to the Mac. And with the G5s, most games will run just fine (as long as you upgrade from the base nvidia card; but that holds true for PCs as well). My dual 2.0 + stock Radeon 9600 rocks on UT2K3.

Ask yourself if tolerating Windows worth it just to play games?

For me, my G5 plus a Playstation 2 satisfies 99.9% of my needs. Oh, btw, I've got my PS2 connected to a high-def 42" plasma display via component video. Now that's a killer game machine

Or, do what is suggested above, and build a cheap PC with a good graphics card to use exclusively for games, then use a Mac for everything else.

BlueCat · Nov 21, 2003, 07:08 PM

Originally posted by compsolver:
hi there. i'm considering a computer mainly for gaming and some microsoft office useage.

will a mac with osx work great for this or would an ibm pc?
some games i like to play are warcraft 3, diablo 2, unreal tournament 2003, neverwinter nights, flight sims.

what about panther with the aforementioned games?

tia for any responses.

As with Cadaver ... it's Mac + PS2 for me!

But in answer to your question, no doubt about it, PC are better for games. As mentioned already, definitelly custom build your own - don't go for the Dell, IBM or branded lablels.

Having said that the thing that put me off PC for games and made me get a PS2 is that, I got sick of new games outdating my hardware!!! It's just too expensive to have to upgrade hardware to support the latest and greatest games! (well that was about 5 years ago

). It was then I decided to get a game console instead!

i am yujin · 10:16 PM

Originally posted by Cadaver:
If its truly a high-end uber game machine, then I guess you should probably go PC, but keep in mind that most best sellers do eventually come to the Mac. And with the G5s, most games will run just fine (as long as you upgrade from the base nvidia card; but that holds true for PCs as well). My dual 2.0 + stock Radeon 9600 rocks on UT2K3.

Best sellers?

Where's my CS? Where's my BF1942? Where's my Grand Theft Auto? Where's my Final Fantasy 11? Where's my Call of Duty?

Why is it that the top online games don't come to Mac?

Most best sellers do come far after PC users have done playing and moved onto another game Mac users are waiting for.

James L · Nov 25, 2003, 10:16 PM

Mac + PS2 for me too!

compsolver · Dec 1, 2003, 11:45 PM

Originally posted by BlueCat:
As with Cadaver ... it's Mac + PS2 for me!

But in answer to your question, no doubt about it, PC are better for games. As mentioned already, definitelly custom build your own - don't go for the Dell, IBM or branded lablels.

Having said that the thing that put me off PC for games and made me get a PS2 is that, I got sick of new games outdating my hardware!!! It's just too expensive to have to upgrade hardware to support the latest and greatest games! (well that was about 5 years ago ). It was then I decided to get a game console instead!

i just had a local store build an amd 64-bit cpu system and have had nothing but problems.

so this time i could go with another local shop i trust more or dell. dell has the dimension xps specifically for gaming plus onsite warranty.

or i could get a g5.

my concerns about the g5 are i've read about kernel panic problems, how common are those with g5's and panther? does apple warranty stand behind their products to fix something like that?

Brad Oliver · Dec 2, 2003, 02:13 AM

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
And you'll be doing Office work? Get the PC. Office v.X for Macs sucks even more than the Mac games' performance, IMO. It hasn't seen any upgrades in 2 years and is slow as a dog in Panther.

Honestly? My experience with Office is the exact opposite - I find the Mac version more elegant and stable when compared to Office 2k (I haven't used Office XP). As for Office X updates, there have been a total of 5 minor ones, the most recent dated Sep. 9 2003.

To be fair, the last major release was in Nov 2001, a few months after Office XP was released for the PC. It just happens that Office 2003 was released a few months ago for the PC, so the lack of a new major upgrade of Office Mac isn't yet reason to pin blame on Microsoft - they usually take 2 - 2.5 years between releases (with the notable exception of Office XP). I would not be surprised to hear something about a new version at MacWorld in January.

blizzard · Dec 2, 2003, 05:27 PM

I kind of lucked out...one of my friends' computers busted back at the beginning of the year and rather than fix it he just bought a new one. So I got the old one, spent a day figuring out what was wrong (fried motherboard), then spent 400 bucks Canadian to get a new Athlon 2500+, 256 megs of DDRAM, and motherboard, then re-flashed the 8500LE I had in my Mac and used all the old components from his computer to build a pretty respectable PC. It's probably effectively more than six times as fast as my old Power Mac G4/466, and cost FAR less than the dual G5 I'd need to compete with it games-wise. Despite what people say, Windows XP is not totally unuseable...if you know what to do with it, it's fairly painless. Not nearly as painless as OS X, however, and nowhere near as fun to use. My general pattern is to boot the PC whenever I need to do something that my Mac can't handle (games, Bittorrent downloads, and newer DivX'ed TV shows that lag like mad on the Mac), but whenever I need to get serious work done, the Mac goes back on.

So...PCs aren't as bad as some make them seem, but aren't nearly as satisfying to use. If games are your gig and cost is an issue, get a PC. If cost isn't an issue, get a G5 and it'll be the best of both worlds.

deviousgelatin · Dec 4, 2003, 02:07 PM

These days, I pretty much use my Mac for productive things, and my PS2 to play games. I find console gaming to be a much better experience than PC - with the exception of FP shooters..... but UT2003 is on the Mac, so what more do you need?