[Firebolt059]

My friend said that PC's were better than Mac for gaming. He said that PC's had more CPU power, more and better video cards and a greater selection of RAM. Is it true what he said about PC's being better than Mac for gaming?
Also, Please participate in the poll if you can. Thank you.

[BLAZE_MkIV]

Manufactures insistence that PC video cards are somehow different make the available cards sub par and massively overpriced.

MS waged a very successful campaign to addict the video game makers to a windows only philosophy, though the console market is eroding that some.

[Rumor]

In short, yes, he is correct. Is it due to hardware? No, not all. The reason that the PC gamer market is much larger than the Mac gamer market is that most titles are made in a way that cannot be played in OS X unless ported. Some companies (Blizzard) codes their games to work for either platform (I think it is because they use Open GL instead of DirectX ((which is a Microsoft IP)) but I could be wrong).

Technically, any Mac with an Intel processor can play a PC game as long as they have the hardware requirements (which the majority of prepackaged lowend pcs lack) and are running Windows via Bootcamp or Parallels/and that other one (can't remember the name).

[Big Mac]

Firebolt, it sounds like your friend was talking about the hardware side only, and from that perspective he was (mostly) wrong because Mac and PC hardware is now essentially indistinguishable, aside from the firmware Apple provides that properly supports OS X. When the Mac was PPC based, this wasn't true, but since Macs use Intel chips now, you get full Windows compatibility. I say he was mostly wrong because he has a point about having a wider selection of graphics cards (you can only upgrade your graphics card on one Apple line, the premium priced Mac Pro, and you have to stay with only a couple of choices Apple gives you for upgrades unless you don't care about OS X compatibility or don't have a problem hacking the card to work in OS X.)

Now if you mean, is gaming better on Windows or Mac OS X, then undeniably Windows is better. Only a few companies even bother making Mac games now given that it's so easy for users to boot into Windows and play games there.

[mduell]

i7 PCs cost <$1000, while Apple's start at $2000+, and the PCs have more, cheaper, faster graphics card options.

[P]

Originally Posted by Firebolt059 

My friend said that PC's were better than Mac for gaming. He said that PC's had more CPU power

Generally not true. Just before Apple updates it's like that, but not generally.

Originally Posted by Firebolt059 

, more and better video cards

True. Very true.

Originally Posted by Firebolt059 

and a greater selection of RAM.

Not true (what does that even mean?)

Originally Posted by Firebolt059 

Is it true what he said about PC's being better than Mac for gaming?
Also, Please participate in the poll if you can. Thank you.

It is true. At any given point in time, it is cheaper to build a good gaming PC than an equivalent Mac. You can get to the upper midrange with the iMac graphics cards (roughly) but if you want something faster than that, you need an MP, and Apple overprices those horribly. This is a little less troubling than it used to be, as even a middling graphics card can produce graphics equivalent to a PS3 or X360, and so will at least let you play recent games at HD resolution (720p, what console games usually run at, is considered a fairly low resolution in PC gaming) but you cannot make a performance gaming machine for $1200 the way you can with a PC. Don't get me wrong, the latest iMacs are very impressive machines and you can certainly game on them, but I can also put together a gaming PC that beats this i7 iMac while costing far less. With iMacs, you pay for OS X, for design, for noise level and for a very impressive display that you can skip when making a gaming PC.

[downinflames68]

He's right. Tell him to have fun defraging, tweaking, ****ing around, etc. I'll have fun being productive, and only being in windows for a needed program/game.

[lpkmckenna]

DirectX is pretty good now, but OpenGL has lagged in development. I have no doubt that native Mac games run slightly poorer than the same game for PC, moreso with games ported to Mac with Cider like EA's recent ports.

Frankly, I'm ready for Apple to licence DirectX from Microsoft if that made game porting more likely. But now MS has no incentive to licence since they certainly earn more from Mac users buying Windows for Bootcamp. It's all so ironic since MS pressured Apple to adopt DirectX all those years ago, as Apple complained in the anti-trust investigation against MS.