Apple's official Mac gaming solution: Windows

#33
#37

Why do we upgrade PCs? Gee I don't know maybe to play games like Oblivion. Try playing that on your mac-mini.

I've really enjoyed the 500 word essays here my mac fanatics explaining why us PC users are ignorant. Really, I have. The level of fantatisim is quite entertaining. Too bad it was all a waste of time.

Let's look at what $2000 can get you in the real world:

Dell/Alienware:
Aurora™ 7500
MD Athlon™ 64 X2 3800+ with HyperTransport and Dual Core Technology
Alienware® Liquid Cooling with AlienIce™ 2.0 Video Cooling
Alienware® NVidia nForce™4 SLI™ X16 Motherboard
1GB Dual Channel Low-Latency DDR PC-3200 at 400MHz - 2 x 512MB
160GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7,200 RPM w/ NCQ & 8MB Cache
16x Dual Layer DVD±R/W Drive
256MB PCI-Express x16 NVIDIA® GeForce™ 7900 GT
Integrated High-Performance 7.1 Surround Sound with S/PDIF and Coaxial Digital Outputs
Microsoft® Basic Optical Mouse Black

Here's a picture of it:
http://www.alienware.com/product_pages/desktop_all_default.aspx

You can clearly see how cheap looking it is.

Mac:
Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5
Dual-core 2GHz PowerPC G5 processor
1GHz frontside bus per processor
1MB L2 cache per core
512MB of 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-4200)
160GB Serial ATA hard drive
16x SuperDrive (double-layer)
Three open PCI-Express expansion slots
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 LE with 128MB GDDR SDRAM


If you think a 6600 LE is even in the realm of the 7900GT than go check out hardware benchmarks at Tom's hardware. There's no comparison.

Macs have nothing on PCs when it comes to gaming. Nothing. Stick to bragging about Macs being good for Grandma because she won't have to load anti-virus software. That's their only real advantage.

Macs: Good for grandma, not gaming.

Microsoft Drone - Real fair comparison that, putting an Alienware PC up against a Mac that's still waiting for its upgrade to intel chips (and the likely bumps in memory, graphics etc that will come with it). The sad thing is that, in some ways, you're right - Mac hardware will not compete with PC hardware in pure cost terms, you'll always pay more for the Mac - but the way you've gone about showing that:

a) Ignores the added value of the software that's part of every Mac bundle (iLife for instance)
b) Uses an old, and frankly pointless in the context of this blog topic, example rather than say an iMac.
c) You've managed to pick an Apple machine that does let you upgrade the graphics card! I believe there's a X800 AGP upgrade for this machine that can be done by the user in exactly the same way that a PC upgrade is performed. You can also change the memory, internal hard disks, optical drive and add SATA, SCSI, Firewire and USB expansion cards.

Oh, and try playing Oblivion on a $400 PC, the results will be largely the same. Or you could, you know, but a $500 Mac Mini for computing stuff and a $400 Xbox360 for gaming and save $1,100 over a 2 grand alienware rig. Just a thought (and yes, I know that's a silly argument but it seemed to be on a level with the original comment).

You've also somewhat missed the point of all this. I've built my own PC's for the last eight years and use them heavily for gaming. I work with Windows PC's every day and do both development and sys admin for my company. Yet I'm seriously considering switching to Apple for my next machine. Why? Because I'm tired of the headaches that come with using Windows, my gaming needs are being met more and more by consoles and portables (the DS in particular these days) and, frankly, I object to having to upgrade my entire PC to run Vista at an acceptable speed for what is likely to be a very small functional improvment over XP (but vital for running DX10). I've also become tired of the constant upgrade cycle on PC's and the thought of having a nice stable hardware environment for a few years is an attractive one. Plus there's the design of the Mac range, not only does it look MUCH better than the equivalent PC but, in the case of the iMac anyway, it saves a huge ammount of space, important when you're sharing your office space with your bedroom.

Please do try and remember that people like yourself, who seemingly musr have the best of everything when it comes to computers, are a very VERY small percentage of the overall market. Most PC's are bought from a retailer, taken home, put under a desk and used for years without any form of upgrades until they finally die and get replaced with whatever midrange box is on special offer that week. In that market, with an attractive OS/Application bundle, eye-catching hardware, improved security over Windows AND the ability to run legacy Windows applications if necessary (and it probably won't be for the majority of users) Apple machines are at the very least a practicale alternative to a Windows machine.

I've got a shuttle PC with Radeon X800XT that I use only for gaming. I do EVERYTHING else on my Powerbook and it's been really frustrating having to do so much on my laptop when I'd rather use my more powerful main desktop for general tasks. I've also resented having to spend out so much on keeping an upto date PC just for playing games, it's like spending £1000+ on a games console.
Now this will no longer be a problem, I just need to wait for the desktop intel Powermac successor, spec it out with a high end graphics card and I can finally say goodbye to my PC and can finally do everything I need on just one machine, yay!

omg, Apple after about 20 years finally allow a user to dual boot different o/s. LOL.

If you run Windows , why on earth would you want to run Apples version of Linux on the same machine, when you could grab a better distro of linux for free??

This may be good news for the mac fanboys, but dual boot is kinda old news for the rest of us.

Im sure there is alot of people like myself that think wow OSX is cool but i need XP for my daily routines and work. Big thing here " work " where I need cad i need certain programs to connect to machines in our factory, etc. So i would never even look at a mac, Even though i love the way there os looks and supposely performs ( i dont have much exp with osx but i hear and see all good stuff ) Now for me like i said they look awesome and the build quality is awesome but i could never justify buying one just for that to still need a PC. Now I will buy a mac laptop and check out osx and also boot xp and do my daily routines in xp. This is going to sell alot more MACS to people in the same boat as me. This is a very good move on apples part.

Mac fanboys need to get with the times; those same old stale arguments that you USED to be able to hold up against a Windows machine are NO LONGER TRUE. Blue screen? Give me a frickin' break. NT VARIANTS OF WINDOWS ******DO NOT****** BLUE SCREEN, EVER. PERIOD. I've been using them for over 7 years and never ONCE seen a blue screen.

Look - you want the truth? Here's the truth.
1) Apple is full of hypocrites; they encourage people to run the Windows on a Mac, but will shut down anyone caught running OSX86 on non-Apple hardware. Apple, meet the definition of "hypocrite"; hypocrite - meet Apple.

2) Macs cost too much. PERIOD. I don't care about iLife because there are apps in the Windows environment that are FREEWARE that do just as good of a job as iLife. Is the hardware uber-customized and therefore more expensive? No. Apple just charges more because Apple = Macintosh; back in the 90s when Mac clones hit the market, Apple strongarmed all of the companies involved and either bought them outright (Power Computing) or made them go bankrupt. That's why Apple's cost too much. And they do. Don't give me the "you get a lot of performance for what you pay for" excuse. SURE YOU DO. YOU CAN ALSO GET EQUAL PERFORMANCE FROM A PC THAT COSTS 1/2 THE PRICE.

3. I've been doing graphic design work for over 10 years. I've used Macs since the original Mac Classic and I've been using PCs since the 486 days; I use a G5 at work every day and have 2 XP PCs at home. You know what? OSX is a decent OS. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't LOOK FORWARD to being in the Windows environment again when I get home from work. I use the same applications on both - Adobe CS2, Quark 6.5, Microsoft Office. I have no clue why any design studio still uses a Mac in this day and age when a PC costs a good 1/2 the price and performs as well as (if not better) than a Mac. My P4 at home outperforms my G5 at work in everything I throw at it (including extensive Photoshop work).

You know what? All of the fanboys need to give it a rest. I dual boot XP Pro with OSX86 10.43 at home. I don't give a crap if a Mac user boots XP; they spend that much on a Mac they should be able to boot any OS they choose. Who cares anymore? Both platforms work equally well; give it a frickin' rest and tell all your fanboy friends to do the same 'cause this dumb ass argument is getting OLD.

Wait...
it WAS old.
Now it's just RIDICULOUS.

#52

So you have been building pcs for gaming for 8 years yet you are recommending an agp card for a computer that takes pci-express cards?

You prefer the design of the macs? Guess what, I can pick from hundreds of cases. Try doing that with apple.

But you know what the worst part about macs is? The people that use them. The people who act like they want to crucify me when I say I prefer XP to OS/X. OH MY GOD THE HORROR! I ACTUALLY PREFER XP!

If Jobs had his way we would all have to buy his off-white boxes and we would not be able to select the components that go into them. We would also have to use his proprietary music format that offers no advantage over mp3 other than more control and profit for Apple. Your leader is an even bigger control freak than Gates. He however doesn't have the same market share which is the only thing stopping further limitations on consumer choice.

I would have at one time considered the mini-mac as a gift but after dealing with the mac hordes in forum after forum, I think I'll pass.

This I believe is a great thing, though the subject has been beaten to death already. I may go and get an Apple sooner than expected. I am a pc guru but just havent jumped to the Apple platform because I dont know alot about them. Though the OS should be the biggest reason people should make the leap if they are on edge. With Bootcamp I think they did a good thing. Even though they are putting it in Leopard its cool we get to tinker with it before its relased.

I do hope that Apple gains abit of the market share with this move. But what I want to see is that AMD can get into the Apple move as well. Since I do believe that the Intel processors are made with the x86 architecture and I do believe that the AMD's are as well. That could be sweet to see an X2 or X4 (when they come out) running OS X.

In the short run this will help Apple just look at the stocks...up 6 bucks a share so people are obviuosly with Apple on this move as well as I am.

I never really have bashed Macs or Mac users. I just may be one of them some day!

My Experinces with Macs have been consistantly poor. First was the back in OS9 where I couldn't run certain websites, cause the netscape on the machine would literally lock up the machine if i went to Unrealed. org. Then Not too long ago, my BF and I bought a Mac Mini. And started using it to work with GarageBand and iMovie. Finding that it saved everything to the desktop by default, our desktop got rather cluttered. So I did the next logical thing. I highlighted, Dragged and dropped all those files into a folder. After i did that, i noticed that it still showed the files on the desktop.. Thinking it only copied them, i deleted the files... later finding that all i had done was created a short-cut.

Then back when i was in school, finding that the mac didn't like running AIM express cause all the browsers installed weren't advanced enough.

Now, ironically, my first computer was a Mac.. A Mac Classic in fact. that's what got me into computers.

And it's also funny to see someone compare a casual mac user (Upgrade every 5 years) to a power PC gamer. You can keep a windows machine for 5 years if all you did was casual games. I think my BF is going on 4 years with his current machine.

"Then back when i was in school, finding that the mac didn't like running AIM express cause all the browsers installed weren't advanced enough."

Don't think you can safely say this. Firefox, Safari, Camino are all great browsers that are far more up to date than IE. Problem is some sites don't bother coding to support multiple browser platforms.

If you want Mac games, buy Mac games, otherwise, just buy a games console.

On the subject of WMA/WMV: Why would Apple want to pay money for WMA/WMV licenses, and end up canabilising iTunes music store sales. Makes no business sense.