Stormfalcon
01-25-2008, 01:21 AM
Okay, it's past time for me to retire my current PC box (an Athlon XP 2000+ based system that's a few years old). On the one hand, I can stick to the PC side of things and either build myself a new one when I can afford to get all the parts at once (and be able to stick with XP) or get a prebuilt one that's saddled with Vista (which I've learned to hate with a passion after the past year dealing with Vista-related returns at work). On the other hand, if it's likely I'll have to change from XP to another OS anyway, I may as well go with a Mac.
While ideally I'd like to go with a MacBook Pro, the budget I'll be looking at when everything comes together over the next few months will be more suitable for either a MacBook or an iMac. While portability is very tempting, as a gamer I can't see myself all that satisfied with an Intel graphics chipset. Thus, I'm looking at an iMac as a serious option (as opposed to building my own PC in order to avoid Vista and the crapware that's usually bundled with premades). That leads to the following gaming-related questions:
1) How well will they handle Mac-native games, particularly WoW (Yeah, I'm a WarCrackHead)? Is there any advantage to playing a cross-platform game in the Mac environment as opposed to playing them on the Windows side via Boot Camp?
2) How well will iMacs run games on the Windows side via Boot Camp anyway? I know that the graphics chipset is no 8800GT (especially since the current iMacs came out before the 8800GT was released) and there have been some unkind reviews of the chipsets used in the iMacs. However, considering what I'm stepping up from, it'd still be an improvement. In real-world use though, how well does an iMac hold up when handling more current games?
3) Considering that the upper-end 20" configuration and the 24" configurations all use the same graphics chipset and amount of video memory, would it make more sense to stick with a 20" screen and the lower resolution to try to not tax the video chipset/memory so much at native resolutions, or is there little difference performance-wise and/or the 24" screen is enough of an improvement over the 20" screen that the whole issue is moot?
And yes, I know better than to pay Apple prices for main memory upgrades.
While ideally I'd like to go with a MacBook Pro, the budget I'll be looking at when everything comes together over the next few months will be more suitable for either a MacBook or an iMac. While portability is very tempting, as a gamer I can't see myself all that satisfied with an Intel graphics chipset. Thus, I'm looking at an iMac as a serious option (as opposed to building my own PC in order to avoid Vista and the crapware that's usually bundled with premades). That leads to the following gaming-related questions:
1) How well will they handle Mac-native games, particularly WoW (Yeah, I'm a WarCrackHead)? Is there any advantage to playing a cross-platform game in the Mac environment as opposed to playing them on the Windows side via Boot Camp?
2) How well will iMacs run games on the Windows side via Boot Camp anyway? I know that the graphics chipset is no 8800GT (especially since the current iMacs came out before the 8800GT was released) and there have been some unkind reviews of the chipsets used in the iMacs. However, considering what I'm stepping up from, it'd still be an improvement. In real-world use though, how well does an iMac hold up when handling more current games?
3) Considering that the upper-end 20" configuration and the 24" configurations all use the same graphics chipset and amount of video memory, would it make more sense to stick with a 20" screen and the lower resolution to try to not tax the video chipset/memory so much at native resolutions, or is there little difference performance-wise and/or the 24" screen is enough of an improvement over the 20" screen that the whole issue is moot?
And yes, I know better than to pay Apple prices for main memory upgrades.