Minor Axis
Well-Known Member
You can afford one computer, should you buy a Mac just to play games? The short answer is "maybe". Macs have come a long way in the gaming department. A variety of Mac games are ported to the Mac. If you are a casual gamer or love the most popular games that have been ported, you'll have no problem with native Mac gaming.
If you have not heard, Mac are now powered by Intel and can boot directly into Windows XP or Vista. This opened up the world of Gaming to Mac users allowing them to enjoy the best games out there while staying with their Macs and Mac OS Ten. The most nice thing about Macs today is that you can look at their Intel processors and make a direct performance comparison with their PC counterparts. Did you know that Macs were used to demo Vista? And the MacBookPro at one point had better Vista benchmarks than its PC competition?
MacPro, MacBookPro
If you are a hard core gamer, the new Macs are Intel based, boot into Windows XP or Vista and the MacPro and MacBook Pro will handle most/all PC games just fine. One thing about gaming, Mac or booted into Windows, the top of the line Mac tower is expensive as compared to what you can find in a PC. Not to say you can't find a $2500 PC tower, but you can get a pretty good PC gaming machine for less than $1400. The Mac Book Pro is pretty reasonable price wise for what it offers as compared to PC laptop competition.
iMacs
I don't own an iMac so I don't have first hand experience with it. Their performance falls somewhere in the middle, but they do have better graphic capabilities and are better performers than MacBooks. Check out the forums at Mac Rumors and Inside Mac Games for the latest opinions. Read this TUAW.com iMac article.
The Mac Book
If you are a casual gamer the MacBook fills the bill. But if you are a hardcore gamer, because of it's integrated graphics (X3100) chipset on the motherboard the MacBook is limited in it's ability to "game". However the new MacBooks do have Shader 2 support so they will play more games. My wife has WindowsXP installed on her MacBook and plays a variety of relatively low overhead PC games as well as Mac offerings. Things like Nancy Drew (PC), those run of the mill murder mystery games (PC), lots of gambling games (Mac), Mystery of the Sphinx (PC/Mac), all of the I Spy games (PC/Mac), and Penumbra Overture (Mac), a mystery horror game.
If you have not heard, Mac are now powered by Intel and can boot directly into Windows XP or Vista. This opened up the world of Gaming to Mac users allowing them to enjoy the best games out there while staying with their Macs and Mac OS Ten. The most nice thing about Macs today is that you can look at their Intel processors and make a direct performance comparison with their PC counterparts. Did you know that Macs were used to demo Vista? And the MacBookPro at one point had better Vista benchmarks than its PC competition?
MacPro, MacBookPro
If you are a hard core gamer, the new Macs are Intel based, boot into Windows XP or Vista and the MacPro and MacBook Pro will handle most/all PC games just fine. One thing about gaming, Mac or booted into Windows, the top of the line Mac tower is expensive as compared to what you can find in a PC. Not to say you can't find a $2500 PC tower, but you can get a pretty good PC gaming machine for less than $1400. The Mac Book Pro is pretty reasonable price wise for what it offers as compared to PC laptop competition.
iMacs
I don't own an iMac so I don't have first hand experience with it. Their performance falls somewhere in the middle, but they do have better graphic capabilities and are better performers than MacBooks. Check out the forums at Mac Rumors and Inside Mac Games for the latest opinions. Read this TUAW.com iMac article.
The Mac Book
If you are a casual gamer the MacBook fills the bill. But if you are a hardcore gamer, because of it's integrated graphics (X3100) chipset on the motherboard the MacBook is limited in it's ability to "game". However the new MacBooks do have Shader 2 support so they will play more games. My wife has WindowsXP installed on her MacBook and plays a variety of relatively low overhead PC games as well as Mac offerings. Things like Nancy Drew (PC), those run of the mill murder mystery games (PC), lots of gambling games (Mac), Mystery of the Sphinx (PC/Mac), all of the I Spy games (PC/Mac), and Penumbra Overture (Mac), a mystery horror game.
