Making the Mac switch

I have been really thinking aobut and have been getting really excited to make the switch to a Mac , but i have a few questions...will all of my PC games work on Mac? I like to build my own machines, but have a hard time finding the Mac components online. Anyone know a good place?

A few years back when I was deep into macs, I shopped at MacWarehouse. Games, alas, will not run on a Mac unless you run it under emulation (prepare for 486 speeds), or via a pci card containing a pc chip (prepare to spend 3x the cost of just building a separate box). You can't go out and buy the latest components and just build one. Macs aren't like pc's in that respect. You can fix them, and upgrade them, but you'll be hard pressed to find just a G5 case and components to put one together. I love macs, but I've accepted the fact that living in a pc world requires a pc. If you really want to get into a mac (and who doesn't?), I'd suggest having both boxes and running one monitor/mouse/speakers via a kvm. You can network OSX and XP easily (from what I hear) to share files though.

No. Different architecture, different O/S.



You can't "build" an Apple like you do a PC. It's part of how they tie everything in together so well. Only certain things are qualified, and those are meant to work with the operating system. Apple is a software company, that just puts together certain parts to go with that software.

I don't understand why you couldn't built a mac tower. I've seen them in full sized cases, and even the inside of them, and it doesn't seem like they're assembled any different, accept in that the hardware is obveously different. And i don't understand why there are video cards meant for gaming like Nvidia and ATI when they aren't even compatable with most of the games out there...oh well...sounds like I'll have to spend a shit load getting duel AMD 64 bits to get the same power I want...

why do you care about dual cpu's?

Why you can't build one, is because only one place sells them. Apple. And they sell it all as one big package.

Why they have nice video cards, is because of how X works on their operating system. The video card does all the drawing. All the stuff on the screen is done in video memory, not system RAM. They also use the good stuff to power their gorgeous Cinema Displays, because then they can charge $$$ for it. They aren't stupid when it comes to making money per unit.

Macs aren't built for gaming. They are built for two things. Work, in terms of content creation for film, or internet, or audio. Or for certain other workstation applications, many of my former profs use Apples for development work. The other thing Apple is built for, is idiots. People with more money than brains, who want a pretty looking computer, that costs lots of dough. Apple likes those people, who fall for buzz words like "dual cpu" and "64 bit". You sound like one of those people.

While DMOS is right (as always), the mac OS kicks ass. I've been a PC user for years (as I am a gamer), however, I love the mac os x. It is so much more stable and reliable compared to XP. You can get software called Virtual PC to run Windows progz on your mac, but it's not gonna be the same. Normally you can get 'ports' of the popular game titles for mac, but not all the games. It really all depends on what you wanna do. While the mac is great for editing buffs, the pc is great for gaming and editing. And if you're gonna be using the system for just internet browsing, email, and documents/reports, i still think mac is the way to go. you don't have to deal with all the bs of IE like getting so much spyware/malware/viruses. However, you are stuck with the product that apple gives you. When you buy a new unit, all of them come with a 64mb vid card except for the dual 2.5. THat's what blows. You can spend 1299 on a basic imac, or 2499 on a 2.0 g5 dual, but you still get the same vid. card. Apple kinda shafts you with hardware. I sell them to customers everyday, yet they have no idea. I have an ibook, i love it, howver i just use it for internet, email and schoolwork. It's really all up to you on what u need it for. I hope I helped you in your decision. If you have any questions, gimme a email or pm, I sell pc's and macs in a retail enviroment (CompUSA).

well i looked through my games, and realized there's only one i"m going to really miss...Battlezone...(game old enough I"m sure I can PC-emulate it) and i looked through the titles for mac, and am happy to see some pretty good titles out for mac...soon even doom3, my fav for now. and my obsession to dual-processing? Well, I just don't think Intel's hyperthreading quite cuts having dual processors in multi-tasking like they claim it does.

oh and that power g5...in my opinion...faster than a PC in the same price ally (well...maybe 1g more expensive.)

heh 1g is alot of money

yes, it is, true...but not when you're talking about high-end computers. Sonsider one component of a high-end computer is the price of an entry-level computer. Example...you can get an entry level computer for $500, and you can get a Geforce 6 Ultra for $500 as well. lol

Damn your right lol I never thought of that.

a lot of people say that Mac just isn't for gaming, and when I ask why, they tell me about a lack of titles. It looks to me like all of the titles that actually matter make it to the Mac...so that's no of importance to me...what I want to know of is gaming performance compared to on the PC...I see plenty of benchmarks showing how the Dual 2.5 GHz Power G5 is up to 80% faster in photoshop, but I wanna see game benchmarks

There is a program I use on my mac that emulates the windows API so its faster and doesnt need virtual PC. It's called Darwine, if u have OSX 10.3.9 or higher the easiest way to put it on is via mac ports. I have Tiger and Jaguar on my machine (10.4.11 + 10.2.8). If u want to buy a graphics card for your mac, make sure its a mac edition card, as they have the firmware to run Quartz etc. I tried a PC edition and it didnt work so it was from an PC FX5500 to a Mac ATI RAGE 128 XL . Even with a Rage XL, the graphics are awesome on my 22" HD monitor. no droppped frames in movies. Macs hardly get viruses too, i haven't seen one on mine yet. It's worth noting if u get a G4 (PowerPC Processor, just like the powermac g5), u will have to use the PPC edition of darwine btw. with early g4's, they only recognize 128GB of HDD storage, unless you use a seperate PCI ATA controller.
Hope this helps, i love my mac more than my pc
Soulman

Uh, you realize this thread hasn't been posted in since 2004 right? Besides, why use Darwine when you can use parallels or VMWare Fusion and get better results?

If you're still using that Pentium 4 then I can understand why you'd love your Mac more.

actually i use a q6600 as my pc as well, my mac beats that, cant beat osx. The hardware is great too, tho the cpu tends to get quite hot