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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  The Gaming Graveyard  |  Archived: We distort. We decide.  |  Topic: Duality: Gaming on a Mac Running Windows 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: Duality: Gaming on a Mac Running Windows  (Read 60833 times)
Righ
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Teaching the world Google-fu one broken dream at a time.


Reply #35 on: June 06, 2006, 12:37:54 AM

Think different   cool

Well, I can understand your PoV, of course, I come from X11 hell, so even Windows is taking the piss with menu simplicity. I'll tell you whats nice however - Expose, which comes with Tiger (the current version of Mac OS X). The more window operations I can do from the keyboard, and the less I have to push mice around desks arseing around with window operations, the better. Expose is the most wonderful life-changing interface improvement to come to any GUI. Dead simple, wonderfully effective:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/expose/

You can alt-tab (er, cmd-tab) in any version of Mac OS X.

The camera adds a thousand barrels. - Steven Colbert
Sky
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I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.


Reply #36 on: June 06, 2006, 06:37:38 AM

I love OSX, and I really dislike Windows, as I say every time this crops up. I'm happy to see XP running on mac hardware, even at a premium for decent hardware, it's saving me the money of buying a mac for my future music studio + a new gaming pc.

I might be getting old, but it the mac's gpu isn't up to snuff for a couple of games (like what, anyway? FEAR? Shooters kinda suck). I'm playing Oblivion just fine on my 9800pro (fixed res panel ftw!), only 'missing' HDR. That's competition making gpu hardware kick ass.

Competition is a great thing in the OS world, and now macs are finally running on a competetive gpu.

A final word on OSX v XP: there is no comparison in my experience doing admin on both systems (since OS9/Win98/NT). OS9 sucked donkey balls, but OSX has made me a True Believer. It's easy and powerful without much of the hassle of working with Windows. Ghost can bite me, I'll stick with the eloquent Carbon Copy Cloner.
Lantyssa
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Reply #37 on: June 07, 2006, 02:32:10 PM

I am also computer literate and see no problem with having my computer hold my hand if it want's to.  I don't understand the pc pundits when they use the arguement that Macs are too easy.  It's just a weird point, in my opinion. 
[A little late because I've been moving.  Ugh.]

It is not something I look down upon in and of itself, however listing it as an awesome feature that should change my mind about what OS I should use does irk me since it is a completely moot point at best, and a potentially annoying feature at worst.

I am generally happy with my choice of machines.  I picked what was right for me, the other person picked what was right for them.  It is all good.  Proselytizing annoys the heck out of me though.  I don't particularly like the rabid Windows users either, but they tend to leave me alone since I am already using their OS of choice.  I can also point out Windows strong points since it happens to be what I am most familiar with, but that instantly labels me as the enemy in some circles...

Hahahaha!  I'm really good at this!
Signe
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Muse.


Reply #38 on: June 07, 2006, 03:24:01 PM

Actually, I just really want someone to hold my hand.  Righ works.  I'm lonely.   tongue

As long as I'm derailing... we're moving next month, too.  I'm trying to get a head start on packing.  God, I hate moving... and we do it way too often.  I see your ugh and raise you a bleh.   undecided  I can't wait until 3 days after it's all over.
« Last Edit: June 07, 2006, 03:25:48 PM by Signe »

My Sig Image: hath rid itself of this mortal coil.
Morfiend
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Reply #39 on: June 07, 2006, 04:20:09 PM

I wouldnt say that OS X holds your hand. Its just well designed, and intuitive. Shit is where you think it should be. Unlike Windows, where they seems to spread every thing around more and more with each OS design. I hear its even worse with Vista, where if you want to mess with your "video" settings, there are 3 different windows, and they are all accessable from different locations in the OS. Its hard for me to put my finger on it, but often times when using XP these days I constantly think to myself "why the fuck did they put that there?". Where as using OSX most things are right where I feel they should be.

Also, to some one on page one. You can Alt Tab on OSX, you dont need to have every porgram open on the desktop at once. Also, networking on OSX is much much much easer.

I am by no means a "APPLE RULES YOU STUPID PC IDIOT" kind of person, but I have seen what a better opperating system can do, and I enjoy it. I also dont over look all the problems OSX has (Like the network beachball of death) but in general I find it just works better.
Lantyssa
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Reply #40 on: June 07, 2006, 04:45:35 PM

Good luck with the move.  Packing ahead of time helps alot.  I really hadn't wanted to move myself, but that's the way these things go sometimes.

Have a blarg for good measure.

Hahahaha!  I'm really good at this!
squirrel
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Reply #41 on: June 07, 2006, 06:29:34 PM

Both OS X and WinXP are good tools for certain tasks. IMO OS X is superior for general computing (web surfing, writing, email) and graphics/photography work. XP is good for MS Office and Gaming.

Some nifty features of the OS X interface if anyone unfamiliar with it is interested:

Spotlight - absolutely the bomb. Seriously best OS search tool I've ever seen, i couldn't live without it now.

Dashboard. Some cool widgets and interesting ideas.

Expose. Linked above as well, check out the movie. In conjunction with virtual desktops a very useful feature.

Anyway I'm no Apple zealot, I spend about 30-40% of my computing time in Win XP for either Excel/Outlook (corporate mail standard) or gaming. But for everything else I think OS X is better.

Speaking of marketing, we're out of milk.
Righ
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Reply #42 on: June 07, 2006, 07:48:47 PM

Actually, I hate Spotlight, but then I hate all text indexing doohickeys that do shit in the background. Full text searches are for archive file servers, not my desktop. Plug a removable disk into a Mac with Spotlight on it just to grab a file off it quickly and tell me that you still love it. :)

If anybody wants to know how to disable, remove and clean up after Spotlight, I have the answers.

The camera adds a thousand barrels. - Steven Colbert
Big Gulp
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Reply #43 on: June 08, 2006, 05:04:24 AM

Full text searches are for archive file servers, not my desktop.

On this, we agree.  I don't use Windows' search, or Google's for anything on my PC.  I keep my files in order in the first place, and don't need such an app.
Sky
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Reply #44 on: June 08, 2006, 06:38:24 AM

My boss, a longtime mac zealot, loves the doohickeys like spotlight. Expose is cool, but I never use it. Dashboard is middling, once you get enough nice widgets it is cool. You can get all the functionality elsewhere, but having it one keypress away is nice. RidingWithRobots ftw :P Actually, useful stuff like routing tables, wifi finders, the ubiquitous calculator, calendar and weather guide.

I like the way apps tend to behave better; though they can still litter three places, they tend to stick all their associated files in the .app "folder", hiding it from casual users, but opening up things for more advanced users. That's the key to OSX, it's easy to use but deep if you want to dive in.

I also hate the registry.

I guess I'll toss out my current XP problem: can I boot from an external drive (I have a usb 2 drive). I can't even seem to get the stupid OS installed on there. Even so, as I mentioned, I think Ghost sucks and CCC is sublime. I can image OSX onto an external drive (firewire), boot from it and reimage the host drive in less time than I spend on Google trying to figure out if I can even do that in XP.
Quote
XP is good for MS Office and Gaming.
We've been using Office for Mac for years now. 2004 version is pretty damned nice imo (though of course bloated with all the wrong defaults enabled...it IS Office, after all :))
squirrel
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Reply #45 on: June 08, 2006, 05:30:07 PM


We've been using Office for Mac for years now. 2004 version is pretty damned nice imo (though of course bloated with all the wrong defaults enabled...it IS Office, after all :))

Not on an Intel Mac it isn't. That bloatware running under emulation is horrid. Also Entourage<<<<Outlook when it comes to connecting to Exchange 2002+ servers.

Speaking of marketing, we're out of milk.
Sky
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I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.


Reply #46 on: June 09, 2006, 06:24:02 AM

It's been working fine for me, I've had a mactel mini for a while now. Since we can't afford G5s, the Core Duo is a step up for most everyone here (though only I am using one for evaluation right now). I'll grant you photoshop is a total hog, I'm trying to filter a 1.7GB scan on a mactel imac with 1GB RAM. Yeeouch. But my daily apps run at least as good as they did on my G4 mac, windows run very well. I'm happy with it, so long as I don't want to run any 3d games. Entourage is bloaty, but I like it. I'm the only one using it, though. I've done a good job at promoting alternatives, so most people use different solutions, most use iCal but for email clients it's all over the place, from thunderbird to browsers.

My supe and I had a lunch conversation about 3d vs 2d, lamenting the fact that 3d is such a hog (he's looking at specs for Civ, which had traditionally been hardware-friendly). I have to side with him, for many games, 3d is more of a drawback than a blessing. Is it just that schools are grinding out so many more 3d artists or what? It sucks, Civ 4 is uuugly (not that Civ's ever been purty, but now it's a system hog, too).

I haven't had time nor opportunity to check out the X1600 gpu in the imac or mbp.
Righ
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Reply #47 on: June 17, 2006, 06:20:20 PM

Well, this is odd. Apple's own website it now touting Parallels Desktop. Is there a buyout coming?

http://www.apple.com/getamac/windows.html

The camera adds a thousand barrels. - Steven Colbert
Tebonas
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Reply #48 on: June 19, 2006, 12:52:30 PM

Anyone has any experience with that? Sounds like something I oughta buy next year with my Macbook Pro if it perfroms well. Especially if Apple owns it by then  cool
Sky
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Reply #49 on: June 19, 2006, 01:02:25 PM

Tebonas
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Reply #50 on: June 19, 2006, 01:08:46 PM

Ack I see. Same old problems. Thanks for that link, won't get my hopes up too much.
Righ
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Teaching the world Google-fu one broken dream at a time.


Reply #51 on: June 19, 2006, 04:34:02 PM

Same old problems as what? It seems more promising than most of its predecessors for most non-game tasks. high end gaming will always be a problem since most games tend to want to write to the video hardware, and the video hardware folks dont usually give out source code to people wanting to build abstraction layers. However, since they appear to be working with Intel's Directed IO, it may become the first virtualization environment to be able to do such stuff. I certainly like the developers' pace and style.

The camera adds a thousand barrels. - Steven Colbert
Tebonas
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Reply #52 on: June 19, 2006, 11:35:02 PM

Since high end gaming is my crux specifically (I have nothing workrelated that can't be done on my Mac, most times better. Games are the only reason I still own a PC), it has at the moment the same problems all other virtualization software had for me in the past. If you are talking about application support, I'm with you. That is nothing I care about, though. Lets hope they really that 3d hardware support off, I'm the first that would be happy about it.
Sky
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I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.


Reply #53 on: June 20, 2006, 07:13:44 AM

Boot camp works great, and you are running XP natively. Only downside is you need an XP install disc with SP2, but shouldn't be a big deal to slipstream one, eh?

I keep forgetting to test our MBP and iMac that have the X1600 gpu. I think the iMac has beefy vram, too, because it's for document scanning, I'll probably be dropping more RAM in it, as well. Could be a decent gaming machine, and it's locked in a remote office ^^
Righ
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Reply #54 on: July 28, 2006, 05:35:56 PM

I just got a MacBook Pro with 1.5 GB of memory and I've made a Windows partition using Boot Camp and installed XP SP 2 and Titan Quest on it. Its a fast little Windows machine too. Easily the best Windows gaming laptop I've used to date. And when Im done playing games, I can reboot out of the suck. :)

The camera adds a thousand barrels. - Steven Colbert
Prospero
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Reply #55 on: July 28, 2006, 06:01:29 PM

Great article. I was thinking of going with a Mac Pro for my next computer, and that pretty much settled it for me.

Now hopefully Apple buys Parallels and changes the software so that you can boot into Windows for pure performance, or just use the VM when you need to run some small, stupid app. THat would be dead sexy.
naum
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WWW
Reply #56 on: July 29, 2006, 12:15:49 AM

I just got a MacBook Pro with 1.5 GB of memory and I've made a Windows partition using Boot Camp and installed XP SP 2 and Titan Quest on it. Its a fast little Windows machine too. Easily the best Windows gaming laptop I've used to date. And when Im done playing games, I can reboot out of the suck. :)

I gotta go get me one of these… …my PB is pushing 4 years old now (still runs WoW nearly as good as a G5 but something like Civ4 I don't think will work, the stated requirements are for G5 or Intel Mac…). I've been reluctant due to (a) 1st gen issues namely with heat, but 1st gen Apple products seem to be plagued with problems in recent years and (b) waiting for Adobe to come out Universal Binaries for CS2 suite (or CS3 to hit the shelves).

I played around with BootCamp at a local Mac outlet nearby when it first released and was impressed. And the salesperson guy even was playing a recent FPS release on it…

But it's a little over a week until WWDC (http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/), and that is one of those points in time where the product line and pricing gets reshuffled…

"Should the batman kill Joker because it would save more lives?" is a fundamentally different question from "should the batman have a bunch of machineguns that go BATBATBATBATBAT because its totally cool?". ~Goumindong
Righ
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Teaching the world Google-fu one broken dream at a time.


Reply #57 on: July 29, 2006, 11:05:06 AM

WWDC will be the Intel replacements for the G5 desktop and server, I suspect. The server will be technically more interesting, both will probably utilize the Woodcrest Xeons. Going with the AMD/ATI theme, the desktop will likely launch with an nVidia GPU by default. So as not to undermine the impact of the final part of the range moving to Intel, refreshes of existing Mactel boxes probably won't happen at WWDC. Besides, there's Leopard to preview, perhaps with a VIP from Microsoft showing Bootcamp and spewing some shitty marketing pap. But worth waiting unless you see a bargain beforehand (I snagged a now discontinued 1.83 GHz model for ~$1500).

As for heat - this notebook was on fire when I started using it. It was instantly fixed by the firmware update I downloaded - it tends to run ~60C on the processor under load now, which is around on par with the Dell and Samsung laptops of similar spec. The wireless was regularly dropping as a result of the airport card just turning itself off - it took a reset of the power manager to cure that, so not a disaster, though it suggests a bug still existing in the second version of the firmware.

Adobe are still claiming we need to wait until CS3 for an Intel build. Likewise, Microsoft will make folks wait for a new version of Office. Fortunately OpenOffice is native today, and does everything I need, and Photoshop under Rosetta is sufficient now that I use Aperture for bulk RAW image processing.

The camera adds a thousand barrels. - Steven Colbert
Lantyssa
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Reply #58 on: August 05, 2006, 09:02:39 AM

Some of you Mac fans might find this program useful for game playing.  It's biggest drawback is that the game has to be designed for it, but it should be a lot easier than porting.

A crafty non-game developer that wants a larger market might use it, too, although I don't know how well it would support things like spreadsheets or word processors.

If nothing else, it is something to keep your eye on.

Hahahaha!  I'm really good at this!
Righ
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Teaching the world Google-fu one broken dream at a time.


Reply #59 on: August 05, 2006, 12:17:54 PM

Only useful for the developers. Not quite sure why they can't pull off the same thing as Cedega, but its presumably not technical. Some fun license cost or other IP shenanigans on the part of Apple, no doubt.

The camera adds a thousand barrels. - Steven Colbert
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