Is it Wrong to Buy a MacPro for Gaming?

[goMac]

2)The Hardware specifically- When you look at the video cards that usually call the Mac Pro home, you can see cards like the GT 120, Nvidia Quadro4000 etc. These are not the cards found in consumer systems, they are specifically aimed towards tasks which need precise rendering and not speed rendering which is what games demand, thus the bad performance in PC games.

I'm not sure what all the hate on GPU's is. The current Mac Pros all ship with very good GPU's. I mean, the stock is a freakin Radeon 5770. It's not the best card, but it's pretty damn good.

Would it be nice if there was a fast CUDA GPU on the platform? Yes. But that has nothing to do with gaming.

 

[RichardBeer]

Oh I wasn't knocking the GPU's that come with the Mac Pro, far from it! My point was their different usage intent, and the comparatively wider range of powerful cards suited to gaming that are available to PCs especially for gaming.

 

[goMac]

Oh I wasn't knocking the GPU's that come with the Mac Pro, far from it! My point was their different usage intent, and the comparatively wider range of powerful cards suited to gaming that are available to PCs especially for gaming.

The latest PC card is the Radeon 6970. Which is almost less than a month old and marginally better than the 5870.

Unless you're an NVidia partisan, the state of Mac GPU's is pretty gosh darn good.

 

[gpzjock]

If you want a gaming PC why buy a Mac?

I love Mac OS X, I have a 2008 Mac Pro with 16 GB of RAM, HD5870, a 120 GB SSD drive and 1.4 TB of HDD space. All that cost me about £2000 over the 3 years I've developed it..
If I wanted a gaming machine today I would either install Win 7 on this Mac Pro or spend about £1000 on a made to measure Gaming PC that would blow it out of the water for gaming choice and performance.
If I wanted to upgrade to a new Mac Pro I would have to shell out about £3500 to be happy.....

 

[chaosbunny]

I love Mac OS X, I have a 2008 Mac Pro with 16 GB of RAM, HD5870, a 120 GB SSD drive and 1.4 TB of HDD space. All that cost me about £2000 over the 3 years I've developed it..
If I wanted a gaming machine today I would either install Win 7 on this Mac Pro or spend about £1000 on a made to measure Gaming PC that would blow it out of the water for gaming choice and performance.
If I wanted to upgrade to a new Mac Pro I would have to shell out about £3500 to be happy.....

You certainly don't have to spend anything more than the Win7 license. Your Mac Pro will run all modern games at most settings maxed with decent fps.

I bought my Mac Pro for work and play, didn't want to have 2 separate machines. Specs are in my sig. Resident Evil 5 benchmarks at 120 fps with max settings. I recently got a 27" Dell screen for it and now play Starcraft 2 on ultra settings at 2560x1440 with 60 fps even under OS X.

But my system is also used for Adobe CS5, Cinema 4D and some Final Cut. If it's only for gaming I agree with the other posters that recommend a gaming pc + a mac mini or mbp for the price of the Mac Pro. This would be the rational choice.

But there are sometimes emotional choices too - if the op absolutely wants a Mac Pro and it's worth the money to him it's certainly not "wrong", it's just an emotional choice over a rational choice.

 

[DeeEss]

If you have the money and it's what you want why would it be crazy?

There's always going to be better ways you can spend your money, but life is too short.

If you are strapped for cash but still want one think about an older second hand one (but you can still find them new too) 2.93 or 2.6 quad and upgrade it.

We are all victims of our own guilt at some stage - GET OVER IT.

 

[Joshknightmare]

Not wrong, if you have the money. Worthless if you're going to use it for games.
If you want something thats nice for it's price thats good on gaming/editing or whatever you want to do. I suggest the iMac line-ups.

 

[karsten]

If you really want to spend mac pro type money and have the best gaming rig, you could always build a rig around an sr2-classified server board...[snip]

of course even with all that power it still won't be a real mac....

i think thats always understated. you can build a good system hardware-wise for the windows side, but you're still running a rickety hack when it comes to running os x on there. personally i got tired of running a system that kp'd in text edit and i had to wait months to upgrade with a point release. kind of defeated the renowned stability of the mac experience

 

[Yaboze]

If you have money to burn, go for it.

To buy it specifically for gaming? No, you can build a cheaper Windows 7 PC that will leave you with enough money left over to buy a bunch of games.

If you're going to do both, use heavy Mac OSX graphics, photo and audio software, do development and want to play games, not a bad choice, if you can afford it.

Most Mac gamers use Windows PC's on the side, Bootcamp or Consoles.

The Mac will always have games from companies like Blizzard, Valve and a few others, but Windows 7 is better for games and it always will be unless Apple takes gaming more seriously

Apple hardware seems a step behind as far as GPU's. They use mobile GPU's even in the iMac. They only support OpenGL and the drivers aren't as polished as Windows drivers. Plus, MS has a decade or more of Direct X support. Direct X 9 is still used in 99% of all new games. DX10 was a bit of a flop, but DX11 is gaining some ground.

 

[karsten]

DX10 was a bit of a flop

i dont really agree with that..

 

[nerdo]

Get a PS3 for gaming and a iMac 27" to pleasure your Mac ... eeh thing...

 

[nanofrog]

Windows is pretty useless for doing actual work.

Blasphemy I tell you ....

Seriously though, I don't see that as true overall. I could see that argument with specific application suites/markets (i.e. involves cross platform differences), but it goes the other way as well (where I fall in - Electronic Design Automation is haphazard under OS X at best, as there's not much available, and what is, is crude by comparison IMO when compared to National Instruments or Synopsys' products).

 

[chris98vf]

If it's just for gaming you're nuts however if you also plan to use it as your main Mac then yes. Steam is great on the Mac. I barely ever use my PC now.

 

[goMac]

Blasphemy I tell you ....

Seriously though, I don't see that as true overall. I could see that argument with specific application suites/markets (i.e. involves cross platform differences), but it goes the other way as well (where I fall in - Electronic Design Automation is haphazard under OS X at best, as there's not much available, and what is, is crude by comparison IMO when compared to National Instruments or Synopsys' products).

I'm a programmer, so my list goes as follows:
1) Does Windows include a decent command line shell? Nope.
2) Does it include a compiler or full development tool? Nope.
3) Good OpenGL development tools? Nope.
4) Standards compliance? Nope.

Yep. Windows is pretty much a game playing toy.

Edit: I'm aware that people think that OS X has a poor OpenGL environment, but honestly, their development tools are pretty kick ass for OpenGL.

 

[nanofrog]

I'm a programmer, so my list goes as follows:
1) Does Windows include a decent command line shell? Nope.
2) Does it include a compiler or full development tool? Nope.
3) Good OpenGL development tools? Nope.

Yep. Windows is pretty much a game playing toy.

Edit: I'm aware that people think that OS X has a poor OpenGL environment, but honestly, their development tools are pretty kick ass for OpenGL.

Yeah, you have to get programming tools.

But it's fine, if not a better choice for other areas. It all depends on the specifics, which is really all I was trying to get at (used my needs of EDA as an example).

 

[goMac]

Yeah, you have to get programming tools.

But it's fine, if not a better choice for other areas. It all depends on the specifics, which is really all I was trying to get at (used my needs of EDA as an example).

But even the programming tools you get on Windows are awful.

Example: Visual Studio will not do standard C99 code.

 

[nanofrog]

But even the programming tools you get on Windows are awful.

Example: Visual Studio will not do standard C99 code.

Yes, but you're stuck in one usage pattern. Back up a bit, and you'll realize that this may not be the case for all professional users.

 

[ortuno2k]

Nothing wrong, but like many have said - you can build yourself a much better machine with killer graphics card for way less than the price of a new MacPro.

And - depends what you want to play - but some games are only available for Window, AND they look/play better in Windows than in Mac OS.

 

[goMac]

Yes, but you're stuck in one usage pattern. Back up a bit, and you'll realize that this may not be the case for all professional users.

I still think Windows by itself is pretty useless for doing any real work. I mean... name one thing you can do on Windows out of the box.

Sure, I'm lucky that programming software comes with OS X, but is there really any other professional usage for Windows that you can do without buying any more software?

Mac OS X is really the only operating system where a professional can start using it out of the box. It may not come with Photoshop, but it certainly comes with a lot more than Windows does.

Edit: For the record, I have several Windows machines, and find them mostly useless unless I was to invest more money into them for software.

 

[packsherpah]

If it's only for gaming, don't buy a Mac.

It's not only a complete waste of money, Windows on a Mac Pro (native via BC or whatever) is a complete PITA.
The BC drivers are horrible, resulting in problems all over the place.

I really can't recommend it. You can build a very fast gaming PC with the latest graphics cards for about $1500 and it will blow away the $2500 Mac Pro.
And if you pick a decent mainboard you wont have most of the driver issues the Pro has under Windows.

There is so much misinformation and inaccuracies being passed along in this thread I just had to weigh in here. First of all, buying a MAC Pro for any purpose, even gaming, is certainly not a complete waste of money. The main reason? Any piece of crap PC you build, even if it has the latest motherboard and/or video card when you build it, will depreciate in value about 3 to 10 x faster than a Mac Pro. Most PC people are blissfully unaware of this fact. I was unaware of it myself until I started buying macs. You can resell them years after you buy them for large sums of money. By comparison, any PC I have ever bought ended up just being a paperweight.

My point? Well do the math, is it better to buy a $2500 Mac Pro and use it for 3 years and then still resell it for $1500+ dollars, the whole time using an incredibly well made computer or pay $1700 for a PC that in 3 years you could maybe get @$300 bucks for?

Next, the poster I quoted above says that using a Mac Pro with Boot camp is a PITA... can someone please elaborate on this? I have never had an easier time in my life than I have with my 2010 Mac Pro with Boot Camp and Win 7. It just loaded up and worked out of the gate. I have the 5870 video card, I can download all the latest ATI drivers in windows, and all games I have tried to play are flawless. What is the PITA part?

Would I buy a Mac Pro just for gaming? Probably not, but I wouldn't buy any computer just for gaming. How could you not get more out of a computer than just gaming? Don't you go to school or work or something and need to use office apps? Don't you Take photographs? Listen to music? Take videos and want to edit them? All of these things are tasks just about any human being can do on a computer. Do them and game on a Mac Pro, then three years later sell it for 70% of what you paid for it and buy whatever else is the thing to have at that time. Also, the entire time you own it you will have the benefit of 2 operating systems, not just be married to one. Its literally 2 computers in one from that perspective. Its the best value in computing. The Apple brand and build quality are WHITE HOT, there is nothing better made in personal computing right now than their hardware. The Mac Pro is the made finest personal computer I have ever owned. I say go for it.

 

[goMac]

Next, the poster I quoted above says that using a Mac Pro with Boot camp is a PITA... can someone please elaborate on this? I have never had an easier time in my life than I have with my 2010 Mac Pro with Boot Camp and Win 7. It just loaded up and worked out of the gate. I have the 5870 video card, I can download all the latest ATI drivers in windows, and all games I have tried to play are flawless. What is the PITA part?

The Mac Pro is the best Windows machine I have ever used. I even got rid of my main desktop Windows machine when I got it. Not sure why someone would complain about Bootcamp.

And the drivers? A lot better than the junk that was on my Windows machine (and I did not skimp on parts on that thing.)

 

[gullySn0wCat]

I still think Windows by itself is pretty useless for doing any real work. I mean... name one thing you can do on Windows out of the box.

Sure, I'm lucky that programming software comes with OS X, but is there really any other professional usage for Windows that you can do without buying any more software?

Mac OS X is really the only operating system where a professional can start using it out of the box. It may not come with Photoshop, but it certainly comes with a lot more than Windows does.

Edit: For the record, I have several Windows machines, and find them mostly useless unless I was to invest more money into them for software.

I can't think of a stock app that comes with the Mac that doesn't have a Wind0ze equivalent...

 

[nanofrog]

I still think Windows by itself is pretty useless for doing any real work. I mean... name one thing you can do on Windows out of the box.

Sure, I'm lucky that programming software comes with OS X, but is there really any other professional usage for Windows that you can do without buying any more software?

Mac OS X is really the only operating system where a professional can start using it out of the box. It may not come with Photoshop, but it certainly comes with a lot more than Windows does.

Edit: For the record, I have several Windows machines, and find them mostly useless unless I was to invest more money into them for software.

As far as professional use, of course you have to buy the software. But that can be said of OS X as a platform as well. It may come with consumer oriented software that can do some things, but I don't see the pros here using it to earn a living. The graphics pros tend to go for FCP (though Apple, you still have to buy a license) and a few others, notably Adobe's products.

Sadly, there's some things that you can use a PC for OTB, that an MP can't do at all (i.e. running a surface scan).

 

[lewdvig]

I can't think of a stock app that comes with the Mac that doesn't have a Wind0ze equivalent...

Garageband.

iPhoto, iMovie are a lot better than the standard Windows media programs.

iTunes is a better media organizer than WMP.

It's kind of pointless to argue the topic of this thread. It's OK to feel either way.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

There is so much misinformation and inaccuracies being passed along in this thread I just had to weigh in here. First of all, buying a MAC Pro for any purpose, even gaming, is certainly not a complete waste of money. The main reason? Any piece of crap PC you build, even if it has the latest motherboard and/or video card when you build it, will depreciate in value about 3 to 10 x faster than a Mac Pro. Most PC people are blissfully unaware of this fact. I was unaware of it myself until I started buying macs. You can resell them years after you buy them for large sums of money. By comparison, any PC I have ever bought ended up just being a paperweight.

My point? Well do the math, is it better to buy a $2500 Mac Pro and use it for 3 years and then still resell it for $1500+ dollars, the whole time using an incredibly well made computer or pay $1700 for a PC that in 3 years you could maybe get @$300 bucks for?

Next, the poster I quoted above says that using a Mac Pro with Boot camp is a PITA... can someone please elaborate on this? I have never had an easier time in my life than I have with my 2010 Mac Pro with Boot Camp and Win 7. It just loaded up and worked out of the gate. I have the 5870 video card, I can download all the latest ATI drivers in windows, and all games I have tried to play are flawless. What is the PITA part?

Would I buy a Mac Pro just for gaming? Probably not, but I wouldn't buy any computer just for gaming. How could you not get more out of a computer than just gaming? Don't you go to school or work or something and need to use office apps? Don't you Take photographs? Listen to music? Take videos and want to edit them? All of these things are tasks just about any human being can do on a computer. Do them and game on a Mac Pro, then three years later sell it for 70% of what you paid for it and buy whatever else is the thing to have at that time. Also, the entire time you own it you will have the benefit of 2 operating systems, not just be married to one. Its literally 2 computers in one from that perspective. Its the best value in computing. The Apple brand and build quality are WHITE HOT, there is nothing better made in personal computing right now than their hardware. The Mac Pro is the made finest personal computer I have ever owned. I say go for it.

The difference is, a mac pro costs $2500, I can make a PC that's faster than that mac pro for 1/2 the price. my current desktop runs everything beautifully, except it needs a graphics card update, and since I made it, I've spent a total of $500 on it. And I'd consider it equal to a mac pro in everything except CPU and graphics - it's quiet, cool, good looking, etc...

Don't forget that Windows has the iLife equivalent, and IMO, it's actually better. iPhoto 11 is, well, bad. Windows Photo gallery (iPhoto equiv) is really good, I actually just moved my 5gb iPhoto library back to the PC because I was sick of iPhoto. Likewise, Windows Movie Maker works well enough if you're trying to make a youtube video. It's no final cut studio, but iMovie isn't exactly FCS either.

to answer the OP's question, no it's not wrong, but it's financially inefficient, and a $2000 PC will perform much better than a $2000 Mac Pro will, FPS-wise.

My roommate has a PC that cost him $2000, 2 years ago. He's still waiting for something that can challenge it. Compare that to the newest iMac, where some of the newer features of WoW (sunrays or something?) are dropping the frame rate down to the low 30's.