That’s assuming Apple haven’t gimped it to prevent you running it on 'their’ outdated equipment. I’m keepong a good eye on those Accelsior cards. If I see one in the sale it’s mine.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Mac Pro as a gaming machine?
- Thread starter Michael Goff
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
That’s assuming Apple haven’t gimped it to prevent you running it on 'their’ outdated equipment. I’m keepong a good eye on those Accelsior cards. If I see one in the sale it’s mine.
From this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jglxbtojRlE
It looks like low end 4,1 Mac Pro was bottlenecking the GTX 970 (even under Windows).
The wrong platform
While Mac gaming is increasing it's still far behind Windows (and consoles).
I have both a 6-Core nMP with D700's and a PC (3770k, GTX 780, etc). If I had to choose one as a gaming platform it would be the PC every time. I have a fairly old CPU and MB now, but I can swap out the GPU as I need to and it will last years. the nMP on the other hand is a lot more expensive and I can't swap out any of the components. Don't get me wrong I prefer the Mac as my main platform for everything except games.
If you really need a Mac for day-to-day then get a Mini, and then use your PC as a glorified xbox. You then have a choice of OS as the gaming market changes. If you only have space for one then go with the PC as it will best suite your needs.
While Mac gaming is increasing it's still far behind Windows (and consoles).
I have both a 6-Core nMP with D700's and a PC (3770k, GTX 780, etc). If I had to choose one as a gaming platform it would be the PC every time. I have a fairly old CPU and MB now, but I can swap out the GPU as I need to and it will last years. the nMP on the other hand is a lot more expensive and I can't swap out any of the components. Don't get me wrong I prefer the Mac as my main platform for everything except games.
If you really need a Mac for day-to-day then get a Mini, and then use your PC as a glorified xbox. You then have a choice of OS as the gaming market changes. If you only have space for one then go with the PC as it will best suite your needs.
I’m the opposite. I don’t like Windows, (that doesn’t mean I think it’s crap before anybody gets bent out of shape - just that I personally don’t like it), it’s a great operating system but OSX is nice so is my daily driver.
I want one box only. I want nice hardware only.
My set of compromises leads me to a Mac Pro 5,1 at least. 6,1 will be a stretch as it seems like more than a rip off than I am usually prepared to stomach.
Oh, does anybody have Alien Isolation too?
Yeah, running maxed out 1920x1200 smooth as butter
Ok, cool. I’ll have a look how I compare later - I know it’ll be worse. At the mo the game is running as per the below;
Field of view - 75º.
Film grain intensity - Max.
Screen size - Full.
Deep Colour - On.
Resolution - 2560 x 1600.
Vertical Sync - On.
Level of detail - Ultra.
Shadow map resolution - 2048.
Shadow mapping - On.
Particles - Ultra.
Motion Blur - On.
Depth of field - On.
Chromatic Aberrations - On.
Planar reflections - On.
SSAO - Standard.
Texture filtering - Anisotrophic - 16x.
Volumetric lighting - On.
Anti aliasing - SMAA T1x.
Fraps tells me that;
During cut scene sections where the game loads the next chapter, the frame rate drops to 2 fps.
During normal gameplay, the frame rate varies between 18 and 23 fps.
During cut scene sections, the frame rate varies between 58 and 62 fps.
Got some reading to do though, I mean damn! I don’t even know what half of this stuff means. Shadow map resolution, what?
Chromatic aberration, Eh? Anisotrophic texture filtering, pardon?
ATM I’ve no idea what I do need on and what I can lose or what it even does.
Last edited:
You should definitely drop the resolution down to around 1024x768 until you have better hardware.
Shadow maps are the shadows you see everywhere. Those are not rendered shadows calculated by light, but are in fact semi transparent image files. So the higher the resolution the most defined the edges are.
Chromatic aberration is the jaggy colours you get on the edges of objects and images, especially when there is high contrast. It's typically seen in digital photography as magenta or cyan bits of colour along the edges of objects, especially trees against a bright background.
Anisotropic texture filtering is just another way of smoothing and sharpening textures so you don't see the square pixels on them if they exist. Like this...
I can see how dropping the resolution might improve things. Probably leave shadow maps as they are for now.
As for the chromatic Abercrombie, I’m confused. I’m under the impression that it is undesirable. Does this mean that they’ve added more of it??
The pics illustrate the anisotrophic filtering well. Thanks.
Turn it off and see if you notice any C.A. I don't think it would be visible much in Alien Isolation as the game is so dark.
Will give it a shot. I was actually wondering if its the best game to see the effect of such adjustments. A game like this seems to me to be one where shadow and blur might actually be added for effect.
Shadows, motion blur and particles will make the below settings still look great and you'll see frame rates increase enough to enjoy the game. Try this:
1024x768 or 720p
Field of view - 75º.
Film grain intensity - Max.
Screen size - Full.
Deep Colour - Off.
Vertical Sync - Off.
Level of detail - High.
Shadow map resolution - 1024.
Shadow mapping - On.
Particles - High.
Motion Blur - On.
Depth of field - On.
Chromatic Aberrations - Off.
Planar reflections - Off.
SSAO - Standard.
Texture filtering - Anisotrophic - 4x.
Volumetric lighting - On.
Anti aliasing - SMAA T1x.
Fantastic. Im off to make some more christmas appearances now but Ill try this later on.
Cheers.
That's my cousin's situation, except he uses a maxed out 2011 iMac. He can hardly stand Windows and can only have one machine. It's funny seeing him play so many games on it, but it's fast enough as long as he doesn't play anything advanced, and he even plays most of them in OS X (Parallels or Boot Camp Windows for a few others).
Windows 2000 is certainly my favorite version of Windows. Like XP but faster and cleaner. Also less ugly, but XP had a "classic" theme, so that doesn't matter. But my favorite OS ever is either Mountain Lion or Snow Leopard, depending on usage.
Strangely I thought mine was Ok too. But I’m soon to buy a 5,1 and I’ll tinker with it and see how I get on. I don’t play in OSX often as I don’t like keyboard games and controller support is crap on the Mac. I’ve not seen a reliable app to map the 360 controller yet. I did a lot of parallels gaming before but in Windows is so much better, there’s only so many times you can stand a game freezing just at the moment you’re trying to time something to perfection.[COLOR="#808080”].
----------
[/COLOR][quote="AlecZ, post: 20527761"]Windows 2000 is certainly my favorite version of Windows. Like XP but faster and cleaner. Also less ugly, but XP had a "classic" theme, so that doesn't matter. But my favorite OS ever is either Mountain Lion or Snow Leopard, depending on usage.[/QUOTE]
I’m with you there. 106 & 108 were the best ones. I think 110 is really stable with great features. It’s just as ugly as hell.
I'm a gamer, and I bought a 4,1 Mac Pro to game on. I upgraded it with PCIe storage, faster CPU, and GTX 980. I don't play FPS games, I mostly like Blizzard games. Makes it much easier since all of those are available on Mac natively. Games do not run as well on OS X as they do in Windows.
That being said, I strongly prefer OS X and all the other advantages it brings me such that it's worth turning the eye candy down just a bit. Games still look great and run well. I also have Windows 10 preview installed on Boot Camp just in case I want to play something that isn't available on OS X. It's definitely doable, but not the most efficient use of your gaming dollars. Only consider this if you really love Apple and OS X, in which case you can make a Mac work as a gaming machine.
That being said, I strongly prefer OS X and all the other advantages it brings me such that it's worth turning the eye candy down just a bit. Games still look great and run well. I also have Windows 10 preview installed on Boot Camp just in case I want to play something that isn't available on OS X. It's definitely doable, but not the most efficient use of your gaming dollars. Only consider this if you really love Apple and OS X, in which case you can make a Mac work as a gaming machine.
To be honest I'm hardly ever booted into it, but everything worked great when I set it up. Drivers are compatible with Windows 8 so no big issue there.
Good, because if Apple ever decides to abandon us prematurely via some gimmick (I believe they won't but still) to make us buy a trash can then I'll keep an older version of OSX in case I need it and make Windows 10 my main OS.
I prefer OS X too, and been short on space made me consolidate to a nMP. Once we move house though the gaming rig is coming back out, but only to be used as a glorified Xbox. The Mac will stay as my main machine.
Ive aways wondered about that. Ive always been of the opinion, (and Ive been known to be wrong before), that the original Mac Pro with in my case;
One ODD
5 off HDD
Black magic capture card.
Takes up less space and has a greater selection of ports, (still with two open bays, one of which I hope to fill with a thunderbolt PCI card if/when they become available)?
USB 3.1 is a fine Thunderbolt subsistute. I don't think Intel wants to licence discrete thunderbolt controllers to board makers otherwise they would be popular by now and dent processor sales.
I found that Intel did have a sloppy PCIE board solution but only two big companies offered it and it would not have worked on a Mac Pro as we don't have the GPIO header to connect it to
http://blogs.intel.com/technology/2...herboards-desktops-and-workstation-computers/
A cleaner solution would have had the necessary hardware on the PCIE board and only transferred data to the CPU - a cut down Thunderbolt without the display port video channel. But that's not going to happen.
Last edited:
You are right a MP 5,1 takes up less space than a PC and a nMP and i did consider that route. I already had the PC and a Mac Mini - use the mini as my main desktop and the PC for VMware and games. My requirements changed a little though and i found myself with less time for gaming, instead having to spend more time in VMware. I needed more than 32GB RAM that PC had and I was suffering from an explosion of kit all over the place. After a long debate with myself I decided that it wasn't worth buying a 5,1 MP as I already had external Thunderbolt storage on the mini. If I didn't already have the storage then I probably would have gone for the 5,1 MP (12 core), maxed out the RAM and put some 1TB SSD's in there.