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- Thread starter Derkatwork
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I've tested out a few games on my mini with the dedicated ATI card and well, it sucks. I can run Shadowrun at 2560x1600, but it's a little slow and it's a very basic game graphically. I tried running The Witcher 2 at that resolution and it's unplayable. It just lags and stutters.
My understanding that it is more than that, like cross OS calls that are required to get the game to run on Mac and that most games were first written and optimized for Windows.
The mac version of Portal runs at 54% of the speed of the Windows version..... On 10.6.3 using a hackintosh.
That benchmark is a little bit outdated.
If Battlefield 4 is what you want, custom build.
My 2010 MBP won't run it. My 2011 iMac will, but at very low settings, this is due to the MassiveResolutionScreen® I love so much.
A custom build is the only way you are going to get close to a Mac Mini price point and still play the game. It doesn't have to be hyper expensive...you don't need a $3 million motherboard (Got 2 ram slots, the right processor pin set and a PCI-Express 16x slot? That's all you need), 8gb of ram is plenty.
Buy the cheapest i5. There are only two places where you will see a "Well that was worth it" performance increase and they are the graphics card and SSD. Don't get the most expensive SSD you can find, just one that is SATA III and will do above 400 Megabytes/Second reads.
Get the best graphics card you can afford and try to get one with 2GB of video ram if you plan on playing BF4 at 1080P or higher, BF3 can't be played at ultra on 1GB of video ram at 2048x1152 (Personal experience). It's a texture heavy game.
I have a gaming machine I've been nursing for a few years. It has a small SSD, and uses a lower res display than the iMac. I use it only to play games and nothing else. I didn't even install another browser.
Now that said if all you want is to play Steam games that are available for the Mac, pretty much every mac currently sold will have no problems running it at pretty decent settings/framerates.
Finally:
Use a keyboard and mouse, not a controller. I will track you down in game and call you names otherwise.
Anything above 60FPS is pointless...most displays are locked at that refresh rate. Don't aim for more than that, you won't be able to see it unless you are planning on using a display that can refresh that quickly. GET DAT VSYNC ON BRO.
My 2010 MBP won't run it. My 2011 iMac will, but at very low settings, this is due to the MassiveResolutionScreen® I love so much.
A custom build is the only way you are going to get close to a Mac Mini price point and still play the game. It doesn't have to be hyper expensive...you don't need a $3 million motherboard (Got 2 ram slots, the right processor pin set and a PCI-Express 16x slot? That's all you need), 8gb of ram is plenty.
Buy the cheapest i5. There are only two places where you will see a "Well that was worth it" performance increase and they are the graphics card and SSD. Don't get the most expensive SSD you can find, just one that is SATA III and will do above 400 Megabytes/Second reads.
Get the best graphics card you can afford and try to get one with 2GB of video ram if you plan on playing BF4 at 1080P or higher, BF3 can't be played at ultra on 1GB of video ram at 2048x1152 (Personal experience). It's a texture heavy game.
I have a gaming machine I've been nursing for a few years. It has a small SSD, and uses a lower res display than the iMac. I use it only to play games and nothing else. I didn't even install another browser.
Now that said if all you want is to play Steam games that are available for the Mac, pretty much every mac currently sold will have no problems running it at pretty decent settings/framerates.
Finally:
Use a keyboard and mouse, not a controller. I will track you down in game and call you names otherwise.
Anything above 60FPS is pointless...most displays are locked at that refresh rate. Don't aim for more than that, you won't be able to see it unless you are planning on using a display that can refresh that quickly. GET DAT VSYNC ON BRO.
But... I have a 120hz monitor...
Ohh, in that case, re-read the second to last sentence of my post, but this time really slowly.
Really quickly then? I wonder what the refresh rate of our eyes are...are they all the same? Are yours better than mine? Should I upgrade my eyes?
Yeah, actually. They are. Though you don't see in frames per second, rather in arc minutes. Which is something else entirely.
And no, having a 120hz monitor won't look any smoother than a 60hz TV at first glance. But watch anything that has quick movement, like a football game, or nature documentary, and you'll see that you're able to track the ball and/or bird more smoothly across the screen. That's because 120hz TVs are refreshing the image twice as fast, and it's able to interpolate more data to send to your eye. The end result is a less ghosted, more solid appearance on fast moving objects.
It's not a huge difference, but there is an advantage to 120hz monitors over 60hz ones. Though anything above 120hz is actually straight up overkill, and a complete waste of time.
I hate watching movies on TVs like this though. It just doesn't look right. It's almost like everything is sped up. I enjoy my 24fps 60hz refresh of olden days /grumpy old man.
I actually have a 120 hz monitor as I also have the equipment to play games in 3D on my computer along with watching 3D blu ray movies. In general I'm fine with 30 fps or so for most stuff, but tend to get a fair bit more than that since I have an NVidia Titan card.