Hey guys. I just picked me up a Dual 1.8Ghz PowerMAC G5 today and I want to do some online gaming.
Is it possible with this hardware? I have found games from like aspyr online. If I purchase the game is it a download or is it mailed to me?
Can I use a PC Mouse and Keyboard for the Games?
And it says 8x Agp Nvidia 5200. Can this be upgraded with say a x800 AGP ??
Just a few questions before I jump into this head first.
Thanks,
Skwid
never played games on macs... pc's are just more game friendly
If you spend a little time looking around you'd find the answers so much more easily yourself...
1) You can play practically any game available for MacOS on that harware. Insufficient power is not an issue here 
2) If your PC keyboard/mouse work with the OS, then they'll work in the games. Plug 'em in (so long as they are USB and not ps/2) and try it.
3) The video card is *not* upgradeable.
Well, Ive never tried this, but there is such a thing as winXP for Macs, verry rare,
and possibly, just possibly, you could have better luck with games on that 
There is no WinXP for Macs... It's called Virtual PC with Windows XP. M$ has NEVER made a version of XP for the PPC platform. The last PPC version of a Windows OS was NT 4 Server pre- SP3. After that, M$ dropped all support for PPC.
With a dual G5, you have more than enough power to load Virtual PC and play PC games on your Mac if you wanted to.
There are also more than a few nice games for OS X out there.
With a dual G5, you have more than enough power to load Virtual PC and play PC games on your Mac if you wanted to.
No, he doesn't. VPC is ridiculously slow and doesn't emulate a good enough video card to play most 3d games.
Yep... crap.... you're right... I forgot about the video card piece.
But as for speed, VPC runs fine for me. Just make sure you give it enough ram to do it's job.
I allocate 512 MB for my XP session and it runs fine.
Since he's running dual 1.8 G5's, he will have plenty of CPU power to handle the virtual.
VPC for Mac's emulates PII, PIII or P4 at a minimum of half the CPU speed as the host.
Version of Pentium CPU emulated depends on what CPU (G3, G4 or G5) the host system is running.
It just sucks that M$ can't get it to use the video resources of the host.
Or at least emulate a video card based on the host video cards capabilities.
*SNIP*
3) The video card is *not* upgradeable.
Funny :slant:
i always thought the advantage of PowerMacs was that they are upgradable
The video card IS upgradeable!
Well, I have answered some of my questions by looking on some sites. The Video card is totally upgradable. You just have to get the Mac Edition. ATI and Nvidia both make them. I have ordered me a 9800Xt Mac Edition from New egg and 2 gigs of RAM from Crucial. I am all set. Thanks for the replys though.
Quake2CTF is available for Mac's, so Mac's are definately made to play
Funny :slant:
i always thought the advantage of PowerMacs was that they are upgradable
The video card IS upgradeable!
Don't mind me. I'm dreaming of the *iMac* G5.
yeah halo is a great game. only ever played it on the pc and on the xbox. never on a mac (i don't have the money for a mac mini yet and don't wanna buy it until tiger is released)
@ rjohnstone : Actually there is yeah,
this has been bugging me all the time. what's the diffrentce between the pc and mac versions of graphics cards other than that it is capatible with the os it's intended for? are the performance the same? is Mac's graphics cards better? (hope so) also i have heard that apple computers uses diffrent archetecture than normal pc motherboards that the cpu instruction sets and graphics cards prodedures are diffrent, like the diffrence between pci express and normal agp thingie nowadays.
@ rjohnstone : Actually there is yeah,
There is what? If you're refering to a mythical PPC version of XP, I don't think so.
M$ stopped all Power PC development for the Windows NT platform in 1997.
Windows XP is built/coded from the Windows NT kernel.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1...b97/powerpr.asp
The only platforms/processors supported by Windows XP are Intel Pentium/Celeron family, AMD K6/Athlon/Duron, AMD Athlon 64, AMD Opteron, Intel Xeon with Intel EM64T support and Intel Pentium 4 with Intel EM64T.
Itanium processor support has officialy been dropped by M$.
this has been bugging me all the time. what's the diffrentce between the pc and mac versions of graphics cards other than that it is capatible with the os it's intended for? are the performance the same? is Mac's graphics cards better? (hope so) also i have heard that apple computers uses diffrent archetecture than normal pc motherboards that the cpu instruction sets and graphics cards prodedures are diffrent, like the diffrence between pci express and normal agp thingie nowadays.
Basically the MAC Version is #1 an entirely different connector. The AGP on a PC vs the AGP on a MAC is totaly different looking. It looks more like PCI Express than it does the AGP we are all used too.
Yeah PowerPC Processors run the RISC Instruction set vs a Intel chip runs the SISC Instruction Set. Why do you see macs for Graphics workstations everywhere? Because RISC is optimized for Renderings and Large applications that Render video and Graphics. That's why apple can get away with all those fancy interface gadgets and effects and to do them on windows XP you have to be sporting a pimp video card to get mediocre performance.
Yeah PowerPC Processors run the RISC Instruction set vs a Intel chip runs the SISC Instruction Set.
Do you mean CISC instead of SISC?
so the mac equavalent of a video card performs better than the pc version?
so the mac equavalent of a video card performs better than the pc version?
haha yeah right..........MACS suck at gaming period. I had a G4 17" powerbook which could note even play World of warcraft on the native resolution "1440x980?" anyways it had a radeon 9600 128MB mobility...it was horrible, my athlonXP with a 9700 could play at 1680x1050 smooth. Also another horror story, my friend purchased a 2.0ghz G5 with 9800pro..stil crappy..
Seriously if only apple let the manufacturers release the driver updates rather than apple releasing them I think they could improve them quite a bit.
oh. darn. i agree that having more experienced and focused manufacturers release their own optomized and improved drivers would be better. also, apple should also release imac gamer's edition, which sports a a slower cpu, maybe at 1.25 ghz and faster graphics card with very good drivers maybe 9800pro and keep it at the same price.
haha yeah right..........MACS suck at gaming period. I had a G4 17" powerbook which could note even play World of warcraft on the native resolution "1440x980?" anyways it had a radeon 9600 128MB mobility...it was horrible, my athlonXP with a 9700 could play at 1680x1050 smooth. Also another horror story, my friend purchased a 2.0ghz G5 with 9800pro..stil crappy..
Seriously if only apple let the manufacturers release the driver updates rather than apple releasing them I think they could improve them quite a bit.
Apple don't do every manufacturer's drivers, they do nVidia's because they can't do their own for OS X. ATi do their own. 
We're forgetting that PC games are heavily optimized for PCs. Porting them over (usually from DirectX to OpenGL) kills the optimization. Let's not forget most companies put like 10% of the man-power on the port, compared to the PC. Games like WoW are still in need of heavy updates (one of the developers browses MacRumors.com and he says there are lots of bugs that need to be fixed in the OS X version).
I can play Halo on my 1GHz G4 with just a Radeon 7500. And you know what? I get 40FPS. Sure it won't be 1600x1200 res, or highest quality but I'm playing it online where speed matters more than looks.
I've come to see that most of the "omg macz suck0rz for gamez" is from the spec whorism of PC land where every game must do 140FPS or they're deemed crap.
amen to that seXXI!
pple have become mindless spec who0res and all that matters is who`s got a bigger...clock speed and such
Apple don't do every manufacturer's drivers, they do nVidia's because they can't do their own for OS X. ATi do their own.
We're forgetting that PC games are heavily optimized for PCs. Porting them over (usually from DirectX to OpenGL) kills the optimization. Let's not forget most companies put like 10% of the man-power on the port, compared to the PC. Games like WoW are still in need of heavy updates (one of the developers browses MacRumors.com and he says there are lots of bugs that need to be fixed in the OS X version).
I can play Halo on my 1GHz G4 with just a Radeon 7500. And you know what? I get 40FPS. Sure it won't be 1600x1200 res, or highest quality but I'm playing it online where speed matters more than looks.
I've come to see that most of the "omg macz suck0rz for gamez" is from the spec whorism of PC land where every game must do 140FPS or they're deemed crap.
I totally agree dude. I have about 12 games for my macs and they all run fine on even on my emac. The only upgrades I have done to the emac is put 1 gig of RAM in it. I will say that mac's are RAM hogs. The more you give them, the more they want.
And you are right. It has NOTHING to do with drivers on OSX. It's going from DirectX to OpenGL. There's the problem. If it was writting soley for OpenGL then they would be rock solid like pc. But they are "ported" and there is the problem.
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