Should I use my PC desktop or Macbook Pro for gaming?

[FearoftheNight]

PC:
AMD x64 3000+
1gig ram
x1950 pro agp

Mac (boot camp)
c2d 2.6
4 gig ram
8600 m gt gdd3 version

So which one will run games better?

 

[Darklife]

I never thought I'd say this, but you're better of on the mac.

 

[FuryofFive]

I never thought I'd say this, but you're better of on the mac.

lol i think this wasnt a question..

the signs are clearly there. i see what you did there OP

 

[Nik]

Sell the mac, buy new PC parts, use the superior platform.

 

[Malak]

Sell the mac, buy new PC parts, use the superior platform.

Mac's aren't superior in any situation, so Nik is right here. If MacOS was better, people wouldn't need Boot Camp would they?

 

[CurseTheSky]

I doubt the 8600M GT is that far ahead of the X1950 Pro. Keep in mind this is a mobile part we're talking about, so it's not up to 8600 GT desktop performance levels. The dual core Core 2 Duo in the MBP is what's going to make the biggest difference. So, for now, that's what you should game with.

If you want to do any serious gaming (more than say, Titan Quest or Half Life 2) you should upgrade that desktop. A dual core i3 / i5, motherboard, 2-4 GB DDR3, and HD 5770 should set you back $500 or so.

 

[secretanchitman]

out of those two, i would go for your mbp with boot camp. faster cpu and more ram will help, but your desktop has a faster gpu but with slower cpu and less ram. quite honestly, if you bought 4GB of ram for your desktop, i would be using that to game.

*coming from a person who uses his mbp to game*

 

[dpodblood]

Given the 2 options, the mac book is the answer. Of course the real answer is to build a PC that is actually suited to gaming.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Your PC's RAM is probably the only thing really holding it back. The Radeon X1950 Pro might be old but it's still a desktop card and should handle games better than a middling mobility chipset like the 8600M.

Throw an extra 1-2 GB of RAM in the PC and use that.

 

[hellotyler]

PC -is- superior for gaming. I absolutely love my mac, wouldn't trade it for the world, but I'd never do serious gaming on it.

 

[gonvik]

OP, any games in question that you were curious if you could run well? I have that same exact model of MacBook Pro and use bootcamp on it.

The source engine runs extremely well on medium to high settings at 1440x900.

CurseTheSky is right on the money -- you will not be happy running any new titles at a decent framerate with acceptable quality -- ie Upgrade the pc.

 

[MustangSVT]

Sell the mac, buy new PC parts, use the superior platform.

Even better, RETURN mac to NIK.

 

[n7]

New PC time.

It doesn't cost that much to put together a decent budget gaming PC these days, as upgrading your PC isn't really worth it (other than PCI-e GPU to use for the new one you'll need to build in the future), & laptop gaming ain't going to be all that much fun either, though some games might run a bit better on there.

 

[EvilComputer92]

Get rid of the mac and get an Envy 15, which is practically a clone of the mac except with an i7 processor and Radeon 5650 which will blow the macbook away.

 

[CurseTheSky]

Get rid of the mac and get an Envy 15, which is practically a clone of the mac except with an i7 processor and Radeon 5650 which will blow the macbook away.

Envy 14 you mean.

The Envy 15 has a faster HD 5830 GPU, but the chassis / keyboard / other stuff are all inferior to the 14.

The Envy 14 can handle most recent games at medium with the 1600x900 screen (now discontinued hopefully back soon), and medium/high with the 1366x768 screen.

 

[Schfifty Five]

It's obvious that the macbook pro has better specs, but playing on a laptop can get really uncomfortable after extended periods of time.

 

[vshah]

It's obvious that the macbook pro has better specs, but playing on a laptop can get really uncomfortable after extended periods of time.

well he's got a desktop so he could hook up the kb/mouse/monitor, so it would be no different.

 

[HAL9000]

How's my specs

2 x 2.66Ghz Quad Xeon's (8 Physical Cores in total)

Edit: Overclocked to 3.2 Ghz

12GB DDR2 800MHz
2 x 60GB OCZ Vertex 2's RAID 0 - Mac OS X 10.6.4
2 x 64GB Crucial C300 6Gb/s SATA III RAID 0 - Windows 7 Pro 64bit Boot
2 x 300GB WD Raptor RAID 0
Sapphire Radeon 5970 + 5870 Trifire
Blu-Ray R/W

Yes it's a Mac, and Yes it runs games perfectly, like 100fps av on Crysis...
All together it cost about £2,000 so gaming on a Mac is perfectly do-able if you put the effort in...

I use Mac OS X Way more than I use Windows, but if every I want to do some gaming I turn it off, about 27 seconds later it's on again ready for me to do some gaming...

 

[videogames101]

How's my specs

2 x 2.66Ghz Quad Xeon's (8 Physical Cores in total)

Edit: Overclocked to 3.2 Ghz

12GB DDR2 800MHz
2 x 60GB OCZ Vertex 2's RAID 0 - Mac OS X 10.6.4
2 x 64GB Crucial C300 6Gb/s SATA III RAID 0 - Windows 7 Pro 64bit Boot
2 x 300GB WD Raptor RAID 0
Sapphire Radeon 5970 + 5870 Trifire
Blu-Ray R/W

Yes it's a Mac, and Yes it runs games perfectly, like 100fps av on Crysis...
All together it cost about £2,000 so gaming on a Mac is perfectly do-able if you put the money in...

I use Mac OS X Way more than I use Windows, but if every I want to do some gaming I turn it off, about 27 seconds later it's on again ready for me to do some gaming...

Fixed for you.

 

[HAL9000]

It really didnt cost that much compared to buiding my own PC and buying a Mac separately to use all the time... How much did yours set you back then?

 

[CurseTheSky]

How's my specs

2 x 2.66Ghz Quad Xeon's (8 Physical Cores in total)

Edit: Overclocked to 3.2 Ghz

12GB DDR2 800MHz
2 x 60GB OCZ Vertex 2's RAID 0 - Mac OS X 10.6.4
2 x 64GB Crucial C300 6Gb/s SATA III RAID 0 - Windows 7 Pro 64bit Boot
2 x 300GB WD Raptor RAID 0
Sapphire Radeon 5970 + 5870 Trifire
Blu-Ray R/W

Yes it's a Mac, and Yes it runs games perfectly, like 100fps av on Crysis...
All together it cost about £2,000 so gaming on a Mac is perfectly do-able if you put the effort in...

I use Mac OS X Way more than I use Windows, but if every I want to do some gaming I turn it off, about 27 seconds later it's on again ready for me to do some gaming...

It really didnt cost that much compared to buiding my own PC and buying a Mac separately to use all the time... How much did yours set you back then?

It cost you ~$3200 USD for just the tower (no monitor, speakers / headphones, etc.) and all the internal upgrades, right? And that's a Mac Pro that you added the SSDs, HDDs, and graphics cards into, right?

If so, I'm calling complete BS. The 2x quad core Xeon Mac Pro STARTS at $3500, and that's with an HD 5770 and 1TB HDD. Add another $600 for the HD 5970, $350 for the HD 5870, $180 each for the two Raptors, $120 each for the two Vertex 2 60GBs, $120 each for the two C300 64GBs, $140 for a copy of Windows 7 Professional 64-bit OEM, etc.

We're up over $5400 (£3300) so far, and I'm sure there's plenty of other things that I forgot, like memory, Blu-ray burner, etc. Even if you got the parts (and Mac Pro) heavily discounted, we're still talking something like $4000+.

For that much cash, I could EASILY build a beastly gaming machine and still have plenty left over to buy a Macbook Pro 15 / 17, or iMac 27".

So, again, either prove how you put together a Mac Pro with all of those internals for ~$3200 USD, or stop spreading BS.

 

[HAL9000]

Righto, not BS here goes, I bought a second hand base Mac Pro 2.66 Quad on ebay for £750 for the basic stuff, then I upgraded the processors - £250, then the RAM, 100, then I bought 4 SSD's from my work, at the bargain price of £240 (£60) each, then I bought my two Raptor's on ebay for 100 each, then an aditional power supply for £30, to power an additional graphics card, then £267 for a 5870 and £349 for the 5970, Blu Ray drive was £83. Bringing my grand total to £2169, If you think I could have bought a Mac and a good gaming PC for less, I'd like to know how, I think I made a bit of a bargain, a great Mac a great PC all in one. Please don't just assume I'm lying because you don't know how I managed it....

*Oh! and a £30 student copy of Windows 7 as I'm at University...

So yes I underestimated by £200

So when I say it just takes time and a little bit of money to get a Mac running games, It does just that, It dosent cost as much as you might think if you shop around. It run's great and I'm happy, there's no reason to be rude and abrupt because you think you know best about something.

Edit: Now I'll grant you that I didn't pay full retail for the SSD's thanks to my Job so lets imagine I payed retail price (using your prices: £330) Brings the total I would have paid to £2280, I also bought a SATAIII/ USB 3.0 Card for the C300's to run off, which cost me £29, I'm pretty sure that is it. and a grand total of £2309

 

[HAL9000]

OH! and I spent £12 on a couple of PCIe power cables...

 

[CurseTheSky]

Ok, you got a hell of a deal on everything in your machine, and I apologize for assuming your story was BS.

However, your statement still doesn't hold true for 99% of the population:
All together it cost about £2,000 so gaming on a Mac is perfectly do-able if you put the effort in...

Your setup - for that price - is one in a million. No one else is going to be able to copy it and stay within a sane budget. Furthermore, if you apply the same logic to a PC instead of a Mac, you could just as easily say that you can build a monster PC for the ~$3700 that you spent. Everything in my PC tower cost me less than $1500 total, but I'd never say than when recommending a PC build because I got some amazing deals on several of the components and I know no one else will ever be able to put one together for that price. My case for example - the Silverstone FT01-BW - was purchased for $58 (mint condition display model). My Envy 14 is an even better example - I paid $1260 for it on the first day, but after all the discounts and coupons HP gave me for a couple of screw ups (plus the fact that I got a free processor upgrade worth $75 and the 1600x900 screen is now a $300 upgrade rather than the $100 I paid, when available), it cost me a total of $862.50. The moral of the story is, it might be relevant to you, but say it as such. Don't make it sound like it's that easy to put together a beastly computer for not much cash.

Hell, for that kind of money, I'd build a $2000 PC and buy a $1700 iMac or MBP. It might "only" get 60 FPS in Crysis instead of 100 FPS, but it'll run with the best of them and then some (especially considering very few games make use of quad cores, and I'm not aware of any that make use of more than 4 cores, and tri-fire generally tends to scale mediocre at best compared to two HD 5870s).

 

[HAL9000]

Ok, you got a hell of a deal on everything in your machine, and I apologize for assuming your story was BS.

Thank you, that's all I was looking for, I never said my set up was perfect, there are problems there are faster ways, better ways, and maybe two computers would work better for a lot of people, but I wanted one computer than ran Mac Os X perfectly, and also was able to competently run Windows games, I now have that, maybe it is one in a million and if that's the case that's great, I am one for a bargain when I spot it, it just winds me up when people are bashing Mac's saying that running games on them is a waste of time, because, as I have, if you spend the time, and yes the money that you would otherwise spend on a gaming PC there's nothing to say you can't turn your Mac into a great games machine.

I'm not arguing it's perfect, I'm just arguing that if you want to you can, and that I have, it may not be for everyone, but for me it's perfect. I'm happy so next time everyone's screaming Macs can't game, Mac's can't game, my Mac's got game and other peoples can too.