It’s now running on my old 2.53 Mac Mini with 4GB of ram, 9400M GS at 1680x1050, all graphics settings at low. It runs all right, but the low graphics setting makes everything look a bit more grainy and cartoonish than I would have liked.
I guess bundling that to Steam now supporting TF2 and source games in OSX should really motivate me to look into upgrading to a MBP or iMac with an i5 processor.
Why not DIY it and build a hackingtosh? Way cheaper if you must have Mac and works just as well.
I don’t feel like running around Guanghua shopping for parts plus real work should not be done on a hack just because you never know when a kernel panic or system update is going to paralyze the system.
This seems to me not worth the effort, particularly given that MB and MBPs are fairly competitive these days in terms of pricing.
Sure DIYing is fun, but there are other things that could be more worthy of DIYing than fiddling around trying to get a Hackingtosh to work when the other option doesn’t cost marginally much more and just works. 
I have a dual-boot Hackingtoshed Dell laptop that it one of the more straight forward Hackintosh jobs and even it was a bit of a pain to setup and run sometimes in OSX.
[quote=“catfish13”]It’s now running on my old 2.53 Mac Mini with 4GB of ram, 9400M GS at 1680x1050, all graphics settings at low. It runs all right, but the low graphics setting makes everything look a bit more grainy and cartoonish than I would have liked.
I guess bundling that to Steam now supporting TF2 and source games in OSX should really motivate me to look into upgrading to a MBP or iMac with an i5 processor.[/quote]
Steam games run like ass on a mac. Its because its not actually a native version and nothing is optimized as well. On my late 2008 MBP I get 20-30 FPS on medium running Team Fortress 2. If I try the same game on the windows partition it is like 70-80 FPS with everything turned up except AA. SC2 is the same. It at least runs better on the OSX side than most because it is a native version, but I can have higher settings and better performance in Bootcamp.
Intel Macs are nice but for any gaming you will be using Windows anyways. Might as well buy/build a low-mid range gaming rig to satisfy your appetite. My current machine runs every game from 2009 and before at max, can still run most modern games at medium-high, and would cost about 3-400$ to build in todays market.
This is true, but if you already have a Mac, you can Bootcamp pretty easily for the price of Windows and get the performance boost you mentioned.
Yes, I just meant if you had a working mac and were considering buying for games it is smarter to just dedicate a gaming rig. The price will be much lower and the performance will be outstanding.
Yah true that if you were specifically building a rig for just gaming. Are there hotrod rigs that will keep cool and fit in something like a shuttle box? In case portability ever became a concern (for the LAN-party like scenarios)? You could move the whole rig in a backpack and the box the monitor came in (most of which have handles these days). I think that would be an good option for someone who plays a lot of PC-games, but probably not for someone who does it once in awhile.
Yeah I actually have a shuttle back in the states. They work great, just a weird form factor.
I built a gaming rig around one once. It was always running very hot (had a mid-range graphics card installed) and in the end the motherboard’s power control logic died. I probably wouldn’t go with a Shuttle SFF again unless they’ve seriously upped their quality and cooling design. Gotta admit it was pretty portable.
Seriously? Have either of you tried a Core i hackingtosh? 100% stable as long as you pick the right bits and it’s a piece of cake to install tonymacx86.blogspot.com/
The problem with the iMac’s is that they use mobile graphics cards, which means you’ll never get the same performance as you would out of a desktop equivalent.
And no, I’m not suggesting turning a notebook into a hackingtosh, as that’s a real mess. But you would save a lot of money compared to what you’d gain in terms of expandability and features for your money. I built one for a mate of mine with an SSD and the lot for very reasonable price, although he already had a monitor so… the cheapest 27-inch screen here is a Dell for NT$26k…
I built a gaming rig around one once. It was always running very hot (had a mid-range graphics card installed) and in the end the motherboard’s power control logic died. I probably wouldn’t go with a Shuttle SFF again unless they’ve seriously upped their quality and cooling design. Gotta admit it was pretty portable.[/quote]
I never had the heat issue, and now you can liquid cool them so it shouldn’t be a bother.
I have an Acer 5920G and starcraft 2 runs great. It also runs other shooters like GTAIV on medium.
But I changed the video card to an ATI HD4650 (the original one isn’t that good).
If you really need portability for LAN parties you could shell out the bucks for a gaming notebook… just have an outlet at the ready (because it’s not going to run for more than a few moments on battery power) and a lot of liquid nitrogen to keep it cool. You know a gaming console isn’t so bulky like a full PC, so that’s an option too for parties, assuming there is a TV where you’re going.