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12 cores - imagine the 24 threads
I notice the top-end iMac still gets a bargain bucket "can render 2D, barely" graphics card
Apple don't care about selling systems to gamers.
Originally Posted by directhex
Its not just gamers, since getting my 5790 water cooled and in the PC, my CPU usage is about 3% doing 99% of things.12 cores - imagine the 24 threads
Photoshop loves my GPU. Heck, even VLC.
Now if only I didn't suck quite so badly at FPS's now adays (old age happens at 19 for gamers, fact.)
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
I'd mostly agree with you, but the 5750 isn't a bad card. It's probably similar to an HD4870 or 4850, and while that's hardly cutting-edge, Apple do tend to cater to the mainstream, not the gamer. These are mainstream cards, sure, but that doesn't mean they aren't worth the PCB they're printed on.
Apple have a bit of a way to go if they want to attract gamers, sure, but I don't think that's a bad graphics chip for an AIO PC. It'll certainly play some Portal, TF2 or Starcraft II, which is about the best you'll get on a Mac anyway.
A £90 GPU in a £1650 computer is theft.
Don't buy it then?
If you want a machine with a better card then get a machine with a better card. These are aimed at people who want to buy a nice looking computer that they don't really have to worry about not are people that want to play the newest games at crazy resolutions. If they were, then they would have a better graphics setup ...
Nice, this means I can finally hackintosh my rig with a 5870 driver. Anyone know how to get it?
Why? These machines really aren't designed for gaming. Nobody buys a Mac to play games. Mac gaming is a wasteland. Mac Pros are mainly for professional-level stuff which needs lots of RAM and CPU grunt, like video encoding, rendering or working with huge images. The pricing is high, but you do get a well-built machine and excellent support. Kitting it out with a GTX480 would achieve nothing except bumping the price up even more.
Both things which really lend themselves to GPU computing.
Seriously, two GTX480s, would easily out perform the top spec mac pro doing video encoding, rendering, at half the price.
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
^^
They are designed for those purposes, and as a result you can configure them with a professional graphics card, or multiple consumer level ones..both configurations which will benefit the above purposes much more than a top end consumer GPU. They are not sold as gaming machines..however if you do get one and stick Windows 7 on it, and install a high end consumer GPU..they will beat any "gaming" machine on the planet, no question.
My mac pro is getting on a bit now (over 3 years old) and the only thing I have had to touch on it is the graphics, which I upgraded a few months ago. 2 quad xeons /still/ easily outperforms most high level consumer systems today, and the only thing that I will be looking to upgrade in the next few months will be the ram - i've only got 4gb at the moment which is a little limiting, looking to double that when I find £100 spare.
Would love one of the new ones but can't justify it yet hehe.
Edit - The iMacs however, total waste of money. Vastly overpriced (moreso than anything in Apples lineup imo) and underspecified..and this is Apples problem - they don't really have a decent "mid range" option. The Mac mini is great as a low spec system, but its £100 too expensive, and the mac pro is one of the best computers you can buy, but its current model is probably £1000 more than most people will spend, and its /over/ specced for most people.
They need a mid range, full or mid tower system with upgradable graphics imo, something that will really tempt over the PC users..but they just have not had one of those since the 80s.
Last edited by Spud1; 28-07-2010 at 09:24 AM.
Except for the obvious fact thats boll.
for a start of ECC RAM is slower.
the lack of quad SLI.
the fact that a machine at three quarters of the price of the top of the line model would wipe the floor if you had some watercooling in there and clocked up the CPU to solve that one thread only bottlenecking issue.
but yes, if we completely ignore everything, and pretended really hard, you might just be able to believe that.
I will say thou, the case is very pretty for a mass production PC that has clearly been produced to keep costs down, you can't see many signs of that on the outside.
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
If you compare individual components then yes, sure some will lost out - the ram will be slower (but does this really have a big effect? no of course not), and Quad SLi is only valid on a few games..are there really that many that take full advantage of this now? Multi threaded CPU support is more prevalent I thought..or at least certainly more useful due to OS support.
Put in the same graphics configuration (I mentioned that you'd need to replace the GPU) and I bet the mac pro will win out due to its CPUs. Cba to look up benchmarks but I can't see it losing.
edit: the real bottleneck in the mac pro is the hard drive.
Nope, ECC hit of about ~3-5% of memory performance.
Not to mention, going out on a limb, it will be somewhat latent RAM, at least CAS9, whilst been 1.33ghz.
Compare that to what you can get from the PC enthusiast brands its 2ghz+
The CPU bottleneck isn't that simple, most games only use one core, because the games programmers are lazy luddites who don't want to worry about concurrency.
As such, I would wager the Q6600 D0 which I've just sold to a mate of mine, complete with waterblock and a 2 year old motherboard 'Maximus Extreme' watercooled. With that it had little issue running stably at 3.56ghz. I'll remind you this is my old hardware, with the same graphics card, it would probably whip the crap out of that mac pro, due to overclock CPU, phenomenally faster memory.
Macs are terrible at gaming, what makes them good is some software like Garageband.
Hell even Safari runs better on windows! (it can use the GPU acceleration, for a reason why this is awesome, see: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Larry...ook-at-Canvas/
(you can actually look at the fish tank example yourself, its amazing what a GPU does, especially if you run at high res!)
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
Wow, I think I never spent almost £2000 on a computer before. Luckily (or unluckily?) work doesn't require me to need such stuff.
Really? I'm considering the top end iMac. The screen on it's own is ~ £1000 if you buy from Dell etc. Combine that with an i7 processor, and a better OS (purely subjective) and I don't think it's overpriced.
I'm no longer a hardcore gamer though - I sold my PC with a GTX280 some time ago. I guess the 5850 mobility (which is what is currently believed to be in the iMac) should be fine for everything but super hires FPS gaming.
I considered a MacPro, but I want an all-in-one solution, and I can't see me ever using dual Xeons - even with massive virtualisation.
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