The Macs to Test
The second machine a 15” MacBook Pro is also a laptop. It is essentially the basic version with a 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo (Santa Rosa with a 800 MHz bus). The 15.4” screen in 1440 x 900 is animated by a Nvidia graphic card: a 128 MB Geforce 8600M GT. Apple have modified the card’s frequency: it works at 504 MHz (GPU) and 635 MHz (memory) while Nvidia recommend 600 MHz (GPU) and 700 MHz (memory) . The second interesting point is that the card has more memory under Windows (512 MB). The reason is simple: the graphic card is TurboCache (this feature allows it to recover some video memory from the live memory via the PCI-Express) but unfortunately the Apple driver doesn’t handle that technology. As we will see, this will have an impact sometimes. The Windows tests were carried out with Windows XP Home (SP2).
The third test machine is a 24”iMac. It is the more costly version, with a 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo processor (800 MHz bus) and 2 GB of RAM. The graphics card which animates the screen (in1920 x 1200) is an Ati Mobility Radeon HD 2600 XT. As the name suggests, it is a card originally intended for laptops. Apple paces its card at 600/680 (GPU/memory). Ati recommend between 600 and 700 MHz for the GPU and between 700 and 750 MHz for the memory. The desktop version works at 800/1100 MHz. The card is accompanied by 256 MB of video memory. The tests in Windows use Windows Vista Ultra Edition.
Mac OS X has several advantages: the system is stable, the installation is simple (you just need to copy the contents of the CD onto the hard disk) and these games are usually best-sellers. A small hiccup is that they often come with a small (or sometimes big) delay. Another interesting point is that Mac OS X uses OpenGL to accelerate its graphic interface, the graphic cards supports this API very well and the performances are generally good.
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The Bottom Line (corrected): Macs = No good for games (maybe battleships and doom II)
Do you mean ultimate? (as far as I'm aware there is no "ultra" version of vista) and was it ultimate 64bit or 32bit?
A very weak and uninformed review. The MacBook and MacBookPro are not designed for gaming, but for media and business use. So why test them? The IMacs that can play games very well, Just search in Youtube.com for "Imac crysis" and watch the videos. Why did they use Vista? everyone knows that it creates a huge performance hit for games, that why Mac Gamers who use boot camp use Windows XP. The bottom of the range MacPro was excluded? why? because it might have shown a result that the authors didn't like? it only costs $2299. Not $3000 and comes with the HD2600 XT card not the 7300 mentioned in the article. I guess the article was written some ago before 10.5.1/2 as both updates have enhanced features that benefit gaming and in bootcamp you can put any Windows graphics card in. I guess that Pierre already had his conclusion and wrote an article to back it up. Very poor composition, certainly not constructive journalism! Why not find someone who knows about Mac's to write an article on getting the best out of gaming on a mac, just pop along to http://forums.macrumors.com/forumdisplay.php?f=125 there are lots of people there who could tell you differently. Overall a disappointing article for its lack of accurate information and depth.
Pretty bad review....
There is a 256 version of the MacBook Pro, which if you are a gamer would be the one you go for...
You CAN scale the res on all those machines, and even have the apps autoswitch them, so I don't understand your comment that the Mac cannot do resolution scaling so you had to go with full res...
While I agree you should not be buying a Mac if what you want is gaming, this article was just uninformed....
Good points above - a proper review should use the latest machines.
I still found the review very interesting because it directly compares the performance with Parallels and VMWare to OS X native and Windows native. One of the big selling points of Parallels (which I bought) is that it emulates accelerated 3D graphics in Windows. And this review shows that this is just marketing hot air as that 3D acceleration makes the difference between 5 FPS and 1 FPS, 5 times as fast in marketing speak, still completely unusable in the real world.
So, big thanks for making the effort!
PS: I am not a native english speaker myself but the english in this article is pretty hard to understand in places. I am sure you'd find english-speaking volunteers to edit / proof read this...
Face it, the MAC is a far better computer because it has support for a far better operating system. Windows is just BS, as you will see quite easily for yourself if you actually use the computer and don't just play games. Life is short folks, do yourself a favor and give it a try. Be warned though, it's very true, once you go Mac you don't go back.
But some readers jump to conclusions (e.g. "Bottomline, Macs are no good for games"--geez did you read this at all?), and even the writers of this article have many misconceptions--it is obvious you are out of your element a bit. But I applaud your efforts nonetheless, don't get me wrong.
Windows is basically 'owned' now by OS X, OS X has Windows running in a window, or available at the touch of a button. And there are plenty of instances of "It is even faster, generally, than on Windows."
Thanks for pointing out that even WINDOWS runs better on Mac! Which it does. And, you don't have to rely on Windows horrible and almost complete lack of security.
Macs suck
What we wanted was a more direct comparison between hardware and OS. Macs use PC hardware now so the comparison should be much easier. I suspect Tom is being paid, forced or coerced into not showing us this important comparison. Macs suck but I suspect their OS is far less addled than vista.
Are They Any Good For Gaming? The reveiw is flawed in some ways yes, but the definitive answer is that if you want to play the latest and best games, why get a mac?
I had a mac, and I'll never go back...to mac that is. I can buy 3 pc laptops with similar internal hardware for the price of a mac nowadays. Macs are to computers what Starbucks is to coffee. The folks that drink it can come up with all kinds of reasons why they are right to pay 3 times as much for their 'super special' coffee. More power too ya, but seriously, macworld...wake up. Macs just can't compete.
Compete to what Gryphyn, compete to what?