iMac & Macbook gaming

**h.chua** · 08-02-2006, 06:58 PM

Hi, I have an iMac 17", RAM maxed out to 2 gig. However, I can't seem to use this mac for gaming. After reading a lot of threads I finally came to a conlcusion that gaming isn't possible/smooth here because of my video card. The 17" comes with ATI Radeon X1600 graphics processor using PCI Express 128 MB of GDDR3 video memory. I learned that the reason the mac doesn't have smooth gaming even if the game (doom, warcraft) is set to the lowest resolution and lowest detail already. It seems that I would have to upgrade the vram to 256, however it's not possible with the 17", according to forums, and I've also asked iStudio. What can I do? Is this the end for gaming for me?

And to the Macbook users out there, how is gaming on the Macbook? Feedbacks? Suggested specs?

Thank you! I would really like to resolve this dilemma of mine. I want to make sure if I still have hope in playing games in my iMac

**Sponsor** · 08-02-2006 06:58 PM

**lamski** · 08-02-2006, 07:21 PM

Install bootcamp, install windows XP and play your games there.

**h.chua** · 08-02-2006, 07:27 PM

would it help? with regards to smoothness? isn't the hardware the problem? because i have the mac versions of the games anyway, it's just that it doesn't play smoothly. so if i play it with windows here on my mac, are you saying that it would improve?

**booblanco** · 08-02-2006, 08:32 PM

@ h.chua

Many of the Mac games (particularly those from Aspyr) are straight ports of PC games - that's why there is the inevitable performace hit. You may say that a lot of the performance is "lost in translation" so to speak. EA's Tiger Woods is a glaring example of this.

There are however game developers such as Blizzard who, despite a limited market, release Mac-native games like Warcraft and Diablo that run smoothly on machines such as iMacs and PowerBooks with video cards of at least 64MB VRAM. Always refer to the recommended specs of games as your basis; minimum system requirements will only disappoint you.

I recommend that you play Warcraft 3, Unreal Tournament 2004, The Sims and Call of Duty on your iMac. Gameplay and framerate are excellent on my specs provided below (similar to yours):

**suavecito** · 08-02-2006, 09:13 PM

128mb X1600 Radeon is very much capable of playing Warcraft and Doom, (but not DOOM3) Try not to enable antialias or any of those eyecandy stuff in your game settings. Another is to quit all running application except for the game that you are playing. Games are hardware intensive and they dont want any other applications running along with them.

**kilter2** · 08-03-2006, 12:46 AM

games like generals dont run smoothly on a macbook. It runs better on my ibook 1.2. Maybe the game is not yet universal

**raygun** · 08-03-2006, 04:27 AM

ano po ibig sabihin ng "smooth"? i have 3 first person shooting games and one flight simulator, pero smooth naman ang resolution sa imac, wala din lags.

**quasar** · 08-03-2006, 10:07 AM

I think kilter2 may have something there. The problem may be that you are playing non-Universal games on your Intel-based iMac. It is well known that programs written for PowerPC Macs are slow on Intel Macs. I think you'll have to buy Univeral versions of your games.

**kimir** · 08-03-2006, 10:08 AM

@kilter
cnc generals is not universal, not yet at least

**PatrickGaerlan** · 08-03-2006, 11:47 AM

There's no reason your iMac should be unable to run those games acceptably. Make sure you're using the Universal Binary version of Doom 3 from Aspyr. Download the update here.

Which Warcraft game are you playing, Warcraft 3 or World of Warcraft? If it's World of Warcraft, it should have automatically updated your copy to a Universal Binary back in February. Unfortunately, there's no UB version of Warcraft 3. In that case, use Boot Camp to run Windows and play Warcraft 3 from there, you'll get the full speed (the Windows and Mac OS X versions are in the same box).