79 replies to this topic

[Camper-Hunter]

So NVIDIA used one 6 pin and one 8 pin jacks, instead of two 6 pin, just to annoy Mac users? I have more trust in the manufacturer's design team than in a commercial card hacker.

[mattw]

It seems strange but a cheap 09 machine upgraded is still great value if you want to game in OS X.

As well as upgrading my own 2.26GHz I recently did a single socket 2.66GHz quad to 3.33GHz Hex and that was so easy in comparison - like 5 mins. to swap the CPU.

You could probably do the CPU, RAM, GPU and install an SSD in half and hour.

The good news is that the trend for more and more power hungry GPU's seems to be more or less over and the latest designs put more emphasis on keeping the watts down so more cards are coming back into the the right range for these machines. If the drivers appears either via Nvidia or in OS X updates we may yet see it through another good few years for gaming.

[sturmvogel]

Given that Nvidia regularly updates its drivers and that Yosemite can run Nvidia cards natively, I con't see that as an issue. I'd upgraded my 2009 base model with an SSD, 24 GB of RAM and a GTX 960 and was doing just fine on my not very demanding games (Civ 5, Witcher 1 & 2, Pillars of Oblivion, Europa Universalis IV) until it died on me with an untractable video problem when I was updating to X.10.5. The main limitations as far as I was concerned were the slow SATA access speed, only half that of more modern machines, but you can bypass that with a 4x PCIe card for M.2 SSD blades. I was getting ready to swap out processors like Mattw as I'd come to the conclusion that my 2.26 Xeon was the most serious limitation remaining on my machine when it all became moot.

It will be interesting to see how much of a subjective difference there is between the Mac Pro and the new 5K iMac with the M295x video card that Apple gave me when it couldn't fix the MacPro once the iMac arrives (Hopefully later today).

[Camper-Hunter]

sturmvogel, on 30 September 2015 - 08:29 AM, said:

The main limitations as far as I was concerned were the slow SATA access speed, only half that of more modern machines, but you can bypass that with a 4x PCIe card for M.2 SSD blades.

Well, in real life use (not benchmarks), you probably won't see much difference between the SSD on SATA2 and the PCIe card, unless your work requires copying GBs of data. Because the huge advantage of SSDs is more related to the low access times than the raw transfer speed.

[mattw]

sturmvogel, on 30 September 2015 - 08:29 AM, said:

It will be interesting to see how much of a subjective difference there is between the Mac Pro and the new 5K iMac with the M295x video card that Apple gave me when it couldn't fix the MacPro once the iMac arrives (Hopefully later today).

I'm sure you will be pleased with the improvement - it should be more or less identical in performance to a maxed out 2009 Mac Pro (CPU and GPU upgrade) for games plus you get the fantastic display.

Given that you are getting it covered by Apple that's a good deal, it's just harder to justify if you were paying and already have an upgraded Mac Pro as effectively it is more of a side grade.

[Matt Diamond]

sturmvogel, on 30 September 2015 - 08:29 AM, said:

It will be interesting to see how much of a subjective difference there is between the Mac Pro and the new 5K iMac with the M295x video card that Apple gave me when it couldn't fix the MacPro once the iMac arrives (Hopefully later today).

Your Mac Pro 2009 was covered by an Apple warranty??

[sturmvogel]

Camper-Hunter, on 30 September 2015 - 10:56 AM, said:

Well, in real life use (not benchmarks), you probably won't see much difference between the SSD on SATA2 and the PCIe card, unless your work requires copying GBs of data. Because the huge advantage of SSDs is more related to the low access times than the raw transfer speed.

Agreed, the most significant difference that I noticed when I installed the EVO 950 256GB SSD was on loading times.

[sturmvogel]

Matt Diamond, on 30 September 2015 - 07:38 PM, said:

Your Mac Pro 2009 was covered by an Apple warranty??

No, they offered me an equivalent Mac Pro since they couldn't figure out why my machine wouldn't display video despite swapping out video cards and the power supply, processor board and backplane board over 5 weeks. I turned the MacPro down because I really wanted a dual display setup like I'd had before. I'd been saving up for another monitor, but a new iMac would satisfy my requirements and be a better gaming machine in general. I got the 3TB Fusion drive because I needed to find a home for the data on my now homeless internal drives, although I did have to buy a Thunderbolt 1 enclosure for my two good 3.5'' drives from OWC. Right now they're in JBOD mode, but I may opt for a RAID of some sort as they're identical 2TB Toshibas. I couldn't talk them into the i7 processor in addition to the M295x, so I plan on running a few benchmarks to see how much of a difference the slower processor and the Fusion drive make, although I suspect not that much subjectively since I'm not really a power user. That is once it finishes restoring from my Time Machine back up (19 hours and counting now, dammit).

I will say that Thunderbolt, even just 1, is far, far faster in transferring large files around than the FW800 that I was using before. Would have preferred to buy an external Thunderbolt 2 enclosure, but they were all four-drive setups, when all I needed was a home for my Toshibas, and more expensive than I could afford.

[ginaadrson]

i am using the mac mini CPU and LG monitor  specially for games monitor, this monitor Game mode for gamers as well as for easy setup a height/ tilt movable stand for comfortable viewing.this monitor best use for gamers
  

[Sneaky Snake]

Are you using an eGPU with the Mini?

[Steve Ballmer]

LOL - You people think that Macs are real computers?

You slay me!
.....
wait a minute now ....

[DirtyHarry50]

Steve Ballmer, on 05 October 2017 - 03:06 PM, said:

LOL - You people think that Macs are real computers?

You slay me!
.....
wait a minute now ....

Are you trying to give the impression that you know the difference between what is real and what is not? Seriously?

You make me lol!

[UmarOMC1]

In these trying times, as a Mac gamer of the 90s... wait, it's still the 90s, right?

—a Hackintosh is the only reasonable gaming machine, as I was saying.

[macdude22]

Given the firmware checks in place in High Sierra, I'm fully expecting the boot chain to get secured requiring everything in the chain to be signed by Apple at some point in the future. This "sucks" for the power users that want to fiddle, but from a security standpoint I'm behind it. All the low hanging fruit vulnerabilities have been solved.

My prediction, Hackintoshes won't be able to run 10.15.

The future is going to be, there's other platforms for you to do "low level fiddling". That's fine, I've got my basement lab of old macs and linux boxes and raspberry pi's. My stuff that touches the internet in 2017 can be locked to the hilt.

[Camper-Hunter]

macdude, I agree. And I've always thought the hackintosh isn't worth the hassle. Either stay on the Mac platform with its strengths and weaknesses, or switch to another platform (like I did).

[UmarOMC1]

Well I've kept my computer able to run the latest for about 8 years, I suppose I can see what Apple's MacPro offering will be next year.

[macdude22]

I tried the whole Wandows thing for a few years. I have too many things to do and not enough time to do it. My life is too short to waste it on dicking with nvidia driver conflicts. If a game is on macOS or iOS great, otherwise there's plenty of great games on Xbox and Switch.

[the Battle Cat]

macdude22, on 06 October 2017 - 07:24 AM, said:

Given the firmware checks in place in High Sierra, I'm fully expecting the boot chain to get secured requiring everything in the chain to be signed by Apple at some point in the future.

::The Battle Cat runs into the gray auditorium in his little tank top with a sledgehammer in his hands, his enormous bewbs majestically bouncing and swaying in slow motion, then throws the hammer into the gigantic face of Macdude detonating the screen Big Brother is projected on::

[Steve Ballmer]

DirtyHarry50, on 05 October 2017 - 07:12 PM, said:

Are you trying to give the impression that you know the difference between what is real and what is not? Seriously?

You make me lol!

I have 132 Billion dollars, reality is whatever I say it is!

[ipickert55]

Steve Ballmer, on 11 October 2017 - 07:35 PM, said:

I have 132 Billion dollars, reality is whatever I say it is!

Can I report him Father Battle Cat?