Mac vs. PC thread

[mal]

You mean something like this one?

Mind you, I'd just love to own a plain old G4 cube. :yum

 

[racketboy]

that "Rotten Apple" mod was very sweet

you guys ever seen it?

 

[Des-ROW]

Originally posted by gameboy900@Nov 7, 2003 @ 01:46 AM

Oooh can you imagine a Mac case running a PC. That would sure get Clouds panties in a bunch. Oh and Des-Row alot of how a PC game looks depends on the video card you're using. If you use an old DX7 card you will not be able to see the amazing effects you get from pixel and vertex shaders. Half-Life 2 will run on such cards but then all the pretty effects will not be possible since the card can't handle them.

Even with a Radeon9800XT, PC games will not look as good as console games.

 

[mal]

This rotten apple?

I love the colouring. :thumbs-up:

[edit] Here's another one.

 

[Jeffrey]

Couldn't I just Mod the imac to make it a dedicated Dreamcast or Saturn or something? I am sure that flat screen could be converted to a display. Then I'd have a cool looking game station that makes use of the imac's CD drawer!

 

[Tagrineth]

Des-ROW:

PC games tend to look worse than console games because PC games have to cater to the 'least common denominator', i.e. all the people with integrated Intel/SIS and GeForce4 MX *grumble* DX7 class cards, who still have P3's and lesser Athlons (and even *shudder* Celerons). The idea being you want as many people to have access to your games as possible.

Hell, I'm a neurotic tech-head and I'm on the borderline low-end now (800MHz), and interestingly that's going to stay borderline for a while thanks to Xbox making sure many recent games can run on 733MHz... LOL.

Anyway, console games suffer from this syndrome too - the number of PS2 games supporting >2 players is really depressing compared to N64, Dreamcast, GCN, and Xbox - simply because the hardware only has two controller ports, despite multitaps being available. This also applies to multiplatform games. This also applies to online - PS2 does have a decent number of online games but it's still pretty limited because the adapter is an add-on. Xbox, by comparison, has quite a lot of games that are compatible with Xbox Live! somehow or another (at least for a possibility of patches, or extra multiplayer levels, or even extra single player levels).

Anyway, if you look at general trends, when new consoles appear they generally give PC games of the time a sound thrashing, but about halfway through the cycle the balance of power shifts. It always does. Look at Unreal Tournament 2004, Half-Life 2, Max Payne 2... they look great.

 

[Jurai]

Originally posted by Tagrineth@Nov 7, 2003 @ 03:59 PM

Des-ROW:

PC games tend to look worse than console games because PC games have to cater to the 'least common denominator', i.e. all the people with integrated Intel/SIS and GeForce4 MX *grumble* DX7 class cards, who still have P3's and lesser Athlons (and even *shudder* Celerons). The idea being you want as many people to have access to your games as possible.

Hell, I'm a neurotic tech-head and I'm on the borderline low-end now (800MHz), and interestingly that's going to stay borderline for a while thanks to Xbox making sure many recent games can run on 733MHz... LOL.

Anyway, console games suffer from this syndrome too - the number of PS2 games supporting >2 players is really depressing compared to N64, Dreamcast, GCN, and Xbox - simply because the hardware only has two controller ports, despite multitaps being available. This also applies to multiplatform games. This also applies to online - PS2 does have a decent number of online games but it's still pretty limited because the adapter is an add-on. Xbox, by comparison, has quite a lot of games that are compatible with Xbox Live! somehow or another (at least for a possibility of patches, or extra multiplayer levels, or even extra single player levels).

Anyway, if you look at general trends, when new consoles appear they generally give PC games of the time a sound thrashing, but about halfway through the cycle the balance of power shifts. It always does. Look at Unreal Tournament 2004, Half-Life 2, Max Payne 2... they look great.

the few online games ps2 has i really enjoy (frequency, socom) but ya xbox online gaming is 2000x better, i attribute this more to the centralized nature than to online play being built in though. Since you can play nearly all your xbox games that support online using one service with built in voice chat, friends lists, and all that other jazz, its just much more convenient and fun than anything else. Plus downloading new content is nice.

PC games just need to go back to saying screw you to anyone who doesnt have a half decent pc. Plus imo its still funner playing online cuz your not gonna get any sweet ass gaming like RTCW:ET on your xbox, sorry.

 

[racketboy]

most of your upcoming, high-end games like HL2 and Doom 3, don't exactly cater to lowend machines, do they?

 

[Jurai]

Originally posted by racketboy@Nov 7, 2003 @ 05:00 PM

most of your upcoming, high-end games like HL2 and Doom 3, don't exactly cater to lowend machines, do they?

HL2 will run on pretty low end

 

[racketboy]

only with all the eye candy and such turned off -- which is what they were kinda talking about

 

[Jurai]

Originally posted by racketboy@Nov 7, 2003 @ 05:19 PM

only with all the eye candy and such turned off -- which is what they were kinda talking about

as if i'd dedicate time to read their posts before replying

 

[Tagrineth]

Originally posted by Jurai@Nov 7, 2003 @ 04:22 PM

PC games just need to go back to saying screw you to anyone who doesnt have a half decent pc. Plus imo its still funner playing online cuz your not gonna get any sweet ass gaming like RTCW:ET on your xbox, sorry.

Um, actually from what I've read, RtCW for Xbox is an excellent game, especially online (up to 16 players with various modes).

 

[Jurai]

Originally posted by Tagrineth+Nov 7, 2003 @ 05:32 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Tagrineth @ Nov 7, 2003 @ 05:32 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'> <!--QuoteBegin-Jurai@Nov 7, 2003 @ 04:22 PM

PC games just need to go back to saying screw you to anyone who doesnt have a half decent pc. Plus imo its still funner playing online cuz your not gonna get any sweet ass gaming like RTCW:ET on your xbox, sorry.

Um, actually from what I've read, RtCW for Xbox is an excellent game, especially online (up to 16 players with various modes). [/b][/quote]

RTCW on xbox is one of the worst xbox games i ever played, the multiplayer was horrible. Counterstrike might be good.

edit: anything i say tonight may be mean and overly offensive, i'm pissed off beyond the realm of pissed off atm

 

[gameboy900]

And even with the better eye candy counter strike on xbox will only support 16 player games while the much older pc version can do upto 32. As for Half-Life 2 it will be able to scale the graphical quality to your hardware. So if you got the latest DX9 generation cards you'll get the best possible images but if you only have the old DX7 generation card it will still run but with obviously alot of the eye candy turned off. The thing PC games have to have that console games don't is that they scale their graphics and such to the PC they're running on. If a game detects the latest video card it will turn on (or you do it in the settings) all the amazing eye candy in there. When I first played Unreal 2 (not tournament, the single player game) on my Radeon 9800Pro I blew me away. The game was absolutely goregeous. I never saw a game that looked quite so good. Especially at 1280x1024.

 

[Gallstaff]

Plus CS on a console just isn't counter-strike...

 

[it290]

Sure, they run in lower resolution, still they look better, and I personally do not care about how many fps you can get with a 500 USD video card, the ingame graphics are horrible in most PC games, why? I wouldn't know. I personally do not believe that fps and resolution are everything, how the game looks is more important. I still see more detailed character models and backgrounds in console games.

Again, you honestly think that Silent Hill 3 looks better on a PS2 than a high-end PC?

As for the character models being more detailed, I agree with you to some extent, but that depends on the type of game more than anything else. Consoles get the 3d fighting games, and those are more or less always the games with the highest player model polygon counts (DoA3, SC2). They can afford to do that because there isn't much else to render at the same time. But looking at a game like UT2003 (of which there is a console version that's fairly limited by comparison), not only are the player models very detailed, but they also possess realistic physics and many of them can be displayed simultaneously. PC's usually are the first to do things things like ragdoll physics and deformable geometry , with consoles catching up when they break the CPU/memory restraints needed to do those types of things. I'm not going to go so far as to say 'PC games universally look better', but I think it's silly to assert the opposite as well.

 

[Tagrineth]

Consoles and PC's go back and forth...

When a console gen arrives, it tends to trounce concurrent PC games severely. Conversely, around halfway through a console's life span, PC games take the lead and keep it until the next console gen... rinse, repeat.

 

[Gallstaff]

Notice how mac has no place in that cycle

 

[Cloud121]

Notice how the Mac isn't considered a gaming machine. If you want games, buy a damn console system. Besides, if a game is big and popular enough, it'll get ported to Mac eventually, sometimes with added bonuses you can't get with the Windows version.

 

[Gallstaff]

I keep forgetting how great the mac version of Half-life wa.... oh sorry there was no mac version of one of the best selling games of all time, my bad.