NeMon'ess's Journal: What's wrong with Boot Camp for gaming?

There must be something wrong with it, because I looked over Apple's hardware, and I don't see anything particularly wrong for casual gamers except the graphics cards are crap. Is it not worth it to Apple to get get the gamers onboard and another 2% market share?

I can buy an iMac with a Radeon X1600? That card retails online for $90. For $180 I can get a GeForce 7900 GS that has around three times the performance. More importantly, it will run today's and tomorrow's games satisfactorily. The X1600 will not. Furthermore, the X1600 only comes with 128MB, unless I pay Apple $75 for 256MB. The 7900 GS of course comes with 256MB.

Or I can buy a $2000 iMac with a GeForce 7300 GT. Too bad the 7900 GS is still twice as powerful. And that's still the 128MB version. If I want it with 256 I have to pay Apple $125. Wait. WHAT? According to pricegrabber.com, I can buy the 256 version today for $100. What a way to screw the customers.

It's such a waste. Macs could be fine gaming machines. The pieces are all there except for the video card. Damn it Apple. PC users already have monitors and most don't need a new one. Please sell a mini-tower headless iMac with power in the $900 to $1400 range.

The boxes wouldn't even have to be that big. As tall and deep as a 17" iMac, but wide enough for a replaceable PCI-E card and two quiet 120mm fans in the front and back. If not used for gaming, the fans would run silently.

One suggestion

[dave-tx]

Consider the Mac Pro. Granted, it's more expensive, but it's also much more upgradeable than the iMacs or Mini's. If cost is a deterrant, consider doing what I'm doing - just put off your purchase for a few more months and stash away a bit during that time. It's worth delaying purchase of any Mac until 10.5 is released, anyhow (By then there's also a good chance that price point and/or hardware options will shift).

My Mac Pro plan is pretty simple - Configure it to it's bare minimum, upgrade memory, video

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[NeMon'ess]

Thanks anyway, but I quote guidryp (702488) [slashdot.org]:

I can't afford to take money and burn it. Dual Xeons and ECC memory (means) this platform is at least twice as expensive as it needs to be. This exceeds my computer budget by over 100%. I could build something on the PC that meets my needs and has similar power on most tasks for a little over 1/3 this cost. Giving Apple a chance, doesn't include being a moron with my money. I won't lay down an extra $1500 just to have OSX. That premium is a little rich for my bloo

Heh....

[jawtheshark]

You posted exactly this in a thread I recently read. Not under your name, I think: I would have noticed.

Apple is not interested in gamers. The reason is simple: serious games buy components, not systems. Apple sells systems...

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[NeMon'ess]

No, it <a href="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=221394& c id=17960868">was</a> <a href="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=221394&c id=17961036">me</a>. Unless someone else copied me and posted.

How many gamers are serious ones though? How many are casual? Judging by how many <$200 video cards there are, there's a ton of gamers who do just fine with them. I think these people would happily buy a headless Mac that comes with a GeForce 7900 GS. Then in two years they

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[jawtheshark]

Well, then someone must have copy/pasted it. I was really almost verbatim.

Anyway, to do this legally, you do not only need a 200$ video card (which are a scam, last time I bought one for my machine, I wasn't happy at all and went back for a more expensive one), but also a 400$ Vista license (can't buy XP anymore and you want to stay legal, don't you?). That's the investment even before playing any games. That PlayStation 3 suddenly starts to look cheap and the Wii is an easy sell with the wife.... ;-)

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[jawtheshark]

Oh, just before you think that I'm a Mac fanboy. I own no Macs and have no Apple stock. I'm typing this on a Debian machine that is overpowered (at least it was in 2003, when I bought it) because I used to be a gamer.

I used to own an iBook G3 600Mhz and was very happy with it. Alas it was victim of the famous "logic board failure" and wasn't covered by warranty anymore. This happened just before the Intel switch and I thought it was unwise to buy a new Mac. I went back PC with WinXP and am now slowly

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[NeMon'ess]

*Sigh*, having to buy a copy of XP is a really compelling cost argument, along with your others. Oh f'n well. I won't be switching anytime soon.

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[jawtheshark]

I have the Corporate Edition of XP, ehm, which means I never pay for XP. That's one of the reasons I migrate to Debian. I stopped pirating everything years ago with the exception of the operating system. I want to change that. If I'd have to pay for each machine that I reinstalled (mostly because the original OS was 100% borked) with that corporate edition, I'd be bankrupted.

I didn't want to crush your arguments why Apple should do this. To some extent they are really valid. I just wanted to offer an

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[NeMon'ess]

I didn't want to crush your arguments why Apple should do this. To some extent they are really valid. I just wanted to offer an alternate viewpoint.

I don't mind at all. You answered what I was looking for: Why Apple isn't doing what I want them to. They've considered the idea, tabled or rejected it, and I wanted to get perspectives on why. So thank you.