Steam for Mac: First Impressions, Windows Is Faster

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actually they can be compared, you just choose not to and don't acknowledge any comparison, though how do you justify double price compared to my laptop for the macbook pro




i guess you didn't notice that both they computers they tested, they tested the Win7 performance against the Mac OSX performance (ie the desktop and laptop are not compared)
 


for the Xeons, look into the Workstation section, IMO, its better just to build the Xeon system yourself
 
Looks like macbooks and consoles are becoming simliar.
~ Higher price then it's worth
~ No upgrading possible
~ Last gen video card
~ Hardware becomes outdated, but the price of the machine is the same
~ Kids who own this, think their better off then pc owners
 
Alright, here we go. Now before I begin remember that this is just a price – hardware comparison. No benchmarks or any of that, it is a comparison of what you get for your money. I’ll try to match by specs as best as I can. Then if I have time I will match to price. I will start with Macs and then find the similarly spec PC. When I start with something I will select the Mac product and then use the cheapest venison of it that is available. I will also supply links to product pages. All Macs will be compared to a Dell System unless I can find some other manufacturer that offers Xenon in their desktops… and I cant so scratch that. Any piece of hardware listed with a spec of “None” means that the option is there but by default is empty. Shipping cost on macs seems to be free on all, not sure on dells, if you want it get it yourself and let us know.
Mac vs. Dell

We’ll start with the expensive end.

The Mac Pro - $2500
http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MB871LL/A?mco=MTM3NDc3ODQ
CPU – Single 2.66GHZ quad core Xenon
RAM – 3GB DDR3 1066
Hard Drive 1 - 640GB
Hard Drive 2 – None
Hard Drive 3 – None
Hard Drive 4 – None
Graphics – GeForce GT 120

The Dell (By Specs)
Nothing using Xenon Processors

The Dell (By Price)
Had to go with Alienware Aurora ALX - $2300 ($200 under target)
CPU – Single i7-920 2.66GHZ
RAM – 6GB DDR3 1600
Hard Drive 1 – 500GB (RAID 0 with Drive 2)
Hard Drive 2 – 500GB (RAID 0 with Drive 1)
Hard Drive 3 – None
Hard Drive 4 – None
Graphics – 1x ATI Radeon 5870


Next Up is the iMac which I already did by price, here it is by spec.
iMac - $1200
http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MB950LL/A?mco=MTM3NDc2NDc
CPU – Core 2 Duo 3.06Ghz
RAM – 4GB DDR3 1066 (more than the Mac Pro…???)
Hard Drive 1 – 640GB
Graphics – GeForce 9400M

Dell (By Spec) Inspiron 560 - $800
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/desktop-inspiron-560?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&redirect=1
CPU – Intel Core 2 Duo 2.93GHZ
RAM – 4GB DDR3 1066
Hard Drive 1 – 750GB
Graphics – Intel GMA X4500

I guess Mac has it if I’m not allowed to match the price.



Next we have the Mac mini
Mac Mini - $600
http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MC238LL/A?mco=MTM3NTAwOTE
CPU – Core 2 Duo 2.26GHZ
RAM – 2GB DDR3 1066
Hard Drive 1 – 160GB
Graphics – GeForce 9400m

Dell by Spec – (Again) Inspiron 560s $530
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=ddcwcc1&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19
CPU – Core 2 Duo 2.93GHZ
RAM – 4GB DDR3 1066
Hard Drive 1 – 750GB
Graphics – Intel GMA X4500

Dell by Price – Inspiron Zino HD $600
http://www.dell.com/us/en/home/desktops/inspiron-zino-hd/pd.aspx?refid=inspiron-zino-hd&s=dhs&cs=19&~oid=us~en~29~inspiron-zino-hd-anav4~~
CPU – AMD Athlon 2 1.8GHZ
RAM – 4GB DDR2 800
Hard Drive 1 – 750GB
Graphics – ATI HD3200


I’m not doing laptops because I lost interested, if anyone is so inclined have at it.

There it is, a price comparison of Mac vs PC.


 
Thanks for that wokstation suggestion.

I could only find them in Dual Xenon, which you can get in Mac too so Ill do that real quick

Mac Pro Dual Xenon $3300
CPU - Dual 2.26GHZ xenon
RAM - 6GB DDR3 1066
Hard Drive 1 - 640GB
Hard Drive 2 - 4 - None
Graphics - GeForce GT 120


Dell by spec T7500 (base price underconfigured $1830)(price configured $3100)
CPU - Dual 2.26GHZ xenon
RAM - 6GB DDR3 1066
Hard Drive 1 - 750GB
All other Bays - None


Dell by price - too many configureable options. Thing that can jack this price upwards of 10K for some real graphics work and all that crap. Truely powerful workstations.
 
Seems I opened a can of waorms but everyone has run to Dell to do the comparison.
Why?
Dell aren't exactly what I would consider a comparative system.
If you want to do comparative you have to have specification as well as style and Dell, even the XPS range, are pretty boxey and dull.

I picked Sony as the comparison because within the PC market Sony are often accused of the same thing as Apple - overpriced but stylish - but if you have the hard cash available you can have a machine that really kicks ass.

If I wanted to compare Apples and Oranges just to prove a laptop is cheaper than a Macbook I would have selected a cheapy and crap generic brand like Gateway or Acer. As it is by naming specifically Sony as the standard bearer for proving that laptops are more cost-effective than Macbooks I have deliberately made it as hard for myself as possible. The most over-priced PC hardware I could possibly find is cheaper to buy than an equivalently spec'd Macbook.

I would even bet that Dells recent acquisition "Alienware" would give Macbooks a run for their money, as they are notorious for being ridiculously overpriced. Does anyone want to spec up an Alienware against a Macbook just to prove a point?
 
You are right, I do feel the same way about sony. Tho I dont know if its true, I would feel that they are overpriced and "stylish" let me find some specs.
 
Im just gonna stick to IMac comparisons because its right in that 1000-1500 price range. Which is about what I usually spend on a PC when I build. Tho I do build. Much more worthwhile. Ill also say that you mentioning that you want a sony is kinda silly because really I just proved that the dells are cheaper and have more powerful hardware. Who gives a damn if its stylish. The looks wernt in question. But if the Mac needs to win it i guess you need to go against sony.

Now $1200 iMac vs Sony

$1200 iMac
core 2 Duo 3.06GHZ
4GB ram
500GB drive
9400m graphics

For the sony the cheapest thing they had was $1300, your right, more expensive, lets see what you get for the extra 100 not much ill say, not much

Core 2 Duo 2.7Ghz
4GB DDR2 6400
320GB hd
and GeForce 210M

So The iMac can have it vs sony.

So to the owners of a Mac or some sony thing. Is all that style worth the extra $$$

I think my arguement still stands.




 
My shot at the dual Quad Xeon powermac:

http://tinyurl.com/34f8sxe

The HP in configuration on the picture above has the same CPU and the same type and amount of RAM however it lacks firewire a soundcard network card and a graphics card for the obvious reason that HP does not have anything that could match the price range of the mac and their graphic cards are FireGL in stead of Radeons. The mac has a bigger harddrive since HP has no 640Gb harddrives and their next in kin would have driven the price up with another 100 bucks and i chose the cheapest windows 7 x64 version they offered.

Still this HP workstation already costs 3227 USD while the mac sits on 3299 USD. This leaves little space to upgrade the HP to match the mac and it is doubtfull you can find a descent PCI-E 16x v2.0 graphics card a gigabit network adaptor a (cheapass) audio card and for comfort i leave the Firewire and airport be since i would not use them any way (true if you buy them OEM or at least not at HP you could close the gap between HP and Apple a bit).

Between the two of them the HP is not only way more expensive but also not nearly as pretty but thats a personal thing and in a head to head comparison this should not matter much.

Last but not least i checked other brands of x86 workstations and had to conclude that Lenovo in example does not ship dual Quad Xeon setups and dell workstations that do are even more expensive then this HP.

All that is left is the platform support, warranty's and service and for as far as i know both HP and Apple have one year of carry in waranty but Hp is not to strickt about it while Apple notoriously sucks. Then again if you dont buy extended service from HP you HP will meet her end of service in somewhere between 2 and 5 years while Apple still supports some of their G5 Powermacs and Xserv's.
 



your right on. I went through a few places on x86 workstations and they get pricy fast. They have cheap ones, but the cheapest dell was a crap proc and 1G ram. The configureable options can bring them to far more power than I think you can get on that Mac but at prices going over 20k. Warrenty service has always been good for me with macs, though I hate talking to their nerds or w/e they call them. Although at least they speak proper english.
 
[citation][nom]cbrei10213[/nom] All Macs will be compared to a Dell System unless I can find some other manufacturer that offers Xenon in their desktops… and I cant so scratch that. [/citation]

It'll be easier if you search with "Xeon", not "Xenon",
from business/workstations not from home section, try Dell Precision T7500 or something. Same specs, costs more.
Don't like the high prices of those Xeons? Me neither, but lots of video- and 3D folks do, if fact they love them.

As for the iMac comparison. iMac is an all-in-one. Dell offers one like that, "Studio One 19".
Ok, so it has only 19" screen, and can't compete with anything but the lowest end iMac availlable,
but when you tick all the boxes to match the specs it still comes up costing more.

Wah, so you want a fair comparison against basic minitowers? Too bad, Apple doesn't make basic minitowers.
Now I'd like Apple to make a basic minitower that'd fit my needs. But they dont.
I'd like macpro to use normal processors, not workstation class xeons, but macpros come with xeons.

If you want to compare similar products, compare similar products.
If you just want to win an argument with made up points, then go on and compare a product class to another.

Dell even has a POS garbage copy of mac mini, if you're interested. I'm not.
 
You called last year's MacBook PRO a "lower end Mac"?!?! I thought that was their best selling flagship at several thousand dollars? My 1-1/2 yr old $575 Gateway laptop that is only used for mobile web-surfing & occasional Portal/TF2/Left4Dead fix when away from home has more juice than that. 😱

Fanboy rage in 3... 2... 1...
 



I did tick all the boxes, just now. It was cheaper. ?
 
With my aged 2008 MacPro GTX285 both systems fully maxed @ 4x MSAA + 16X AF at 1920x1200 frame rates I get with Portal are:

OS X 10.6.3 (console reading circa 125fps)
Windows 7 / nvidia drivers 197.45 (console reading circa 170fps)

After the Valve update to Portal the graphics were visually like for like (nothing spectacular on either OS) and barely distinguishable. These are more than adequate frame rates for both OS's. Given that it is an unoptimised first release for Mac with Apple's notoriously crappy OpenGL drivers I managed to play through the entire game in a little over 3.5 hrs, without a crash, whilst simultaneously recording three TV programmes and converting two Movies to run on an iPod (courtesy of EyeTV).
 
Didn't like the comparisons, mainly because the mac had 9400m or higher graphics while dell systems had 4500 intel graphics. At least with a 9400m you can play games on medium with a decent resolution where as the integrated 4500 couldn't even play portal on low with a resolution over 1280x1024, 1024x576(fixed widescreen resolution)
Honestly comparing laptops for gaming is a weird concept that's just being introduced within the past 5 or so years. People paid 2000-6000$ for a laptop you can get now for 500$ that's 5x the speed. Hell though, I couldn't play half life 1 on my netbook with a 4500 at a resolution over 1280x1024 without lag. 500-600$ can get you a laptop with a dual processor @2.2GHz, Radeon 4650, 4gb DDR2 800MHz, and a 17" screen and 250gb of hdd. Want a high performance laptop? Pay the extra 200$ for an i5 and 4gb DDR3 @1066.
 
[citation][nom]theribster500[/nom]for all you pc fanboys out there, first off, this is the first version of steam + ports of these games for the first time for a completely different OS. It takes time for things to become perfected, and even still, it isn't perfected then. Seriously, how long has steam been on windows for, compared to this release of steam for os x[/citation]

So because they are late to the game we should excuse it? It runs like crap (compared to PC) and has broken elements, if it's not ready then don't release it.
 
[citation][nom]hemelskonijn[/nom]Cryogenic: How the hell did you manage to take my post criticize it and then come to the same conclusion?[/citation]

Read Blizzard's post, it's the OSX graphics stack that lacks features and not their optimizations. Also Starcraft II and Warcraft are not DirectX ports, they run in OpenGL in windows too.

Also what king of optimizations are you talking about, that no company can make despite their best efforts (considering they have managed to optimize on all platforms so far, except OS X).

 
[citation][nom]theribster500[/nom]for all you pc fanboys out there, first off, this is the first version of steam + ports of these games for the first time for a completely different OS. It takes time for things to become perfected, and even still, it isn't perfected then. Seriously, how long has steam been on windows for, compared to this release of steam for os x[/citation]

Gaining 5% market share is not worth the extra cash involved to get a previous game working on a Mac. The only hope for Steam to survive on a Mac is for developers to start making games that support OpenGL and DirectX. Developers will try at first, but it ultimately will not happen. Developers are already looking for ways to port games from one platform to another without having to rewrite the core of the game. Which is unfortunately what will need to happen for games to succeed.
 
Cryogenic:

Its not so much that no company can make it but more that they wont, you cant utilize a system to its maximum potential if you have overhead (even if its only a little) and if you reuse code that is platform independent. Most of the software we run today runs on layers if you will the games in example don't communicate with with a set of hardware but with DirectX or OpenGL who in turn communicates with the system drivers (or kernel extensions in the case of a mac) which finally addresses the hardware (graphics card and many other parts). This is a reversed pyramid and the more layers there are the more overhead you create specially if you port it. Those same layers in that pyramid ensure that the end result is portable (cheap and dirty if needed) as long as the new stack or pyramid represents roughly the same structure and is able to communicate with the layers above and below. Herein lies the problem since the layers differ for all platforms there is always the need to fix specific pieces of code so the aforementioned layers above and below are able to communicate with it. Rewriting the complete layer (the app or game in this case) costs loads of money so any one including blizzard prefers to just change the code using tricks and hacks to get it working acceptable and stable enough.

In most programs subtle hacks and tricks wont produce any noticeable overhead and as you might imagine the more "simple" the code is the less tricks and hacks are needed to get it run in the way it should run. Games are a different story since games are resource demanding the effects of the port are more likely to show up no matter how well you ported it.

Now imagine some one wiping some layers from that pyramid off the table and write a game for the remaining layers of his or her pyramid ... the result would be less layers that have to communicate with each other but also a specific set of perks and weaknesses so any hack they would have to make would only be to circumvent these weaknesses leaving all the hack to make it compatible out creating an environment where there is no overhead unless absolutely necessary and preferable clean code.

It is almost impossible to write software multi platform that way since it is both time and resource intensive work and thus costs loads of money and in the last two decades we started to work with more and more layers in example the game "engine" that is reusable now more then ever.

Starcraft II and World of Warcraft run on DirectX 9 (pixel shader 2.0) primarily while both are capable of running on OpenGL. While running windows you could theoretically switch from DirectX to OpenGL if you change the config.wtf file of World of Warcraft and the result will be a lower frame rate and less advanced graphics not because OpenGL is not capable enough but because the game is made primarily for DirectX 9.0c.

 
[citation][nom]dalta centauri[/nom]Honestly comparing laptops for gaming is a weird concept that's just being introduced within the past 5 or so years.[/citation] Because their market share is increasing exponentially whilst desktops are in decline. Consoles and products like the iPad are where the profit in games is headed. Incidentally, this doesn't bode well for gaming on either Windows PC or Mac OSX desktops. Valves stab is brave and possibly foolhardy. However, Digital Distribution is an area where games sales are increasing. Persuading devs to code for all platforms and deliver by one service is a real possibility. Direct X really doesn't have much going for it when it comes down to platform agnostics. Unlike the commenter, datawrecker, above, I think games producers would be quite happy with a 10% market expansion if they coded for Linux, Mac OS and Windows using OpenGL and sold via one delivery system. There's an awful lot of profit in 10%.
 
I think usersname is right, in choosing between support for both DirectX and OpenGL orgoing with "just" OpenGl is the right choise if only to ensure OpenGL performance keeping portability and at the same time making sure dev's use a cleaner (thus faster more stable) code base.
 
Yeah, well if I want to play games, I'll buy a nintendo. Mac is not for games, and no one buys a mac for that purpose. Enjoy updating windows and catching malware from browsing the wrong site with an out of date browser. How many security plugins do you need again?
 
There's a lot more to computing than playing games. I got a mac a year ago and I'll never go back to windows. Windows 7 is so annoying to use. Plus anything you can do in linux you can do on your mac. It's such a useful OS for programming and it comes with so many great tools. Most of the people I know with Macs are scientists. For instance almost all the scientists at the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics here in Victoria use Macs. Why? Because they work well, have a full programming suite available, and they're secure. No virus's or malware screwing with you on a daily basis.

My wife has had her macbook for 5 years and has never had a single issue with it. It runs perfectly, the same as when she bought it.
 
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