Well, I did it....gaming PC

[Bananasaurus]

You gotta buy what works best for you and your needs. There's nothing wrong with using devices for multiple reasons from different manufacturers. There are far more iPhone users with Windows PCs than there are iPhone users with Macs. It's not uncommon. Windows PCs are amazing for gaming and are going to be the leaders for that market segment for years to come. Apple has made recent announcements to help developers port games to the Mac, but it's in its infant stages. And it still remains to be seen if enough developers will even hop on for it to be worth anything. Only time will tell.

Either way, congratulations on your shiny new gaming PC.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

Fair point, and the Sonoma comment reminds me that it's always an arms race between windows/game developers/crossover/wine/apple to see who can break something first. If I weren't in the position to invest in a dedicated gaming pc, I'd pursue it for sure, but I have the luxury of not having to.

I found that having to maintain both mac and windows (when my wife has a PC tower I set up for her) was a pain and decided to ditch the mac and proceed with gaming win machines. Much easier, and all of my software was cross-platform at that point anyway.

So it can get even easier.

 

[MallardDuck]

I found that having to maintain both mac and windows (when my wife has a PC tower I set up for her) was a pain and decided to ditch the mac and proceed with gaming win machines. Much easier, and all of my software was cross-platform at that point anyway.

So it can get even easier.

Ha...not going that far, only one toe into the dark side (ok, maybe up the knee).

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Tex Murphy Overseer is one I've never gotten to work on anything later than 7.

Thank you. That's a blast from the past, 25 year old game. Looks like it's hit or miss, some got it running in Win 10/11 and for some it doesn't work. Ironically it seems to work via Wine and Linux.

 

[MallardDuck]

Yep, I love all the games in that series. That one had some really funky video requirements (before things got standardized). I haven't tried it on the new machine yet...something for this winter.

 

[Isengardtom]

Wish it was different, but it's not, and I decided to stop denying reality.

I finally gave up and bought a gaming PC. That's my first non-Mac since 2006. Apple's continued insistence on going their own way (especially not allowing eGPUs) finally pushed me over the edge. The 4070 runs circles around the M1 Max. Crossover/parallels/fusion are fine for circa 1990's games, but between the x86/ARM translation, and the lack of GPU support, they're barely playable for anything from this century.

When even they can't even release Baldur's Gate 3 for Mac on time, you know it gotten really bad.

It was a bit of a nightmare building one that could drive my 5K LG ultrafine, but after fits and starts finally figured it out (displayport out on GPU to displayport in on motherboard to TB4 out to monitor)....and I'm lovin' it.

I did the same thing. Missed my gaming and lately lots of good games have been coming out in 2023

I Built my own Desktop PC which was both stressful and fun at the same time. Got a Core i5 - 13600 k + 4070 Ti and a 1440p gaming monitor. Love it so far

As for “Gaming Porting Toolkit” : even if it does become a success (and that’s a big if in my opinion), it will be years before there is a decent enough library available to reconsider Mac Gaming.

In the past I at least was able to use bootcamp and have best of both worlds but since apple Silicon Mac gaming is almost non existent. Only games I’ve played in the last few years were on my iPad Pro (Divinity Original Sin 2 and Civ 6 along with some Apple Arcade stuff), but would love to play Cities Skylines 2, Baldur’s gate 3, Starfield, …

 

[MallardDuck]

I did the same thing. Missed my gaming and lately lots of good games have been coming out in 2023

I Built my own Desktop PC which was both stressful and fun at the same time. Got a Core i5 - 13600 k + 4070 Ti and a 1440p gaming monitor. Love it so far

As for “Gaming Porting Toolkit” : even if it does become a success (and that’s a big if in my opinion), it will be years before there is a decent enough library available to reconsider Mac Gaming.

In the past I at least was able to use bootcamp and have best of both worlds but since apple Silicon Mac gaming is almost non existent. Only games I’ve played in the last few years were on my iPad Pro (Divinity Original Sin 2 and Civ 6 along with some Apple Arcade stuff), but would love to play Cities Skylines 2, Baldur’s gate 3, Starfield, …

Almost exactly the same specs - did the 13700k, and went back and upgraded to the TI last weekend. Figure it's the sweet spot for $/performance/future proof (though I wish it had 16GB VRAM, but the 4080 is just too $ for what you get). And of course the bragging rights inside are whispering 4090, but that's just insane for what I need.

I'm debating now if I play BG3 on the Mac when/if it comes out, or play it on the PC....

 

[Isengardtom]

nice - Yeah I went for the 4070 TI as here in Europe (Belgium) the 4080 Gigabyte Aero I wanted was 1.399 EUR, and the 4070 Ti was 979 EUR.

did some checking and it seems to be a very good 1440p card

 

[MallardDuck]

nice - Yeah I went for the 4070 TI as here in Europe (Belgium) the 4080 Gigabyte Aero I wanted was 1.399 EUR, and the 4070 Ti was 979 EUR.

did some checking and it seems to be a very good 1440p card

I'm playing Mass Effect 2 in 4k and it doesn't skip a beat.

Those are roughly the prices here too (less VAT of course). The 4090's are $1700 US!

Apple really is limiting their options by refusing to support eGPU's - and not just games. AI/LLM/ML stuff too.

 

[diamond.g]

Almost exactly the same specs - did the 13700k, and went back and upgraded to the TI last weekend. Figure it's the sweet spot for $/performance/future proof (though I wish it had 16GB VRAM, but the 4080 is just too $ for what you get). And of course the bragging rights inside are whispering 4090, but that's just insane for what I need.

I'm debating now if I play BG3 on the Mac when/if it comes out, or play it on the PC....

I want to see if BG3 on the Mac has the same CPU limits the PC version does in Act 3.

 

[MallardDuck]

Haven't heard about that. Usually CPU isn't a constraint for most games, so that's a surprise. How bad is it? (wondering now if I should have gotten that i9)

Chapter 3 performance is terrible. :: Baldur's Gate 3 General Discussions

Chapter 1 was smooth and awesome but by the time you reach chapter 3 you wish the game would have ended already... It really is no fun playing with max 20 fps, constant stuttering in frame and sound.

steamcommunity.com

edit, just found it. sounds bad.

 

[diamond.g]

Haven't heard about that. Usually CPU isn't a constraint for most games, so that's a surprise. How bad is it? (wondering now if I should have gotten that i9)

Chapter 3 performance is terrible. :: Baldur's Gate 3 General Discussions

Chapter 1 was smooth and awesome but by the time you reach chapter 3 you wish the game would have ended already... It really is no fun playing with max 20 fps, constant stuttering in frame and sound.

steamcommunity.com

edit, just found it. sounds bad.

Yeah it is pretty bad on a 12900K so we are hoping 2 things, 1 there is a patch to fix the CPU issue and 2 that macOS version on Apple Silicon isn't affected.

 

[Fumblerooskie]

Wish it was different, but it's not, and I decided to stop denying reality.

I finally gave up and bought a gaming PC. That's my first non-Mac since 2006...

Good for you, it's the way to go in order to end the frustration. I did the same thing when I traded in an Intel Mac Pro for a Studio, and haven't looked back. The Studio is in my office and the Gaming Rig is in a separate, private room with PC input devices that work flawlessly for simming. The investment was well worth it, and I hope that it turns out to be the same for you.

Apple has a history of dragging out a game developer at WWDC to show off some new hardware tech, they'll announce that a new day is here for gaming on the Mac...and then, nothing.

Apple Arcade is just that, mostly kiddie games that bear little long term interest for adults, very little depth.

You made the right choice.

 

[Huntn]

Good for you, it's the way to go in order to end the frustration. I did the same thing when I traded in an Intel Mac Pro for a Studio, and haven't looked back. The Studio is in my office and the Gaming Rig is in a separate, private room with PC input devices that work flawlessly for simming. The investment was well worth it, and I hope that it turns out to be the same for you.

Apple has a history of dragging out a game developer at WWDC to show off some new hardware tech, they'll announce that a new day is here for gaming on the Mac...and then, nothing.

Apple Arcade is just that, mostly kiddie games that bear little long term interest for adults, very little depth.

You made the right choice.

I continue to use my MBP for business and my home built PC for games. Loss of Bootcamp or an equivalent struck a severe blow to gaming on Macs.

 

[rumz]

What are system requirements like for games these days? Been a bit since I was in that scene (the PC building scene... I'm not sure I have qualified as a PC gamer for decades if I ever did 😂)-- seems like in the previous decade games were largely still single core affairs on CPU and it was the GPU doing much of the lifting.

Just curious what a baseline gaming PC looks like in terms of CPU & RAM (GPUs I have an idea on since that's mostly all anyone talks about re: PC gaming ).

 

[diamond.g]

What are system requirements like for games these days? Been a bit since I was in that scene (the PC building scene... I'm not sure I have qualified as a PC gamer for decades if I ever did 😂)-- seems like in the previous decade games were largely still single core affairs on CPU and it was the GPU doing much of the lifting.

Just curious what a baseline gaming PC looks like in terms of CPU & RAM (GPUs I have an idea on since that's mostly all anyone talks about re: PC gaming ).

Depends on the game really.

 

[rumz]

Depends on the game really.

I take that to mean that there are now games that will take advantage of several CPU cores? (just took a gander and mid-range to high end CPUs have about twice as many cores as when I last built in 2016, hah).

 

[diamond.g]

I take that to mean that there are now games that will take advantage of several CPU cores? (just took a gander and mid-range to high end CPUs have about twice as many cores as when I last built in 2016, hah).

Yes, there are games that take advantage of CPU's properly (like CyberPunk 2077) and scale well the more cores you add. 8 cores still seems to be the sweet spot (probably because of consoles) though.

 

[erayser]

Yes, there are games that take advantage of CPU's properly (like CyberPunk 2077) and scale well the more cores you add. 8 cores still seems to be the sweet spot (probably because of consoles) though.

With all the buzz lately on the CP2077 2.0 update... I might have to start a new game again... or play at a good midway point in saved games after installing the 2.0 update. Hopefully the update comes early enough before Phantom Liberty is released.

As for the thread topic, I just like building my PC rigs and choosing the case, mobo, cpu, gpu, memory, drives, psu, fans/cooling components, etc... brands that I prefer. I've done air, custom loop watercooling, and AIO. I've been building my PC's when people weren't building them to play games. I wouldn't buy a mac for gaming, but I would consider a mac for my vid/photo content creation editing and music recording... but my work provides us with free full Adobe CC licenses... and it works fine on Windows for me. I would buy a mac pro if there is something I could do with it that I can't do on Windows... but I would rather save the money for my next build... most likely next year if NVidia 50 series cards are released. I usually skip a generation. The price to performance gains aren't usually worth upgrading every series for me.

 

[maflynn]

With all the buzz lately on the CP2077 2.0 update

Really, I've been living under a rock - what's going on with CP?

 

[Mackilroy]

They’re completely revamping the skill tree, police AI, armor system, adding vehicle combat, other unmentioned changes.

 

[erayser]

Really, I've been living under a rock - what's going on with CP?

Couple days ago, CDPR announced update 2.0 which is free, and a new Phantom Liberty trailers featuring all the new updates and features delivered in the 2.0 patch. There will be new weapons, redesigned perks and new relic skill tree, revamped police (finally...haha), new vehicles and car combat to name a few. Lot's of YouTube vids uploaded within the last 2 days on Phantom Liberty and the 2.0 patch update. There are vids of summaries on the updates, and also a Dev Q&A vid talking about all the features. I don't game a lot... but pretty excited about the 2.0 patch and playing Phantom Liberty.

 

[Huntn]

They’re completely revamping the skill tree, police AI, armor system, adding vehicle combat, other unmentioned changes.

Replied to here:
Post in thread 'Cyberpunk 2077 Discussion (Spoilers)'
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/cyberpunk-2077-discussion-spoilers.2281148/post-32415097

 

[macmedal]

I have been holding out with my Intel 2020 27 iMac with my Radeon Pro 5700XT on Windows 11 bootcamp. Mainly play games with my teenage kids on cross play platforms (they are on PS5) still get decent enough FPS on likes of COD MWII, but I am a below average gamer so I don't get too concerned about such stuff.

However I am also considering building a windows gaming rig, as at some point the intel iMac will stop being supported by Apple and it will no doubt struggle with triple AAA moving forward.

Haven't had a PC for over 20 years (used to build my own) and to tell you the truth never thought I would again, but I am stuck on keyboard and mouse so console is not for me. So many changes to consider now and have always favoured AMD over intel, but the prices of GPUs is still eye watering despite being more available than they were.

Apple have made their choices and unless something gives in the future, gaming on the Mac for me is just too painful to continue with long term.

 

[Mackilroy]

The recently announced 7700/7800 XT cards are more reasonably priced, and should offer good performance. CPUs have largely been good enough for a few generations now, unless you do high refresh/high resolution/CPU heavy games/all three.