New Computer, Hardware question (Vid card)
By
Baba_Kanoosh,
Posted on: 2012-01-27 23:33 in Mac Users
Quote:
First off, are you planning on staying Mac for hardware or going with a Wintendo PC?|
Originally Posted by Blood Red Arachnid
Planning to get a higher-end computer soon enough. This is important mostly for the games I play, with this one being the primary game. I would love to be able to run this game on a setting other than low graphics, but I am not sure what hardware to get a hold of to do this.
Particularly I am asking about graphics card. If I want to run this game on higher quality, what graphics card would be best to aim for? |
If the former, toss out a real-dollars budget.
If the latter, go here:
Then post the necessary info back here.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
Right now nothing is set in stone as far as expenses go. It changes depending on if car troubles should arise, how much I'll get for trade-isn, ect.
However, I am expecting the "peak" to be around $1500. I am staying with Mac, btw.
EDIT: You know what? No, skip the slow and steady. I'm looking for which kind of Graphics cards would be best, whether by brand or by model. Whether or not I can afford it should come later.
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Blood Red Arachnid
Right now nothing is set in stone as far as expenses go. It changes depending on if car troubles should arise, how much I'll get for trade-isn, ect.
However, I am expecting the "peak" to be around $1500. I am staying with Mac, btw. EDIT: You know what? No, skip the slow and steady. I'm looking for which kind of Graphics cards would be best, whether by brand or by model. Whether or not I can afford it should come later. |
Okay, Mac Pro line is utterly out of your price range (starts at $3000 and goes from there).
At best, staying in the $1500 range, you're looking at the iMac 21.5" 2.7Ghz with the Radeon HD 6770. You're still limited on on-board RAM because of the iMac platform and the video is essentially a mobile solution.
If you're going "price is no option but keep it sane", step up to the iMac 27" 3.1Ghz. The card actually has more than 512MB of discrete memory. But you're looking at 2 grand.
The problem is, if this is going to be a CoH machine, AMD is NOT the way to go. Look around the help forums for all the people playing musical drivers with their AMD/ATI video cards to find something stable. Add that on top of the Mac "quirks" and...
This is one of my major beefs with Apple, how inflexible their platform is. Were this a Wintendo PC, I could just give you a nice list of parts and you could assemble it yourself.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
So... does that mean I should go with Nvidia for the graphics card? I know my current Macbook has a NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, and that runs alright (when soloing and inside instances), and I assume that the problems I'm getting are from there being only 256 MB VRam, half of what the low-end Macbooks currently offer.
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My. GOODNESS... Apple is so much suck I can't hardly believe it.
But that's for my needs. They are very much awesome in a lot of other ways, and I DO recommend them to individuals... but man... those are seriously screwed up machines, IMO, hardware wise.
Can't you build a Wintel box with an OSX on it yourself these days? I know I've read that somewhere... The point is the OS, not the box, right, for going Apple, yeah?
/Is really interested in this topic now.
//And yes, IMO, Nvidia is THE graphics card, overall, to deal with. ATI/AMD is... odd. Had too many issues with them, and I'll never buy them again. I like to be sane.
///Seriously, you ATI/AMD lovers, I'm GLAD you like them/have good luck with them, they just don't like me. Sorry. I tried, I really did. Had to quit.
August 31, 2012. A Day that will Live in Infamy. Or Information. Possibly Influence. Well, Inf, anyway. Thank you, Paragon Studios, for what you did, and the enjoyment and camaraderie you brought.
This is houtex, aka Mike, signing off the forums. G'night all. - 10/26/2012
Well... perhaps I was premature about that whole 'signing off' thing... - 11-9-2012
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If you mean system RAM, that is upgradeable, as well as the hard drive (there are guides online at places like ifixit.com). The video and video RAM are not upgradeable. Still, a Radeon HD 6770 should give pretty good performance.|
Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
You're still limited on on-board RAM because of the iMac platform and the video is essentially a mobile solution.
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
The problem is, if this is going to be a CoH machine, AMD is NOT the way to go. Look around the help forums for all the people playing musical drivers with their AMD/ATI video cards to find something stable. Add that on top of the Mac "quirks" and...
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
This is one of my major beefs with Apple, how inflexible their platform is. Were this a Wintendo PC, I could just give you a nice list of parts and you could assemble it yourself.
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Aside from those comments, though, you pretty much hit the nail on the head.
I now have a 2011 Macbook Pro model with ATI video and high-res graphics (I needed the extra room on the display for work). It actually runs CoH about as well as the desktop does. As for priciness...yes, I probably would have thought twice about the cost if I didn't use it for a lot more than gaming. It's great to have one small, lightweight laptop that can do it all, though - reliable gaming, work, and a little bit of impressing flash for meetings with clients.
Manga @ Triumph
"Meanwhile In The Halls Of Titan"...Titan Network Working To Save City Of Heroes
Save Paragon City! Efforts Coordination
In the world of Mac, what would be better, 7400 SATA drive or solid state drive in a laptop?
"Oh NO! I'm so sorry baba! you and your wife will be sorely missed...s#@!, i did it again, didn't I?" - mintmiki
Animal Farm ID:71800
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SSD would be faster, but also cost around ten times as much as a 7200 RPM laptop drive. There are also two Seagate models that are 7200 RPM and also have a small SSD on board called Hybrid drives. Not as fast as SSD but faster than hard drives.|
Originally Posted by Baba_Kanoosh
In the world of Mac, what would be better, 7400 SATA drive or solid state drive in a laptop?
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FYI, 7200 RPM uses more power and generates more heat than both SSD and 4200 RPM also.
Manga @ Triumph
"Meanwhile In The Halls Of Titan"...Titan Network Working To Save City Of Heroes
Save Paragon City! Efforts Coordination
Quote:
No, as in VRAM. And the lower VRAM is going to limit options that one can use if one is trying to play at higher resolutions.|
Originally Posted by CuppaManga
If you mean system RAM, that is upgradeable, as well as the hard drive (there are guides online at places like ifixit.com). The video and video RAM are not upgradeable. Still, a Radeon HD 6770 should give pretty good performance.
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| AMD now performs pretty much the same as Nvidia on Mac, except for a few instances where AMD's didn't work at all for a while until there was a fix. |
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| I usually try to avoid telling people that - and I *have* a custom built gaming PC - only because it's so difficult to find reliable 100% hardware these days. |
There ARE highly reliable options within the Wintel/WinAMD space though. At multiple price points.
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| When something goes wrong, you don't know if it's the hardware or the person assembling it, and lots of banging the head against the wall can result. |
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I now have a 2011 Macbook Pro model with ATI video and high-res graphics (I needed the extra room on the display for work). It actually runs CoH about as well as the desktop does. As for priciness...yes, I probably would have thought twice about the cost if I didn't use it for a lot more than gaming. It's great to have one small, lightweight laptop that can do it all, though - reliable gaming, work, and a little bit of impressing flash for meetings with clients.
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Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
Quote:
But that's for my needs. They are very much awesome in a lot of other ways, and I DO recommend them to individuals... but man... those are seriously screwed up machines, IMO, hardware wise.[/quote]|
Originally Posted by houtex
My. GOODNESS... Apple is so much suck I can't hardly believe it.
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Not getting into this. It's neither here nor there and only serves to draw flames. Can we just put the "I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC *FIGHT!*" thing to bed?
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| Can't you build a Wintel box with an OSX on it yourself these days? I know I've read that somewhere... The point is the OS, not the box, right, for going Apple, yeah? |
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
Quote:
SSDs have the following edges:|
Originally Posted by Baba_Kanoosh
In the world of Mac, what would be better, 7400 SATA drive or solid state drive in a laptop?
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- Generally faster
- Generally quieter
- Generally cooler (lower power consumption)
- Higher cost per-GB
- Due to the above, SSD in the "acceptable" price range are usually an order of magnitude smaller than mechanical drives.
$120-200 will buy you:
- A 1TB laptop drive.
- A 750GB Hybrid drive (750GB HD with a 32GB "caching" SSD welded on)
- A 40-120GB SSD
If you're one of those people who treats a laptop like a desktop machine and accumulates "stuff" all the time, you're going to run out of space FAST.
And for a size comparison. A 512GB SSD is available. But one of those costs nearly $700.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
Quote:
The Windows and Apple drivers behave a lot differently, so a lot of the AMD bugs in CoH don't appear on the Mac. Then again, some of the nVidia bugs appear in CoH for the Mac on AMD.|
Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
Not talking about "performance". Talking about AMD's drivers being ridiculously tetchy with CoH.
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Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
There's no such thing as 100% reliable hardware from anyone. Period.
There ARE highly reliable options within the Wintel/WinAMD space though. At multiple price points. |
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Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
Let's just say that there's a market for Mac products. And while I know that market, I'm most definitely NOT a part of it. Saying anything more than that will just make me sound like I'm being offensive.
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I always tell people to use whatever makes them happy. If you aren't happy, that's when I would suggest a change. And if you want to try a change, go for it and don't let the trolls sway you.
If you want to know how it makes me happy, that's a better question. The model I selected, a Macbook Pro, really takes the place of 3 computers. 1) I'm an iOS developer so I need the Mac for that; 2) but rather than also buy a Windows laptop for dual-box gaming, I chose a model that can handle that too. And 3), if I travel or my gaming PC dies, I have one single lightweight laptop that can take its place for a while.
Manga @ Triumph
"Meanwhile In The Halls Of Titan"...Titan Network Working To Save City Of Heroes
Save Paragon City! Efforts Coordination
If money were no object, and I was looking for a new Mac that would replace my current Mac and still be a good CoX machine, I'd do the following:
Head to apple.com and start with the 15" MacBook Pro with the 2.4 Ghz i7 processor ($2199):
- Bump the default installed RAM from 4Gb to 8 Gb (add $200)
- Swap the 750Gb SATA drive for a 512 Gb SSD (add $1100)
This configuration comes with an AMD (?) Radeon HD 6770M with 1Gb of VRAM (this is about as good as you're going to get, short of getting a MacPro tower and swapping out the video card for your own pick), so there should be few bottlenecks anywhere in the system. Of course, it's also $3500 for a laptop, and I'm sure some of the hobbyists here can find similar components on the DIY side for significantly less cash.
That said, from a practical perspective I'd probably just go with the default lesser-expensive build for the current 15" MacBook Pro -- I'm running CoX fairly nicely on my current 4-year old MacBook Pro, so I'd feel pretty comfortable going with the current MacBook Pro.
You could also add these at much less cost:
8 GB RAM for $39.99
512 GB SSD for $664
That brings the total for upgrades to around $700 with an SSD.
Upgrading a Macbook Pro is not that difficult - ifixit.com has guides for it.
Manga @ Triumph
"Meanwhile In The Halls Of Titan"...Titan Network Working To Save City Of Heroes
Save Paragon City! Efforts Coordination
I have a Macbook Pro 15" from December. It has the AMD Radeon HD 6750M 512 MB and can run at 1680x1050 in Ultra mode.
I would recommend the 6750 as the minimum for a new Mac that's supposed to play CoH, I normally run at 30+ fps, but do notice some slowdowns if there is for example a large crowd in Atlas Park (20-30 players). The game still runs, it's not a slideshow, but things get slightly less smooth, there are drops to about 20 fps.
Get one with a 6770 or 6970 if you can afford it.
Of course at a lower resolution, it would probably not happen either, but the iMacs have even higher resolutions, so I would not go for the 6750 model, if I had an iMac. The basic Macbook Pro 15" with the 1440x900 screen would do great with the 6750 though. but a Macbook would be more expensive than a comparable iMac.
As for SSD vs. HD. I hardly notice any loading times, only the Praetoria areas take more than a second or two and I have the standard macbook hard disk. I have 8 GB or RAM though which helps.
Planning to get a higher-end computer soon enough. This is important mostly for the games I play, with this one being the primary game. I would love to be able to run this game on a setting other than low graphics, but I am not sure what hardware to get a hold of to do this.
Particularly I am asking about graphics card. If I want to run this game on higher quality, what graphics card would be best to aim for?
TPN trial guide video / MoM trial guide video / DD trial guide video / BAF trial guide video
/ Lambda trial guide video / Keyes trial guide video / Magisterium trial guide video / Underground trial guide