FFXI on a Mac = OWNAGE!

[Timian]

Re: FFXI on a Mac = OWNAGE!

How did it go from

"FFXI looks great on my MAC!"

to

"MACs are PCs too."
"No, they're not, because 1001101011010101011101000101101"

and so on...?

[John Doe III]

Re: FFXI on a Mac = OWNAGE!

Stop redoing the topic guys/girls. The TC was just simply saying how amazing the game looked on his MAC. Please do not draw this topic into something it does not need to be, Timian is right. I am happy for the TC though, the game does look amazing when the game settings are on the highest, and even more glad to see you do not get lag, which is pretty suprising.

[Feba]

Re: FFXI on a Mac = OWNAGE!

am I the only one who wonders if mac OS would be more popular if apple let go of the hardware market a little? Apple dell!

'course they probably never will, but still. If mainstream hardware makers offered people a choice between Vista and Leopard, it would be interesting at least to see people's results. Does MS still have deals with companies to only use their OS?

[Timian]

Re: FFXI on a Mac = OWNAGE!

am I the only one who wonders if mac OS would be more popular if apple let go of the hardware market a little? Apple dell!

'course they probably never will, but still. If mainstream hardware makers offered people a choice between Vista and Leopard, it would be interesting at least to see people's results. Does MS still have deals with companies to only use their OS?

You can pretty much turn your Windows OS into a Mac, by using RocketDock...
Sure, it's mostly just superficial, but still...

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: FFXI on a Mac = OWNAGE!

am I the only one who wonders if mac OS would be more popular if apple let go of the hardware market a little?

They had tried licensing to clone makers already, with disastrous results to the bottom line. Mostly, the buyers were just people who had owned Apple Macintosh looking for cheaper upgrades.

Don't think they'll ever do that again.

[HairdewX]

Re: FFXI on a Mac = OWNAGE!

am I the only one who wonders if mac OS would be more popular if apple let go of the hardware market a little? Apple dell!

'course they probably never will, but still. If mainstream hardware makers offered people a choice between Vista and Leopard, it would be interesting at least to see people's results. Does MS still have deals with companies to only use their OS?

A big difference with MS is that it really caters to developers and provides a lot of tools and resources... So developers are more inclined to make software for Windows.

My company could have gone with the free Unix/Linux development tools, but the tools available on Windows are just so much better and easier to use that it is worth the licensing fees...

[Timian]

Re: FFXI on a Mac = OWNAGE!

FFXI still looks good on his Mac though. XD

[Feba]

Re: FFXI on a Mac = OWNAGE!

And of course the only person who didn't go into Mac bashing is Ita.

Superficial changes and development tools had nothing to do with my musing.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: FFXI on a Mac = OWNAGE!

FFXI still looks good on his Mac though. XD

Heh. No one disputes that.

Apple displays historically has been pretty good, and nearly impeccable since the dawn of its LCD lines. Well, almost perfection, prices aside. ._.

A new-ish Intel MacBook is a nice way to play FFXI, I'd think, except for the booting into Windows business. Here's hoping Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion can do something about that soon.

[Jarre]

Re: FFXI on a Mac = OWNAGE!

I'm a Mac user, but those statements are a bit silly. Today's Mac's can run Windows natively--and thus can run windows programs like POL/FFXI. Every Mac is a PC, now, hardware-wise.
If anything, PC's (can) have better drivers under Windows than Mac's, so the argument that Mac's handle PC programs better is absurd. As for leader in graphics, that's really ancient history--GPU's on PC's have been blowing away Mac's GPU's for a long time now. Nowadays, Mac's just use PC GPU's, and not top of the line ones, to my knowledge.

So why does my Mac at work (1Ghz G4 with 1024mb PC2700 Ram and 64mb Graphics card, Mac OSX10.3.9) render a fly through 3 times quicker than my PC (Athlon 64 3000+, 1024mb PC3200 Ram, Geforce FX5600 256mb ram graphics, windows xp home.) using Archicad?

[Xephar]

Re: FFXI on a Mac = OWNAGE!

I knew this would happen... the big PC vs Mac argument lol. I have both a PC and a Mac and they are both cool. PC I like the fact you can upgrade comppnents and its more customizable and I love macs becuase OSX is a great OS for professional level work with I do and the hardware quality and build is very very good. I'm mainly using this for FFXI becuase the specs of this are much better than of my PC lol But I'll do a video to show you all how good it looks!

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: FFXI on a Mac = OWNAGE!

So why does my Mac at work (1Ghz G4 with 1024mb PC2700 Ram and 64mb Graphics card, Mac OSX10.3.9) render a fly through 3 times quicker than my PC (Athlon 64 3000+, 1024mb PC3200 Ram, Geforce FX5600 256mb ram graphics, windows xp home.) using Archicad?

~_~

Please read a little more carefully; this is about Mac's with Intel CPU's, not IBM/Motorola PPC "G4" lines of CPU's. The difference is more than between fresh apples and old oranges, mind you. (Pun intended.)

The CONTEXT is running FFXI on Mac hardware--which means you run Windows, then run POL, which launches FFXI. It's USING MAC'S AS WINDOWS MACHINES to play FFXI. Why drag Archicad into this?!

This is not a Mac vs. Windows debate--I was commenting on Macht's assertion that Mac's would run FFXI better than PC's--a silly notion, IMO.

(If nothing else, at least pick on on the fact the OP is about using a Mac as a PC--a PC without the same level of driver support as something from Dell or HP or other PC vendors would have.)

[Xephar]

Re: FFXI on a Mac = OWNAGE!

Yeh I did not intend this thread to be for Computer wars. I just wanted to state that if anyone was unsure on how FFXI would run under bootcamp which is for INTEL Macs ONLY, it works very nicely under windows XP on Mac Hardware in my case being a MacBook Pro. However I'm entirey sure how FFXI with high resolution background textures enabled would run on a standard Macbook since they have intergrated Intel GMA graphics chips and mine uses an dedicated ATI graphics card.

[Amele]

Re: FFXI on a Mac = OWNAGE!

--a PC without the same level of driver support as something from Dell or HP or other PC vendors would have.)

nonsense. (assuming you're booting into native windows)

sure, it didn't come with pre-packaged drivers. (except the surprisingly complete windows default set for critical applications.)

you can bet that most manufacturers have available windows drivers to download and no, Apple does not, in fact, make their components in house. those are OEM too, just like the processor core.

an x86 architecture is an x86 architecture. <- this is why a mac won't run it particularly better than a pc. for the purposes of this discussion (quality of gameplay) they are the same machine class.

that said, it's gonna look sweet on an apple display, since their displays are so high quality, but that doesn't mean you can't buy an apple display and stick it on your Dell, as long as it's got a GPU to support the screen res/refresh rate/etc.

and the short answer to Jarre's question is the the G4 (IBM powerPC etc (and associated buschips etc.) is more optimized for graphics rendering than the x86 architecture, although some moves have been made recently to close the gap. The mac version of the software is probably also more optimized for it's architecture, since the arch. is controlled on mac, compared to x86 PC where it is not.


"letting go of the hardware market" killed IBM's involvement in the IBM PC. (beyond the fact that 'IBM' is still used in all official print statements about x86 compatibility) Apple saw what happened to it's original competitor and isn't about to make the same mistake. profitability is about more than just gross market share - it's about market segment too.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: FFXI on a Mac = OWNAGE!

nonsense. (assuming you're booting into native windows)

sure, it didn't come with pre-packaged drivers. (except the surprisingly complete windows default set for critical applications.)

you can bet that most manufacturers have available windows drivers to download and no, Apple does not, in fact, make their components in house. those are OEM too, just like the processor core.

Not exactly nonsense. I'm a bit behind, but on double checking, it was actually not until August of last year did Apple release the driver for the build-in iSight camera and microphone, for example, with BootCamp Beta 1.1. (Incidentally, the drivers apparently weren't great, and they had to update them again in Beta 1.2 last month, along with revised drivers for its trackpad and such.)

No major PC vendor would distribute machine first and driver second--that's why I wrote driver support for Mac as a PC is sub-par compared to "real" PC's. It's logical, it's commonsense--and, it's not a criticism. -_-

and the short answer to Jarre's question is the the G4 (IBM powerPC etc (and associated buschips etc.) is more optimized for graphics rendering than the x86 architecture, although some moves have been made recently to close the gap. The mac version of the software is probably also more optimized for it's architecture, since the arch. is controlled on mac, compared to x86 PC where it is not.

On "rendering": If you mean vector processing (i.e. SIMD co-processor) performance, sure, it's possible (even likely) G4 wins over whatever Jarre had in his PC. CAD's should be able to take advantage of G4 class CPU's SIMD performance, if the application programmers wanted to. (Note: G4 isn't so much more optimized for graphics as for SIMD operations, however, if you want to be technical about it.)

On "bus": I don't believe Apple won on better system bus bandwidth, but it's too much digging for me at the moment. Let's just say I'm doubtful without giving supporting evidence for my assertion. =b