Mac or PC for SL?

I know there's alot of Mac loyalists/Micosoft haters out there and I know why - I use both.
But do Macs run SL well? Seems like I could get a kick ass PC for around $1,200. A new Mac with the nVidia 7300 is about $2,000 - so quite a price difference.

I love my old mac (800mhz G4), but it's not enought to run SL smoothly and properly, so Im in the market for a new computer. I figure SL is probably built on PC's and so might be more stable on a PC. (?)

Any thoughts or advice on this would be greatly appreciated!!!

If you have the money and you plan to use it for mainly for gaming, it's a no brainer, get a PC.

I'm biggest Apple fan on the planet, I've been using Macs for many years, but one thing they're not is gaming machines !

Having said that, I'm in SL on a Macbook Pro and generally very pleased with the performance. but I didn't buy that machine just to play SL, I need it for other work too !

I have brother or father company older Macs.. at home.. so I must count on them - BUT on the other hand its for free... and the are not giving away to old ones.. I am the little sister))

I have huge one - silver colour and called a G5% - and it works fine for me... or must.,

Last week I was at a printing house with something called a fiber connection...and at same kind of Mac and with same kind of memory and same kind of card - the performance was 10-15 fps up from my one at home and I have Broadband 22 in and one out..

Question Laukosargas or any..

In are great to have a fast connection - do I need a fast out to use the SL software to the optimal?

/Tina - please explain this as EXAKT and simple as possible – I am NOT a technical freak)

Exact and simple are polar opposites. I'll try for simple, but containing no huge errors.

Network quality has two main issues,

1. Speed or bandwidth.

2. Ping time, or latency.


Every one focuses on 1. DSL and cable ar certainly good enough, but the kind of speeds one gets at a college or big business are great. Go to one of the many online speed tests, such as http://speakeasy.net/speedtest/ I get about 1000k down and 700k up.

Latency, #2, can be *more* important. Open a command window, and ping www.seondlife.com. Because I am on satellite (poor latency) I get times between 1 and 4 *seconds*.

What this means is that when I chat, it takes as long as two seconds to get to SL before SL can send it to you. This is why some people, ME!!, constantly walk off bridges into the water, crash into walls, and learn to avoid activities requiring short latency.

Latency means a lot.

Lastly, invetigate the next higher cost service...some options are

T1. Last time I looked, about $400/month. not sure, but I think it is about twice as fast as DSL.

Two DSL. it is a little tricky, but a router wizard can set you up. Two DSL accounts, two DSL routers, your household network uses them both simultaneously.

DSL and Cable. As above, except that two vendors. If DSL craps out, cable still works, and vice versa.

To answer the original question, albeit confusingly...

The answer isn't clear. PCs with equivalent kit by and large run SL "faster" in terms of client FPS. If you're into heavy shooting in SL, that can be critical.

But... for 99% of SLers somewhere around 10-15 fps is fine. For many around 5fps is actually fine, you can walk, talk, build, script, change clothes, dance, etc. at 5 fps quite happily (you can do it at 3 as I used to on my old G4).

However, (well the last few days and the first few days of 1.7 aside), my client often runs for 18+ hours a day without crashes, without serious glitches even. On the occasions I've run on a PC (when away mostly), and looking at PC users around me, they seem more prone to crashing and glitching...

So, speed of client against stablitiy.

If you're buying the computer just for SL, PC. More bang for the buck. (Though the gap has narrowed.)

If you do other things with your computer as well, whichever platform is best for your other needs. Either will run SL well.

It also comes down to two things:

#1 = $$$$$

Do you buy that iMac for $1000 or the PC for that or less? Do you plan on upgrading if possible? If so, then PC.

#2 = Availability

Do you live in an area where you can find a place to buy parts & do repairs for a Mac?

I suppose you could run SL on a Mac using Bootcamp & Windows XP, but then why bother buying a Mac, ya know?

PC with an Nvidia card 6600GT or better. A $2000 Mac will not perform as well as a $2000 PC for gaming. With Intel and AMD dropping prices, $2k and building it yourself you can get pretty close to bleeding edge performance for gaming where the same money on a Mac gets you a lackluster machine usually with a low end video card.

.zzzzz...........zzzzzz...........wake up mate wake up!


or dream on........

I've just got a mac and i love it, the only problem i find is that some programmes on the net don't support macs, and some services don't either. But they need to get with the times!

I've got a Mac Pro Dual Zeon XEOM. It's very powerfull and upgradeable.

There's currently some graphics bug with the nvidia 7300 GT on SL, but Brent says hes fixing it.

I have a dual 1.8 processor G5 (Power PC) and it runs SL without any problems. There are lag issues occasionally but I blame that on the network connection. There are ways to tweak your SL settings to use slightly more bandwidth and that seems to help.

If you compare tech specs between Macs & PCs, you'll find even though Macs seem to cost more, you're actually getting a "better" computer -- dual layer DVD burner instead of single layer, faster processors, etc.

You'll also find a lot more games are being developed for Macs than before, so if you're only interested in specific games plus SL, you can check online (MacWorld.com, for one) to see if your game has been developed for Macs.

Someone mentioned something about repairs -- it's worth the $200 or so to get AppleCare protection when you buy a Mac in case anything goes wrong.

You can try the new Intel iMacs. The dual 1.83 processor is going for $1000, while the 2.0 processor is $1200. If you qualify for the education discount (you work for an educational institution, you're a student, or someone in your household is a student -- even K-12) the prices are about $100 cheaper. I originally discounted the iMacs as "just a consumer product," but we have two computer labs full of them at the university where I work, and they're running professional design software plus a number of other high-end programs without any problems -- and our students and faculty really beat up on them.

YEP! Never heard of someone installing a Dual Layer DVD Burner in a PC for $40 or less. Mine was free
Faster Processors??? YEP!! Xeons are world-reknowned for being a gaming processor. Ok, not really. They're not for gaming. Not like it matters since no game currently supports dual core or dual processors. Someday tho.



True again! IF you don't mind playing a game that's been on a PC for about 3 yrs now.
[/quote]



Also true. Send that Mac to the shop. Shipping is SO cheap!!! And we all know how gentle they are with your packages. Wait for it to come back.
OR- buy the PC, take it to Best Buy, etc. Or just have the kid down the street fix it for a few bucks. Or just go pick up a book at your local Barnes & Noble on PC Repair (so frickin' easy it aint funny).

Also be prepared to cough up some $$$ for upgrades.

Apple Store price for 2 GB RAM for your Top Line iMac = $600

NewEgg's price for 2GB RAM for your PC (also DDR2 RAM but not So-Dimm, a.k.a. Notebook memory) = $180

Just to be fair, 2 GB SO-DIMM= $249

Shop around, compare prices. Take someone with you who knows what they're looking at if you don't. Just like buying a car.... and can be just as expensive.

Also- I ran the 3D Mark 06 Benchmarks on my system & compared it to the new Mac Tower's scores. I fell behind only by 126 pts. Which means, the minute I drop in another single OR dual core CPU, I beat it. And I didnt even spend $1000 to build it. $700 or so. Much less now with all the AMD & Intel price drops.

Macintosh
The earlyer Macintosh was not really all that grand at gaming. The new Mac with the Dual-Core Intel Xeon "Woodcrest" processors are the Don Mega of gaming machines. Along with OSX built off a Unix platform very nice.
Macintosh

$ PC > /dev/null

btw Get the New Macintosh

We just got a new 17" Intel iMac. And it plays Second Life just great in either OS X or Windows. For the price we couldn't ask for a better machine.

I've been using both platforms for years and have always preferred my Macs- probably because of these sad facts...

# of PCs I've watched die on me: 3 (we're talking dead beyond hope of resuscitation)

# of Macs I've watched die on me: 1 (but not so dead that I couldn't rescue the hard drive contents *without* Tech Support)

To be perfectly honest, though- I have lately had nothing but trouble running SL on my Mac!! I've thrown my hands up in disgust and just use a pretty basic little Vaio laptop for SL now, and it outperforms my iMac by far. I switch back and forth between cursing myself for not bumping up my Mac's memory (it's about 18 months old and needs it) and cursing software developers for not making the Mac version less sucky. Once I get myself some memory maybe I'll find out what's really to blame.

Ooh I just got one as well and man is it sweet. Have you opened the case up? It's so beautiful inside. I can't wait to buy some 500gig hard drives and slide them in.

I am still waiting for a client for my Commador 64...

I use both... when the Mac client is buggy I switch to my PC... and vice versa

This really isn't an issue for gaming or sl, is it? Nobody will complain about having a better-than-gaming system. You're confusing me lol.


With Bootcamp this is a null topic. You are stretching the three year quote, anyways. I've been generally seeing a maximum of six month turnaround for the Mac version. Even shorter on games that are really any good, anyways. Blizzard has been releasing dual versions of their games for 5 years now...



Yikes! You are sooo wrong. AppleCare is FREE OVERNIGHT SHIPPING. They sent a shipping box for my laptop, picked it up from my home, sent it back completely redone and called the next day to make sure everything was cool. Total turnaround time from first phonecall. 4 days.

I've worked for Best Buy. I will tell you those idiotic "Geeks" couldn't match that in two weeks...

Does this really EVER happen that easy? Are you going to tell a 35 yr old mother of two that she should go out and get a repair book and teach herself how to safely swap out a video card? Have you ever called 4 parts manufacturers to initiate a return? They all say it's not their product's fault, anyways. You might as well let Apple handle it all for you for the next THREE YEARS.

Are you saying Mac owners can't and don't shop around? We've been bargain shopping and upgrading our own Macs for over 15 years... get with the program fella. RAM is RAM and HDDs are HDDs. Buy your own, install your own.

You'd be an idiot if you bought a Mac for a spec score. It's the stability, the brilliant OS, the tech support and the design that makes any machine good. That stands for cheese graters all the way up to cars.

If you want to complain about having to take your BMW to a BMW mechanic, maybe you would feel more comfortable with a 5 yr old Ford that you can learn to fix yourself in your own garage. That's fine with those of us who use the BMW of the computer industry.

~Lefty
"The abundance of words and scarcity of facts spewing from your top hole is a sign that at some point you drank the kool-aid. I would recommend switching to Gatorade for a while." ~Unknown

Just a little info for ya, the Nvidia 7300 video card is a low end card. This is pretty much the standard video card Macs come with and it costs a lot more to upgrade this to a decent video card. On the PC the 7300 is about a $60 card, good enough for web browsing and watching movies etc but a rather lackluster card for SL or most other games.

When looking at Nvidia cards, the model number can tell you a lot about the card. With the Nvidia 7300, the 7 indicates its a 7 series card and shares a lot of features found in all 7 series cards but not found in the 6 series cards. Boils down to the GPU used. The 3 is the capabilities of the card and where it falls in the performance scale. A 7100 is less capable than a 7300 and a 7900 is the top of the series. The 00 is a special designation to show a higher performance from the same basic hardware, the 7950 is basically two 7900 in one slot and in SLI and the 5950 was an exceptionally high performance version of the 5900.

The second number is usually the important number to consider when looking at cards. A Nvidia 6200 and the 7300 are not terribly different as far as their ability to run something like SL. The difference between a 6 and 7 series card really isn't significant as most of the enhancements aren't even used in SL and that is why someone switching from a 5950 to a 6800 won't see a whole lotta difference in performance. On the other hand going from a 7300 to a 7950 will be an almost orgasmic experience.. with the 7950 you can turn AA and AF filtering to the max at 1980x1080 resolution and still get 40 FPS in the welcome area.

Of course, to confuse everything and to sucker the unwary are the letter designations at the end of the model number. GT, GS, LS, GTX, SE etc. In cases of the LS and SE and whatnot, these are usually crippled reject bin chips salvaged and sold cheap. An Nvidia 7800 SE might sound like a good deal at $150 but you will find many of its functions and capabilities not working so that 7800 may perform like a 7300 in actual use, and at twice the price of a normal 7300. Very much buyer beware. You might find a bargan but likely not. There can be a lot of differences between say a GS and a GTX and it can be really confusing so you need to do some research. A lot of times you can tell simply by the difference in price, a 7800 GS may cost half what a 7800 GTX does, probably means a signifcant difference in performance, then again it may not for your particular needs.

No local Apple Store? They will overnight you a box to put it in, complete with overnight shipping back to Apple, probably fix it the same day, and overnight it back to you. No charge. 48 hour turn around time, spending most of its time being shipped for free, without ever having to step outside.

We all know that retailers charge a premium for things like RAM. Heck, the salesman at the Apple Store told me where to go for the best price on the OEM RAM!

I won't bother responding to the rest.

Why would this be an issue anymore? When you buy a Mac today it runs Windows and MacOS X. Run SL, if it doesn't run fast enough for you, boot into Windows and run it there. Problem solved. For half the money you get both a PC and a Mac. Seems like a no brainer for me.

Boot into Windows for gaming

Mac for websurfing or any other use that requires you to be safe. Security is really where the Mac shines compared to a PC.

If you are already a Mac user I'd stick with a Mac.

Some people say - if you do games get a Windows PC
Other say - for a easy more secure computer (no viruses, spyware, hackers) get a Mac.

I say get a Intel Macintosh and do both. If you look at tier 1 computer manufactures such as Dell, Gateway, IBM a Apple Macintosh is either the same cost or very close.
Because they are Intel base Macintosh can do both Mac & Windows. You can run as a Mac and have a modern easy to use secure operating system. When you want to play SL there should be no problem on a Core 2 duo but if you have games or programs that run only on a PC then get Bootcamp that boots your Mac into full speed native mode Windows or run Windows and your program in a window on your Mac using Parallels. You will probably fine Second Life will run fine on a Intel dual core with 1 Gig memory (2 Gigs if you use Parallels). This way you are not confined and have more options.

If you want a independent review of this - Security Expert Steve Gibson
Security Now - Episode #59 - Comparing "Parallels" VMs
http://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm

This is really cool an a great solution - Get one hardware platform (Intel Mac) and run what every OS you want (Mac, Win XP, Vista, Linux etc)

Parallels : http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/
BootCamp: http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/

I'm a keen Mac user but my latest desktop is a PC, basically because of SL. I knew that I could get considerably more sophisticated hardware for less. Of course, immediately after I bought the PC, Apple release a high-powered tower... but, you know, you have to take your chances with hardware, buy whatever seems like the best deal at the time concerned.

I would much rather be dealing with OS X in general than XP, but strictly for SL, the PC is the best bet.

actually its the stock card for the Mac Pro and the 24" iMac, but thats it. The pretty much standard Mac card currently is the radeon x1600. Its available in the 17" and 20" iMacs, and the 15 and 17" MacBook Pros. it was also in the previous gen of both the iMacs and MacBook Pros as well.


Also everyone needs to remember an important detail about Apple. Currently Apple makes no computers at all that are 'desktop' machines. They make machines used for the desktop, but they arent really the same class of parts. The Mac Pro is a workstation class, with workstation parts and workstation prices. Every other Mac made (currently) is all Laptop parts...