gaming pc or mac?

[non sequitur]

*raises hand* I bought the 2GHz CD MBP, as you can see in my sig. Yeah, it only has a 100gb hd. Yeah, only 2 usb ports. Yeah, no firewire 800. Yeah, not C2D.

 

My little notebook computer completely rocks at playing CS:S at 1440*900 with all high settings and aa*2. CoD 2 works good as well, and WoW is a friggin' dream. Believe me, you'd be able to do great with a 24" iMac or a Mac Pro. Heck, if I had 3 grand, i'd get the 17" MBP with 3 gigs of ram. Or perhaps the 15", decked out, and a nifty external monitor.

[mac-mini]

go with a real mac even this mini is better than a hack in experience except it was only $600

[cringemaster]

Yes, go with an imac or mac pro. the mini sucks at gaming

[Alessandro17]

People tend to forget that the 24" iMac has a 24" SCREEN. I Went to the apple store a few days ago and was liek 'z0mg I want to play Battlefield 2 on this baby'. Seriously, if you check out how expensive a 24" widescreen is, it's around $1k, that leaves $1.5k (if you pick the Ram, video and proc upgrade) on the rest of the computer.

 

But I don't want or need a 24" screen. I have gone from 14" (laptop) to 17" (monitor), actually quite good, to a SyncMaster 205BW, 20", almost overkill.

I want more RAM, better video cards...you won't get that from "a glorified laptop", as the iMac has been called by some.

[Ferret-Simpson]

The thing I hate the most about apple computers, is how only the most expensive laptops and desktops are expandable.

 

If the MacBook, the Mac Mini, and the iMac had the Expresscard slot then there wouldn't be any problem with using them for gaming, thanks to the current boom in external expresscard graphics cards.

 

To be honest, that's my biggest qualm with the T421X's. TabletPC's and Expresscard slots are made for each other - tiny pen system on the go, gaming monster when you get home. The additional physics procesing of the external graphics card, and possibly a PhysX card would be nice for my degree work too.

 

But I don't want or need a 24" screen. I have gone from 14" (laptop) to 17" (monitor), actually quite good, to a SyncMaster 205BW, 20", almost overkill.

 

I've gone from a 5 monitor desktop, to a 14" iBookto my current set up. 12" TabletPC on the go, and I hook a 17" TFT to the tablet's external display port for a little more real estate when I'm at home.

[fobis]

lol. okay, let's be realistic here: if you want to play the latest and greatest games that have intense graphics, then a mac just isn't going to cut it.

for those of you who say "oh, but mac offers X1900XT's!" yeah... they're nice cards, but considering they're nothing compared to the new nVidia GeForce 8 series and that ATi's new series is due at any time, the X1900XT is just a waste of money, not to mention severely overpriced by apple just because their customers will take that {censored} from them.

I mean seriously, if you take the basic Mac Pro at $2500, you can build nearly the exact same computer (save for the case and the motherboard) for about $1600.

So if you really want a good gaming PC, then buy the parts and put it all together. That'll get you the best bang for your buck. Of course, you already said that your mom only likes big companies, so I assume that you can't really do that. So I'd say go for the Dell XPS that you want... Alienware has better spec'd computers, but their support and QA/QC are complete jokes.

But if you really must have real Mac hardware and are really planning to play just CS:S, then a Mac Pro would be good. But for future proofing: get a PC and turn it into a Hackintosh if you want (although I don't think GeForce 8 series are supported yet among a lot of new hardware, so be careful).