Tiuk Posted November 18, 2005 Share Posted November 18, 2005 Here's the situation. I'm in love with OSX, but am a poor student who can't afford a Mac. My current system is a Athlon XP 1700 (Palomino), 1 GB PC2100 DDR ram, GF3 Ti200. I decided I'd like to build an osx86 system because a mobo with Intel GMA 900 graphics and a 2.8 Ghz Celron with SSE3 can be had for around $100 US, and the rest of the parts I already have. Then I got to thinking, such a system would have a better CPU than my current system which I use for gaming, so why not up the ante a little and make the osx86 machine also good for gaming. Here are my questions: 1) Is it possible to reliably dualboot osx86 with Win XP (XP is necessary for gaming, I'm not interested in buying Mac versions of games I already have). 2) Are there any mobos with integrated GMA 900 graphics that are good enough for a decent gaming system? I'm looking at the GIGABYTE GA-8I915ME-G (link) 3) Will I be able to easily use the GMA graphics for osx86 while another video card is installed? 4) Since it's for gaming I'd go with a P4 instead of the Celeron. I'm thinking of the P4 540J (3.2 Ghz Prescott, 1 mb L2 cache, SSE3, 800 mhz FSB). 5) When I built my current rig PCI-E wasn't around so I don't know much about it. From what I've read it looks like the mobo I chose can run any current PCI-E GPU, right? Thanks all, I'm really hoping to make this work. If it doesn't, I'll just have to build a cheap osx86 box and the gaming rig will have to wait. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrJägermeister Posted November 19, 2005 Share Posted November 19, 2005 Here's the situation. I'm in love with OSX, but am a poor student who can't afford a Mac. My current system is a Athlon XP 1700 (Palomino), 1 GB PC2100 DDR ram, GF3 Ti200. I decided I'd like to build an osx86 system because a mobo with Intel GMA 900 graphics and a 2.8 Ghz Celron with SSE3 can be had for around $100 US, and the rest of the parts I already have. Then I got to thinking, such a system would have a better CPU than my current system which I use for gaming, so why not up the ante a little and make the osx86 machine also good for gaming. Here are my questions: 1) Is it possible to reliably dualboot osx86 with Win XP (XP is necessary for gaming, I'm not interested in buying Mac versions of games I already have). 2) Are there any mobos with integrated GMA 900 graphics that are good enough for a decent gaming system? I'm looking at the GIGABYTE GA-8I915ME-G (link) 3) Will I be able to easily use the GMA graphics for osx86 while another video card is installed? 4) Since it's for gaming I'd go with a P4 instead of the Celeron. I'm thinking of the P4 540J (3.2 Ghz Prescott, 1 mb L2 cache, SSE3, 800 mhz FSB). 5) When I built my current rig PCI-E wasn't around so I don't know much about it. From what I've read it looks like the mobo I chose can run any current PCI-E GPU, right? Thanks all, I'm really hoping to make this work. If it doesn't, I'll just have to build a cheap osx86 box and the gaming rig will have to wait. 1) no problem 2) too slow for actual games (fear, doom3 and many others). For this you need an actual NVIDIA or ATI witch is not supported by OSX86 3) don't know: I read differend threads (working/ not working), so just test it with an card from a friend when you have the PC 4) P4 is faster as a celeron, but for games it's not so important: you need a fast VGA card 5) Yes, but NVIDIA and ATI will work in Linux or M$. In OSX86 they willl work in VESA (no openGL=no Games) P.S: your RAM will probably not work (only 133Mhz FSB is the same as DDR 266 - PC2100) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiuk Posted November 19, 2005 Author Share Posted November 19, 2005 1) no problem2) too slow for actual games (fear, doom3 and many others). For this you need an actual NVIDIA or ATI witch is not supported by OSX86 3) don't know: I read differend threads (working/ not working), so just test it with an card from a friend when you have the PC 4) P4 is faster as a celeron, but for games it's not so important: you need a fast VGA card 5) Yes, but NVIDIA and ATI will work in Linux or M$. In OSX86 they willl work in VESA (no openGL=no Games) P.S: your RAM will probably not work (only 133Mhz FSB is the same as DDR 266 - PC2100) I'm not worried about gaming support in OS X, that's why I'm dualbooting with XP. I am aware that I'll need to purchase new ram. Thanks though. Anyone have any more input on this question: Will I be able to easily use the GMA graphics for osx86 while another video card is installed? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roland77 Posted November 19, 2005 Share Posted November 19, 2005 I'm not worried about gaming support in OS X, that's why I'm dualbooting with XP. I am aware that I'll need to purchase new ram. Thanks though. Anyone have any more input on this question: Will I be able to easily use the GMA graphics for osx86 while another video card is installed? Imo, np The only annoying thing is u will have to reconnect ur monitor cable from gma900 to the extra card... just disable the gma900 card in windows, @ device manager, and on OSX u can do likewise I guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiuk Posted November 19, 2005 Author Share Posted November 19, 2005 Awesome. I knew it wouldn't be an issue in Windows, but I wasn't sure how OS X treated devices and didn't know if I'd be able to do that. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zidane Posted November 29, 2005 Share Posted November 29, 2005 You could always get one of those Sony Monitors with the switch on it, or get a cheap KVM switch and just run the monitor through that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghw9132 Posted November 29, 2005 Share Posted November 29, 2005 10.4.3 has support for some ATI graphics cards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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