foamy Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 I am considering switching from PC to Mac, BUT CMAK and CMBO must play well. Anyone out there got any comments, experience with Mac and these games? I know "diddly sqaut" about Macs, but after spending 30 minutes in one of their Mall showrooms I was very, very impressed 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 Macs are great computers, but if CM compatibility is a major issue for you then you'll run into a number of problems. Generally you're going to need a used Mac in order to play the current CM titles. Current, on-the-shelves Macs can only boot to OS X. CM can't run directly in OS X, and hence needs the Classic (OS 9.x) environment (a compatibility shell of sorts). But Classic launched from within OS X will not run CMBB & CMAK (CMBO I believe may work in software-rendering mode of 640x480) since RAVE doesn't have full hardware support. To get that hardware support (necessary for 800x600 3D resolutions, etc.) you have to boot into 0S 9.x - something you can't do with the current Macs. There are a number of threads about CM and OS X compatibility with a number of people hoping that the latest patch of OS X.3.x would fix the RAVE issue. Sadly, that doesn't seem likely to ever happen. However CMX2 will be written in the OpenGL API which will allow it to run natively under 0S X (or XI...). There are also some issues with the laptops and desktops that have Radeon 9000 chips. The latest drivers fix what was a horrible color problem in RAVE, but you do have to sacrifice nice looking smoke effects. A Radeon 7000 series card (such as a 7500 or an original Radeon, etc.) would probably be the best videocard (driver support-wise) currently on the Mac for CM. In January 2003 Apple removed boot code from the motherboard ROMs to allow booting into OS 9.x ( Apple Support Doc). So Macs made after that date will generally be undesirable for the current CM series. For laptops I believe one of the faster models that can still boot into OS 9.x is a G4 Titanium 867 and certain Titanium 1GHz models (particular 15" screen models, but not all). For desktops I'm not really sure what the maximum model G4 may be - it may be a 1GHz or slower model. However some of these older desktops could have their CPU upgraded with an after-market CPU-upgrade to bring their speed up to more current models while maintaining OS 9.x boot-capability. Here's one source of used Macs: PowerMax [ October 28, 2004, 02:20 PM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foamy Posted October 28, 2004 Author Share Posted October 28, 2004 Thanks for the quick response Schrullenhaft IF I did got to Mac it would be to their newer units (G5 or some such name), so that pretty much decides it for me, without CMBO or CMAK, life woud not be worth living !!! I guess I'll have to stick with PC, shame that MAC stuff looks awfully good...... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
junk2drive Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 Can you buy the Mac and keep the old PC for games? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gibsonm Posted November 1, 2004 Share Posted November 1, 2004 And of course CMX2 can’t be to far off (which will run under OS X).. So even if you stick with a windoze box for a few months you would be able to buy a new OS X Mac that would run CMX2. If you want to run CMBO, CMBB or CMAK though you need either: 1. Buy a 2nd hand Mac or 2. Keep your PC as a CM box. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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