The Virgo said:
First of all: Please read the whole post before posting. Thanks!
Last night, a friend of mine and my dad's dropped by. Well, we got on the subject of computers and he starting saying that, for the things I do, an iMac would be perfect.
Well, my gaming computer is so old that the latest game I've played is The Sims 3, and it was pretty laggy at that. <:'-( So, for the past few years I've missed out on games. (I don't even have an Xbox360, a PS3 or, God-forbid, a Wii.) So, we mentioned that it would be difficult to spend $1,200 on a work computer and THEN spend at least $3,000 bucks on a new, up-to-date gaming rig.
Well, this friend then said this, pretty much word for word: "All PC games can run on Mac. They were designed on Macs. You put it in and, BOOM, it's loaded. No installing, no waiting, it's in there instantly. On a computer, you have to put it in, wait for it to install, no, not on a Mac. It's installed the moment you put it in."
Well, to be honest, to me, that sounded, and still sounds, like bullshit. VALVe just recently made Steam available for Macs and Skyrim doesn't seem to have OSX support.
However, since my dad and I are not really computer savvy, I wanted to give our friend the benefit of the doubt by asking here: Can an iMac run all PC games? Even old ones that you would get at Good Old Games?
Also, he mentioned when talking about the difference between the $700 and $1,200 iMac, he said the $1,200 iMac has, "... Five more gigs of RAM." Um, that's funny; I always thought RAM cam in 256MB, 512MB, 2Gigs, 4Gigs, 8Gigs and so on. Is it possible to have an odd number of RAM like 5 Gigs?
complicated question, complicated answer..
ever more windows applications will run on macs, and mac has a 'bootcamp' that will run some things
eg, bioware has no officially supported mac platform but the new mmo starwars the old republic works perfectly in bootcamp, so there is no need.
not every program or game will work thus, it's somewhat hit and miss.
and yes, you can have an odd number of ram i myself had 12 gigs on my main pc, i currently have 3 gigs of videoram for a long while and i had 3gb system ram in a laptop
it simply depends on what density of ram you put in the slots.
you could, theoretically get 1024+512+256 and make 1.75 gb.
when you put a 32 bit os in a system with 4gb of ram, you only actually get 3.3-3.6 available ram
due to software limitations, as you can see ram is quite flexable
however such things are not recommended for stability it could cause problems in poorly coded programs
physically, hardware wise mac's and pc's are identical these days nearly every component is interchangeable in the computing market right now
lastly, mac pc's are overpriced, they are overpriced because someone had to physically check the hardware setup and sell that information on plus vendor mark-up
you get good compatibility when using a mac
there will be less problems with program and hardware compatibility
that is what you pay for
it is the exact same service you get when choosing a laptop, or a windows pc built by a reputable company such as alien ware
you get a price bump, but it is guaranteed to work.
the components and included software are vetted to work under any condition with each other
lastly you really need to get a doctor if you're paying $3000 for a gaming pc
honestly, go ask some system builders they can make you a pc for half that with a shelf life of 6 years purely because you can make a build that has upgrade paths avalible
so, you pay $1500 now, and $200 later for parts that have devalued in price and you effectively have the $3k pc you wanted minus the wasted cash and overkill future-proofing
it's far better this way, i promise.
