Mac and MMO's don't mix.

October 19, 2009 11:23 AM

I'm a gamer. I bought a mac. After going through a lot of hassles with Boot Camp, I've decided to switch back. I'll get around $1700 for returning the mac... My question is, would it be better to buy a laptop around this price or sell my desktop as well to up my budget?

Quick note: This question is anonymous because my entire social circle knows about the situation, and I don't want them knowing about my other, more personal questions on the main account.

I did get boot camp to work for awhile, but then I ran out of hard drive space on my Windows partition. Low and behold, you can't dynamically resize drives. Instead of going through the reinstall when I run out of space again (or giving my mac partition a measly 5GB... What is it even there for?) , I decided to just buy a gaming laptop.

I've been looking at the G71GX and the G51Vx.(http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=0rtKwgmuen69jiqw).

Around May of '08, I built a desktop with top of the line gaming equipment at the time (specifically, to run Age of Conan.) I'm away in college now, so most of the time it sits collecting dust. However, I'm worried that if I do sell it, I'll find the laptop doesn't measure up and regret it... Anyone have some experience with this that can chime in? (I've never bought a laptop for gaming before.)

Also, I mention the date/equipment because I'm trying to guestimate how much it'll sell for. My guess is around $500-$600, but could it be even less than that? (I can give specific specs if need be.)

posted by anonymous to computers & internet (14 comments total)

You could also just install Windows over your entire laptop. There's no good reason why you have to have an OS X partition, and it would save you the money.
posted by Electrius at 11:31 AM on October 19 [1 favorite]

G51j is going to be 150 cheaper and comes with the i7 mobile chip.

Or you can go a bit cheaper and get an external vidock2 or roll your own.
posted by Lord_Pall at 11:39 AM on October 19

The G51Vx is $1300. That leaves $400 from the return of the Mac, so why do you even need to sell the desktop? It's going to be tough to sell, might not be worth the hassle. You could just give it away to someone. I've given my slightly older machines to friends and family when I've upgraded in the past.

However, we're not going to be able to tell you if you'll experience a performance hit without at least knowing what's in your desktop right now.
posted by adamdschneider at 12:10 PM on October 19

Macs are not different hardware than PCs. You can keep the machine you have and just re-install windows on it without having a Mac partition at all.
posted by odinsdream at 12:30 PM on October 19 [2 favorites]

What is the specs of the gamer pc ? You might be able to get away with just a vid card upgrade on the gamer pc. what is the specs of dthe desktop processor?
posted by majortom1981 at 12:34 PM on October 19

I'm a gamer. I bought a mac.

Wow. This is pretty much the only reason NOT to buy a mac. If gaming is your goal, I'd sell the mac for a good price and build a smokin' pc gaming rig. Or retrofit your "old" one to be even smokin'ier.
posted by Aquaman at 1:09 PM on October 19

As long as you have a decent motherboard on your "old" gaming PC you can get a lot of upgrade out of 1700.00. At the very least you can get a monstrous GFX card, a zippy CPU, more RAM, a new wide screen monitor, and a netbook to go along with it. Still, I have a mid summer 08 desktop that was pretty much top of the line when I built it (so maybe slightly better than yours assuming we spent the same amount of money) and it is still running pretty much anything I ask it to without trying hard at all.

Regardless, if you get a "gaming laptop" you are going to pay a lot more for something that will not perform as well as your PC.
posted by BobbyDigital at 1:25 PM on October 19

In my opinion,

You have made a serious mistake (buying a mac) and it sounds like you are intending to go on to make another (buying a gaming laptop).

I have twice, since about 2003, purchased or otherwise acquired a laptop that was specifically able to play games because it was the only computer I had, and both times it has come up painfully short in comparison to a real desktop setup.

- Dollar for dollar you get less of a gaming machine with a laptop. You can probably even make two desktops (intelligently purchasing budget-minded gaming hardware) that perform comparably to one gaming laptop for the same amount.
- Laptops are naturally built around the compromise of space and portability with hardware. Out of many laptops and desktops I have both benchmarked and gamed at, the desktop ALWAYS feels more responsive. On top of different chipsets internally, and portable graphics chipsets, your harddrive is going to be slow.
- As far as gaming setup, laptop monitors are often less enjoyable to game at than a real monitor, their keyboards tend to be more difficult to use than a keyboard you purchased or like, and regardless you're going to have to buy a mouse. You have to spend extra on speakers if you don't wish to use a headset. If you purchase all of these add-ons for a laptop, your laptop setup suddenly becomes roughly as portable as a regular PC.
- Laptop driver issues often come into play with gaming, and you have no recourse. Need updated nvidia graphics drivers? Your vendor doesn't have a set for the version number you need. Spend time finding hacked drivers? (Incidentally) the last time I did that, the unofficial driver created audio issues on my laptop. Want to use that mic that came with the webcam? Perhaps, like me, the drivers are buggy and you get bluescreens, or at best have to reset the laptop every time you exit your chosen game due to mic driver issues. You can not change out these pieces of hardware.

Like I started with, this is opinion, but backed with a fair amount of experience. I like laptops and still use mine to game when away from home, but never would I delude myself into thinking it can enjoyably replace a proper desktop setup to game.
posted by BurnMage at 2:04 PM on October 19 [5 favorites]

FWIW, Im running Win7 on a macbook pro with an nvidia8400 mobile, which is fine for portable gaming. Considering youre looking at a monetary loss by selling, Id just redo the partitions and reinstall windows. I have like 10gigs for OSX, everything else is windows. Keep the mac. Heck, you may be able to resize the partitions with gparted or partition magic.
posted by damn dirty ape at 2:46 PM on October 19

A top of the line gaming rig from early 08 is still an almost top of the line gaming rig. I'm guessing you don't want the hassle of moving your whole desktop to college though, hence the laptop.

In my mind, the best thing to do would be to find a mini-ATX motherboard and case compatible with your existing hardware, and transfer your desktop into that. It'll give you a smaller, more portable PC that won't get in the way, and it'll save you a small fortune in investing in a gaming laptop. It's true that you'll have to lug the screen and peripherals around with you, buy, as BurnMage has pointed out, you have to do that with a laptop anyway if you want a decent gaming experience.
posted by hnnrs at 3:12 PM on October 19 [1 favorite]

I meant but, not buy, by the way
posted by hnnrs at 3:17 PM on October 19

Get an external HD (c. $150+) and use that for whichever OS you use less frequently. (alternately, just upgrade the internal HD.) As mentioned above, Macs actually make very good Win platforms (in some cases outperforming the commercial Win boxes.)
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:32 PM on October 19

I'd sell everything and get a crappy Win7 netbook for carrying around and build a new Win7 desktop for gaming. Since you are a student you can get Win7 for $30 which is cool.

For the desktop I'd go for a quad-core 2.66Ghz Socket 1156 CPU, PCI 2.0 16x x1 MB, ATI 5870 (or 5850 if that's all you need), 4GB RAM. That will be good enough for the foreseeable future (out to 2015 or so).

Here's a build:

Intel BOXDP55SB LGA 1156 Intel P55 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
$199.99

Intel Core i5-750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80605I5750 $199.99

ASUS EAH5870/G/2DIS/1GD5/A Radeon HD 5870 (Cypress XT) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express $389.99

SeaSonic M12II SS-430GM 430W ATX12V 2.2 /EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS $69.99

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound - OEM
$6.99

mushkin 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Dual Channel Kit $87.99

Subtotal: $954.94
posted by mokuba at 10:16 PM on October 19

I have an ASUS M50VN that I bought in January. The main motivation to buy it, other than my other laptop was falling apart, was so my daughter & I could play Left 4 Dead together.
The desktop she uses is roughly 6 months older (previous MB died, so MB, RAM, CPU, HDD, PSU were all replaced) but cost less than half what the laptop cost.

I'm not going to mention actual cost of anything as computer hardware is much more expensive here in Australia and currency is fluctuating so what I paid is not relevant to you.
I'm also not a Mac person, although I do use an iPhone.
I just wanted to say I game quite acceptably on this laptop. We just don't have the room here for 2 desktop set ups. The one thing you do need is a decent mouse as while you can get away with gaming using the laptop keyboard (you might prefer to connect an exteral keyboard tho) you cannot game with a touch pad instead of a mouse.
We don't play a huge array of games, but we both are quite happy using this laptop to play Left 4 Dead.
The biggest let down is the quality of the laptop speakers compared to quality desktop speakers. Of course, you can remedy this by hooking up external speakers or using a good pair of headphones.
I recommend making sure you get a model that has a proper number pad, it makes a huge difference to usability.
posted by goshling at 5:08 AM on October 20