Tired of Vanilla

[wismas]

Need some direction. I own a 360 and an iMac. I've been playing games like Skyrim and Fallout on the 360 and would love to try out the games with all the amazing mods I've seen. I realize the 360 is out and from what I've researched so far my iMac running Boot Camp will theoretically run vanilla Skyrim/Fallout in medium to high settings. Ideally I would love to use the iMac and while I think it will run Skyrim I'm fairly certain it will not handle many mods that I would want to add.

 

It's a 2009 iMac with the following specs:

 

2.66 GHz Intel Core i5 CPU

 

4GB RAM, I can upgrade this up to 16GB I believe

 

ATI Radeon HD 4850 Graphics card with 512MBVRAM

 

I'm guessing the video card/VRAM is the biggest problem with my machine for running Skyrim modded.

 

If it is problematic I would consider buying a gaming pc. I've been knee-deep in Macs my whole life so I have no idea where to begin the search or what I should look for. I've read the forum trying to piece the information together and it seems quite a bit of members "build" their own system. Does that literally mean buying components and building it from scratch? Are prebuilt systems such as Alienware boxes overpriced/underperforming? Are there better resources for buying a built system? Right now I think my budget would top off at $800.

 

Two other complications. The reason I like the idea of using the iMac is that it is conveniently set up in my home office but I wouldn't have room to add a gaming pc.

 

If I get a gaming PC I'm probably going to have to connect it to the HDTV in the game room. The TV is an older 720P set, nice enough but not super sharp.

 

Anyway, fishing for help from any and all. If you made it this far, thanks for that and hopefully you will have some insight to share with me.

Edited December 23, 2013 by wismas

[Thor.]

I would highly recommend the way of the pc, if you have any. With that radeon 4850 is a big bottleneck, and i am almost certain mods are out of the question with a 4850,

Edited December 23, 2013 by Thor.

[Werne]

Are prebuilt systems such as Alienware boxes overpriced/underperforming?

Not worth the price, the equivalent machine with exact same parts assembled yourself would cost 1/2 the price, maybe even less depending on components. You basically pay for brand, just like Apple's stuff but without their own OS.

 

Any pre-built machine for 800$ would more than likely fail to run Skyrim on Ultra on stock without mods, add mods and performance would crumble. My machine (FX 8320, Radeon 7770, 8GB RAM) costs ~900$ pre-built around here and I paid ~500$ for the parts when I assembled it myself. That machine won't be playing Skyrim on Ultra even on stock without the HD DLC, and the graphics card would crumble if I were to install graphical mods (not like I care much). An 800$ Alienware would perform worse than both your Mac and my machine.

 

And playing games on that thing of yours is not so good, the card has a formidable GPU but it's memory is way too small, 512MB may be good for medium without mods but anything else would make the game unstable.

 

For 800$, you can build a decent machine. And yes, that means you buy components and assemble the PC yourself, you should know how to use a screwdriver and zip-ties. If building from ground-up (assuming you don't have any parts and you won't rip apart the iMac), I think this should do just nicely:

 

CPU: Intel i5-3570

CPU cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev2

Mobo: ASRock Z75 Pro3

Graphics: Gigabyte AMD R9 270X Windforce, GHz Edition

RAM: 2x4GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1333 CL9

HDD: 1TB Hitachi SATA III

Case: CoolerMaster HAF 912

PSU: SeaSonic 550W 80+ Gold

Optical drive: The cheapest one I could find :tongue:

 

Here's the link.

 

Price: ~$748, some more on shipping and stuff, should come under $800 total. Note: CPU is locked (no overclocking). An aftermarket cooler may seem dumb since the CPU can't be overclocked, but the Ivy Bridge sometimes get quite toasty with stock cooling, especially when there's a powerful graphics card installed in there and the cooler goes about sucking it's hot air. And yeah, you'd have to assemble the machine yourself.

 

There's also the AMD side of things, more cores and power consumption, should be roughly the same in performance. Same components with a difference in CPU, mobo and cooler:

 

CPU: AMD FX 6350 Black Edition

CPU cooler: CoolerMaster 212 EVO

Mobo: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3

 

Here's the link.

 

Price: ~$737, should come under $800 total. Note: the FX-series are unlocked processors, so they can be overcloked, should OC quite well with 212 EVO and GA-970A-UD3. Same as the first build, you'd have to assemble it yourself.

 

 

 

Now to explain why two builds - Intel i5 will perform better in Skyrim when both CPUs are on stock (higher per-core performance), by how much I can't really say, my guess is some ~20%. On the other hand, the FX 6350 will perform better in modern multi-threaded games (higher number of cores) and would likely outperform that i5 in Skyrim once overclocked, but it'll use more power. Both are good and will run Skyrim at 60FPS even on stock frequencies since the performance gap between a low-end i5 and mid-range FX is not that large.

 

Price difference is ~$20 between the two, so it's all a matter of what suits you more. If you intend to OC or have a bit more future-proof machine, FX 6350 or 8320 on an 800$ budget would be a no-brainer, but if your only intention is playing Skyrim and FO, you may find the i5 to suit your needs more.

 

 

 

As for the monitor - a 720p television is pretty much perfect. 720p and 1080p are standard resolutions for gaming nowadays, the graphics card will do better on a 720p than 1080p but it'll tax the CPU a bit more (albeit by a near-irrelevant amount). Using a TV instead of a PC monitor makes little to no difference, both work the same as far as the PC is concerned, it's just that the TV connects to a HDMI port while a standard monitor goes on a DVI port. You can also have multiple monitors (like hooking up both the TV and PC monitor to the graphics card), but I can't really understand the need for that when it comes to gaming.

 

Aaand that's it. You get best bang-for-buck by assembling a PC yourself, by buying a pre-built machine you get a small performance difference compared to that iMac of yours, but it comes in a real case and with Windows installed.

[wismas]

Thanks, Thor and a big thanks to you, Werne for all that excellent information. Are there good youtube videos or better, step by step guides online to follow in order to build a pc? I've never done that, the most I've done was years ago when I used to do the maintenance on our PowerMacs at an old job. I replaced drives, memory and cards but not much beyond that and that was years ago.

 

If I wanted to spend more and get a prebuilt system is there a good resource?

 

For an experiment I may still try to run Skyrim on my iMac. The investment would be minimal, all I need is a Windows OS, Skyrim and some additional RAM. If it doesn't work well I will only be out the money for the memory as I can use the game and OS software on a future machine.

[hoofhearted4]

several videos i watched when i was learning how to build a PC

 

 

they build a system, but its not a tutorial really. but if you pay attention youll still learn

very long video 2.5 hrs

 

 

3 part video

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

 

 

old video, but the 10 tips still apply

some tips

 

 

again not a tutorial, but they do showcase some problems you might run into while building. i always enjoyed this one plus theres 3 PCs being built at once

it was a race

 

 

this is a nice video. this one is a tutorial

1.5 hours long

 

 

lastly while i looked up that last one, i found hes updated it. and done several other video/tutorials on builds, so you might wanna look into him more.

 

hope these help.

[Werne]

Thanks, Thor and a big thanks to you, Werne for all that excellent information. Are there good youtube videos or better, step by step guides online to follow in order to build a pc? I've never done that, the most I've done was years ago when I used to do the maintenance on our PowerMacs at an old job. I replaced drives, memory and cards but not much beyond that and that was years ago.

Well, you have Newegg's "How to build a computer" series (vid 1/3 linked) which basically guides you all the way from choosing parts to installing Windows and software, guys are pretty thorough. But to be honest, it's pretty straight forward even without instructions, if you ever used a screwdriver you'll know how to build a PC.

 

If I wanted to spend more and get a prebuilt system is there a good resource?

To be honest, I got no idea. I live in Croatia and most our pre-built systems are terribly mis-configured (Intel i7-4770K and Radeon 7750, or i3-3220 with Intel graphics which is a 60W system with an 800W PSU, stuff like that), and I haven't seen builds that are much better than that outside Croatia either.

 

I know System76 has some nice machines, the price/performance ratio seems to be decent and the guys know how to build a system. Problem is, they deal with Linux only (Ubuntu, to be specific), so getting one of those would mean having to get Windows on your own, but installing it may prove a bit of a nuisance though since Windows doesn't like to install on a machine with ext4 partitions and you lose support on software.

 

Other than that, I only know of some guys in UK who build custom configurations for some 20-25€ but that's about it. Either way, you get the best components for the price if you build yourself, anything else and you pay either for pixie dust or brand that's terribly overpriced, which is why building your own machine is always the most recommended way.

 

For an experiment I may still try to run Skyrim on my iMac. The investment would be minimal, all I need is a Windows OS, Skyrim and some additional RAM. If it doesn't work well I will only be out the money for the memory as I can use the game and OS software on a future machine.

That's also an option, just don't push settings too high or your game will become unstable due to a small amount of VRAM on your card, and don't install graphical mods for that same reason. If the settings work for you and the game runs at a stable framerate, then you're good, and it's the most cost-efficient way.

 

One note though, since I'm not sure how familiar are you with Windows systems - Windows is not OS X. It doesn't have an online software repository with everything at your disposal, so you need to hunt for drivers and software online yourself. There's a chance it won't work right out-of-the-box since it's not a native system, so just get the drivers and firmware for your hardware if you need them (you'll need the AMD drivers for 4xxx series cards and an anti-virus, that much is certain) and you're good. :wink:

Edited December 23, 2013 by Werne

[wismas]

I've watched a few of the videos and in general terms it isn't too bad. Looks like the mounting of the motherboard and the wire routing are the most tedious/delicate parts of the operation. Thanks again Werne and thanks to you too, hoof! Looks like the tower cases are easier to work on but I was hoping for a smaller/shorter footprint like a desktop profile.

 

My wife just threw a curveball at me. She has been eyeing my iMac for a few years now and suggested that she takes it for her office and I get a new one.

[wismas]

So the my plan is to give my current iMac a crack at running Skyrim and see what happens. I still plan on getting a newer machine, either a gaming PC or new iMac but that may be a week or two. Can anyone recommend an easy to use anti-virus software for Windows 7?

[FMod]

Microsoft Security Essentials.

[Thor.]

lavasofts antivirus, its one i trust the most, You have no idea how many times its saved my pc from a complete restore.

 

its one of the most reliable antivirus i have ever used.

 

http://www.lavasoft.com/

Edited December 25, 2013 by Thor.