Mac Mini and gaming

I like my mac mini a lot, but I'm not sure I'd call it a gaming machine. I'd think you'd really want something with a little more horsepower under the hood, particularly a faster graphics card for any serious gaming.

The Mac Mini will be MUCH better than your first rev. iMac G4. I'm I'm not mistaken, your iMac is 700-800 MHz with a 32MB GeForce2 MX videocard. With a 133MHz system bus. The Mini is 1.25 or 1.42GHz (or if you're lucky and order a 1.42, then 1.5) with a 32MB Radeon 9200. Processor isn't that bad (no G5, but plenty fast), but the videocard, although better than the one in your iMac, may not have the juice to run the more demanding modern games out there. Halo, Unreal Tournament, all the Blizzard games, those will run fine. Just don't expect to run Doom III on it. 🙂

My last computer was a 1GHz Aluminum Powerbook G4... 1GHz and 64MB Radeon Mobility 9600, and I was never hurting for speed, except on the really, really intense games. For light gaming, the mini should absolutely rock for how much you'll pay for it.

As for networking the mini like that, sorry, there's no way. 🙂 You're going to have to find a monitor and swap the keyboard between the computers, or find a monitor and keyboard.

Don't let that deter you from a Mini though. It'll run circles around your iMac in anything you do with it.

I play WoW and Neverwinter Nights on my mini and the framerate does drop in places even with the settings on low.

I'd agree with the above poster that the mini isn't really designed for gamers. I would recommend with going with and imac G5 or above for serious gaming.

Actually, hey, the newer 1.5GHz version of the mini (the one you can only get if you're lucky and order a 1.42) has 64MB of VRAM. I don't know if it's a 9600 mobility or something or if it's 9550 or still 9200, but that should widen the gap significantly more between it and your iMac.

Good luck!

Actually, the huge framerate drop is more likely due to the game having to load data off of the hard drive, or the game grinding on the CPU really hard when you do something like, say, fly into Ironforge and see all the people hanging round the gryphon master there. I'm on a 17" 1.67GHz powerbook with a 128MB Radeon 9700, and I drop frames all the time when in those areas. I'm doubting if that's a huge videocard problem. A Mini with a 64MB card should run WoW pretty dang awesomely (with the exception of places in Ironforge and Stormwind, etc... maybe Darnassus, because it's sooo complex and beautiful...)

My 1GHz Powerbook with a 64MB Mobility Radeon 9600 runs it absolutely flawlessly with the resolution at 1024x768 and all the settings except *ahhh, so beautiful!* terrain highlights turned down. It'll keep running it pretty dang well if you turn stuff up, but it gets choppy at the top. I'd expect a 50% higher-clocked Mac Mini with the same (or similar) graphics processor to perform at least as well if not better.

Yeah I was wondering how much of it was due to congestion and how much is due to video card performance. It would be nice though to run WoW at the highest terrain settings though, but your on point in saying the mini exceeding expectations. The architecture of the mini is really impressive.

You could use a KVM (Keyboard, Video and Mouse) switch to share your keyboard and mouse with the iMac. However, even if your iMac has video out (of that I am not sure), I does not have a video in that would allow you to input video from your Mini on the iMac's screen, so you would have to get a new monitor.

If your iMac does have a video out, then you should be able to share your Mini's monitor and have a Dual-monitor iMac ... but your GFX card must have a video out and support dual-monitor, otherwise you'll get two screens displaying the same image 😟 and I don't know if the iMac G4's GFX card support dual-monitor.

I don't know where to find good KVMs, but I'm sure many people here do.

KVM is covered so just a info blurb about my experience with Myst V.

Myst V is playable on the mini even though it falls below the minimum specs. At lower screen resolution with the graphics features turned off. Only because it is Myst is it still ok at high resolution with the features on if you play in Classic mode and are not impatient--which kind of defines your typical Myst player.

Jan J.