14 DAY TRIAL // Anybody knows that the gaming area for Macintosh is very poorly developed and, in fact, a Mac can be used for merely everything, from advanced graphic editing to simple text editing, but no gamer will go for Mac, even with a G5 processor and bursting with RAM.
The games are designed for PCs and dedicated consoles, and Mac is not even in question. Or better yet, it wasn't in question, since, as of yesterday, Doom 3 is available for Mac too, thanks to Aspyr Studios.
The game's gloomy atmosphere can now be tested by the Mac users, and, along with this release, could we risk the prediction of another area for Mac to have equal shots in the battle against PCs?
For now, this is very difficult to achieve, as the majority of the Apple systems (obviously, of the latest generation) are equipped with medium-end video cards, such as GeForceFX 5200, which results in lower 3D performance compared to a PC outfitted with state of the art graphic cards, supported even by 512 MB GDDR3.
In case you thought that the simplest way to a Mac transition (for getting rid of all the Windows-specific problems) is a Mac Mini, well, Doom 3 won't be able to run on it, the minimum requirements for the processor being 1.5 GHz.
Apple announced that, beginning from the third quarter, its systems will be equipped with 512 MB RAM, even though the Tiger OS doesn't need such an amount of memory.
The minimum Mac requirements for Doom 3 are: OS X v10.3.8 and above; CPU G4/1.5GHz; 512MB RAM; 2.0 GB hard disk space; graphics: ATI Radeon 9600 or Nvidia GeForce FX5200 with minimum 64 MB dedicated memory; DVD drive.