iMac and EQ

[Nitestalker]

<p>Hi all,</p><p>My wife and I have been playing EQ2 for about a year and a half now on a PC.  We are looking at getting a second computer and for non-gaming reasons are considering one of the new iMacs.  Does anyone have expierence running EQ2 on one of the new iMacs using Vista or XP on Boot Camp?  Can someone tell me if this will work?  I really hope it will because we want our 2nd computer to be EQ2 playable.  I checked the forums and wasn't able to get a good answer as most of the forums were a) out of date/pre-Vista or b) about Mac books.  Thanks for your help.</p>

[Wingrider01]

<cite>Nitestalker wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Hi all,</p><p>My wife and I have been playing EQ2 for about a year and a half now on a PC.  We are looking at getting a second computer and for non-gaming reasons are considering one of the new iMacs.  Does anyone have expierence running EQ2 on one of the new iMacs using Vista or XP on Boot Camp?  Can someone tell me if this will work?  I really hope it will because we want our 2nd computer to be EQ2 playable.  I checked the forums and wasn't able to get a good answer as most of the forums were a) out of date/pre-Vista or b) about Mac books.  Thanks for your help.</p></blockquote>The game will only run on one of the new IMACS with BootCamp, if you look at these make sure you select one that does NOT have the Intel GMA 950 video chipset, this chipset utilizes software to get support for some ofthe video requirements needed for EQ2 and other games and it will not reliably run the game. There is no native mac client and to date none is hinted at since the client is tied heavily to DirectX which is not available on the Mac. Run it every so often in this senario when I need a extra machine to run an account on - this is a desktop mac, not a notebook

[Nitestalker]

Thanks Wingrider01...the part about the chipset was particularly helpful.

[CapnBeta]

Hi - I recently purchased one of the new aluminum iMac's and run EQ2 using Boot Camp.  I tried running it under Parallels, a program which lets the iMac run Windows in a window, but the new Parallels only supports DirectX 8 and not the 9.0c that EQ2 uses.For me, running EQ2 was painless.  I'm using Windows XP OEM edition with Boot Camp and created the standard 32GB partition before copying my entire Sony directory over from my PC.  I have the 24" iMac with the 2.4 GHz processor and the default 1GB of memory.I have to say, this is my first experience with a Mac after 25 years of PC and I'm very, very happy with it.  Installation and setup of the machine itself was simple - I entered my name, where I lived, smiled for a picture, and watched it spend all of 10 seconds finding and auto-configuring my internet.  I've gone from a large box, a large monitor, and a dozen snaking cables to one slimline, stylized monitor and 3 cables.  I'll soon be down to just 1 cable when I buy the wireless mouse and keyboard.I suggest you give the iMac a try.  Buy it from a place (such as Best Buy) where you can return it unconditionally in 2 weeks and if you're not happy, just take it back.  I predict you will, though, and as I said - EQ2 runs perfectly for me and the graphics are sharper than I recall them ever being on a PC.  The only down side is a slight lag in cities, but that will be cured when I get more memory.Good luck.- Seditious of Sullon Zek (Guk Server)

[Nitestalker]

<p>Thanks so much for all the feedback...the only question now seems to be if we should wait for leopard <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  Also, just a quick question...does anyone know how to find out what chipset is being used?  It sounds like I might not have to worry but it would be nice to check or at least now how to check...Thanks again all</p>

[antwar]

when you go to buy one (be it best buy or an apple store itself), simply TELL them that you will be using bootcamp+windows xp pro to play PC games on your shiney new intel mac, and you must make sure that it has the graphics capability to play 3D games such as first person shooters and a playable FPS rate. by playable, i mean anything 20 or more is playable. expect to get more or less depending on which zone you are in, the number of mobs and people are around you that you can see (are actually being rendered), and also what settings you currently have set in the game options. tweaking will almost certainly be required to get the best performance rate for your hardware, while still being visually acceptable.