Switching to Mac... Gonna miss my gaming rig!

[pN.Fek]

Hi all,

I'm going to (set in stone) pick up a Mini before Christmas and had 2 questions I was hoping for advice on. I'm switching to Mac Mini after a loooong history of big fat noisy PCs with overpowered video cards in them for FPS and RTS gaming.. but 2 kids and a lot of overtime mean I don't really need all that grunt anymore

1. I'm getting a mac mini because I hate the uber glossy iMac screens. Can anyone recommend the 2009 vs 2010 model? I ask this because the unibody seems to make the 2010 version basically upgrade-proof (from what I've read).

2. I'd still like to do some casual gaming on this thing I'm reaaally thinking of grabbing a 720p native LED TV for the monitor to improve FPS in games while maintaining picture quality (i.e. no downscaling from 1080 res). Anyone tried this and see a noticeable frame rate? It's 2073600 (1080) pixels vs 921600 (720p) which in theory halves the GPU load.

I'd love some feedback if anyone can help. I even borrowed my brother in laws only G4 mini (1.8Ghz?) for a weekend to play around in Steve's universe for a few days. Amazing!! Converting for life (but will really miss my gaming GPU.. cough..)!!

Cheers!

Fek

[Smithcraft]

Hello there!

Your brothers mini is only 1.5 GHz at best.

Anyway, the 2009 mini is only slightly more upgradable than the 2010. The CPU is mounted directly to the motherboard so you can't upgrade it without some expensive equipment. That leaves the HDD as the only really upgradable part. Neither mini uses anything special in terms of hard drives. I don't think it's gonna make much of a difference with either one.

As for gaming, I can't say. I gave up on gaming on the Mac when I picked up my XBox. Also, the GPU that Apple puts in the mini, well, it's there so it can do something right?

For gaming on the Mac news, you might wanna check out Inside Mac Games.

SC
_________________
Grumpy old man of computing.

[Desktop] G4 mini - 1.5Ghz 1GB 80GB HDD - Newer miniStack v2 500GB - 10.5.8

[Media System] Intel i5 mini - 2.33Ghz 8GB 500GB HDD - 4 x Hitachi 2TB HDD in a qBOX-SF - 10.7.5 (Thanks Phil!)

Make sure it has pins!

[pN.Fek]

In that case I'll just grab the 2010 model and wait a year for the warranty to run out. Then I can either replace the 5400rpm drive it comes with standard and throw in an SSD.

Or hand it one down to my wife and buy a new one for me