MBP advice please

Soldato
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Hi Guys

im after some advise please.

I currently have an ASUS n53sv i5 laptop, it does the job of web browsing and playing trackmania and most of the other games i play.
I have a scheme in work that allows me to get laptops and apples tax deducted out of my salary.
So ive been toying with the idea of getting either a 5K imac or a MBP 15"
Are you able to play games like you can via steam ? Its this I dont really follow because ive never seen mac titles for any games.

any help would be very much appreciated
 
Soldato
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Why not have a look at steam for the games you want to play and see if the apple version is available? You also have the option of running Windows via Bootcamp etc.
 
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Many Steam, Origin, GOG and other games (namely League of Legends as far as I'm concerned) are compatible with OSX and tend to run pretty well. For anything that requires Windows, you can very easily install Windows on a Mac and switch between the two OSs on boot.
 
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I just made a similar jump that your are thinking of. Came from an Asus i5 N56VM laptop which served me well for a couple of years but just got fed up of Windows and decided to take the plunge with Apple.

Absolutely love the Macbook (got the 13) and I run Steam (more specifically Football Manager) without a hitch.
There aren't any patches or fancy tricks to get it to work, it's all cross platform no problem. I can even transfer my save game file between my Macbook and my Windows PC without issue.
 
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I've watched a few YouTube videos on boot camp
Daft question but the windows 8 cd is just the normal windows it's not a special windows for Mac edition is it? lol
Looks fairly straightforward the process of dual boot from what I've watched
 
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I've watched a few YouTube videos on boot camp
Daft question but the windows 8 cd is just the normal windows it's not a special windows for Mac edition is it? lol
Looks fairly straightforward the process of dual boot from what I've watched

Yes it's normal Windows and you'll need an ISO as the boot camp assistant creates a bootable Windows installation USB drive.
 
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Thanks for reply
So am I right in saying that when I have windows 8 installed it will work exactly like a windows based system, run Windows based games via steam
 
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Thanks for reply
So am I right in saying that when I have windows 8 installed it will work exactly like a windows based system, run Windows based games via steam

Yeah it should.

Although can I ask why you want to do this? You're still running the same hardware and any game I've tried (admittedly only half a dozen or so) work fine on mac.

Also you would suffer with battery life as Windows is a real hog for battery life compared to OSX
 
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What are you mainly going to use the system for? From what I can see it's gaming and browsing, with maybe a little extra on top?

Depends on what you want really, however for the price of the 5K iMac you could easily build yourself a fairly powerful gaming machine with a 27" display and pick up a mid-range 13" rMBP. The 5K iMac's display is great, however it's not the night-and-day difference like on smaller displays.

My experience with OS X and games is poor, though this was probably about a year and a half ago. Source games ran like crap even though the hardware was more than powerful enough. In Windows my iMac runs BF4 at a mix of high/medium/low settings above 60FPS constantly.
 
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Soldato
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Gaming is hit/miss on OSX. I have a pretty big steam library 200~ games and around 60 can run on OSX. Out of those 60 maybe 30 work properly, there are just lots of games that will fail to launch or buggy, some games sound is just broken and I had to turn it off etc etc. The big titles I play are fine thou, anything source runs perfectly, and Daiblo3 which is my other main game at this time is rock solid.

If I wanted something to really game on I would just get a desktop a nice monitor and maybe a 13" rMBP or Air to accompany it.
 
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In all honesty it's just for work and browsing and some basic gopro video editing
The boot camp thing is just an option to Play around with that's all
I still have my Asus i5 for any stuff that I'm not able to do with the mbp

I did look at the imac 5k its something printable I'm really after as I no longer have a man cave to house it ( wife filled it with crap)
 
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I wouldn't buy one purely for gaming purposes, but as a laptop I'm sure the gaming experience will be as good as other laptops.

As already said, if your a keen gamer then maybe a separate gaming pc (mini atx?) and a 13" Macbook Pro would be better?
This really. Mini-ITX build with a 27" display, not quite as compact as a 27" iMac but a hell of a lot cheaper and more powerful. Use that for video editing, use the iPad for browsing or purchase a 13" rMBP or Air?

If you desperately want a Mac and one system, of course a 15" rMBP is essentially your only choice if you need the power.
 
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Well I need a laptop and I can get it tax deducted
It's either a selection of apples or hp or acer
What would you choose? Lol

I'm not buying it for essentially gaming, I have my asus for that
Gaming on the Mac is just an option
Thanks for all your help
 
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Soldato
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Hp and Acer sux :p. I would get a Macbook its just a warning that things would be better gaming on a PC, this is the case vs any laptop really. rMBP's are the best laptops out right now, if you can afford it then a 15" rMBP with a GPU is still a solid gaming laptop if you just add windows too the mix, I would recommend that as the balanced option
 
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