G4 Cube or G3 iMac for Gaming?

[Tempest]

I own two Macs and I want to know which would be better for OS 9/X gaming? A 600Mhz iMac G3 or a 450MHz G4 Cube? The Cube has a GeForce 6200 card and 1.5GB of memory. I'm not sure what the iMac has only 128MB of RAM but I can upgrade that.   My gut says the G4 cube, especially for OS X stuff, but I don't know how limited the cube is for OS 9 games.

 

[Bolle]

GeForce 6200

Completely useless in OS 9 with that if you want any acceleration.

I am running a Radeon 9250 in my Cube which is accelerated in OS 9 and works reasonably well in OSX while staying cool.

While I could have gone for a flashed GeForce 4 TI 4200 to get the maximum of graphics power with full OS 9 support it would kill the Cube in no time due to power draw and heat output.

 

[Tempest]

Do many OS 9 games require acceleration?

I'm thinking that the iMac is the way to go honestly.  Maybe it's time to sell the cube?  How much do they normally go with a 6200?

 

[BadGoldEagle]

You might want to add a fan to that iMac if you plan on doing a lot of gaming on it. My 400Mhz DV overheats pretty badly after half an hour or so of Simcity 3000...

 

[Tempest]

I didn't realize the iMacs were prone to overheating.  I had never heard that before. 

 

[maceffects]

Both are a good choice with pros and cons, but the Cube can have a bigger external monitor which is nice.  While the iMacs can run on the hotter side, I wouldn't worry too much as long as you have a solid a/b.

 

[Byrd]

I'd say both, but dedicate the iMac to OS 9 and the G4 Cube to OS X.  The iMac shouldn't overheat unless there is a hardware issue/fault - it was designed to run in a fanless state.

Later PPC games (with relatively high system requirements) I've found do struggle on the Cube, FPS games in particular - Halo is pretty terrible.   Quake II and III engine games should just run but forget anything after that.  The (flashed) Geforce 6200 is 64-bit as well so it won't be chugging out high detail or frames unless at a low resolution. A CPU upgraded Cube would crank out higher frames but the GPU (which is a great card for the Cube) will hamper things.

 

[Tempest]

Yeah that's what I'm thinking.  But I'm not terribly interested in playing cross platform games (I have a DOS box for that) I want to play Mac specific titles and I think those are mostly OS 9 so I'll probably stick with the iMac.

New question: How hard is it to upgrade a G3 Beige Tower?  I'd rather use that than the iMac due to space.

 

[maceffects]

The beige G3 would be a good machine to upgrade with a faster processor, tons of ram, and a good video card.

 

[Tempest]

I've maxed out the ram, but it has the base processor and video.  What should I add?