Gaming on macbook under windows.

Hey everyone...

I'm wondering about the new 13" macbooks, and I read most

places that they can be used for "casual gaming" but nothing

serious. Now I'm not really sure what that means since most

of the benchmarks aren't in any games that I play so theres

nothing I can really relate to in those reviews. My question is,

can I run a game like need for speed most wanted or gta san

andreas? I don't mind turning the settings and the resolution

way down so long as its at a reasonable framerate...

Thanks,

Gabriel.

P.S.

I have a laptop now with an ati

mobility radeon 9600 (64 MB) and it runs

the games I mentioned pretty well.

Would the macbooks intel graphics be

faster than this?

#396472

I guess for racing games it should be decent but the integrated graphics aren't enough for playing a FPS like Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (best.game.ever.)

#396492

I guess for racing games it should be decent but the integrated graphics aren't enough for playing a FPS like Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (best.game.ever.)

Heck yeah it is

#396506

HL2 will run on it pretty well. Dazzla posted some videos over at Notebookreview.com I'll see if I can find the links.

Edit

1024x768 -

1280x800 -

#396509

Incredible speed on the MacBook, I plan on buying one. The gaming is a plus

#396517

@ Timmie : Wow thanks alot man that looks stunning! I never expected the integrated

graphics would be so smooth.

Btw do you how nfs or gta performs on it? I'm not sure

but from what I know HL2 is alot more requireing than

the games I want to play... right?

#396524

i wonder how BF2 would run..

#396555

I bet BF2 will run on default settings. Not sure about the OTHER EA titles like NFS. I have a macbook but I don't have those games or bootcamp setup. So I really can't try those out for ya.

#396564

On a default Macbook with a 60GB HD, I wouldn't want to try boot camp. Although, I would like to know how GTA San Andreas would look. It would probably just like my PCs chipset, so I might not try that.

#396579

I saw a review of the 950gma gpu (not in a macbook) and the benchmarks showed 4-6 fps in half-life 2...

#396647

Mac Book can handle Aero in vista, so it should be able to handle source engine games on default settings, and DEF will play any q3 engine games on max settings.

#396650

Yeah well vista and aero run fine on my laptop (athlon-xp-m 2600, 512 mb, 60 gb hd, ati

mobility radeon 9600-64 mb) but it is full of bugs...

#396716

not really the hardware's fault is it?

#396979

if your planning on gaming on mac hardware then macbook pro is the way to go, with its ati X1600 graphics card its more then enough to handle heavy games like elders scrolls oblivion and halflife 2 at high settings with aa/af's turned on, i highly doubt macbooks with their integrated grapics can handle that. but i guess its good if your under a serious budget and just play games here and there, personally i plan on getting a pro, use OSX and game all the heavily dependant gc games i want too.

#397001

Timan, do you really think the MB can handle games based off Q3 engine really well? If so I might really buy one for me to play ET so I can pwn away from home!

#397033

if it could it would be f*cking awesome and i would think about buying a mb MB instead of an imac

#397159

I found some more vids:

The first one is running with the highest in game video settings. It is laggy but somewhat playable.

Running with tweaked in game settings. In the video settings I changed the graphics in game to medium and turned off shadows. With the tweaks the game runs smoothly for the most part. When I'm driving the hog it looks laggy but it is not that is just my bad driving. But there is lag when the screen says "loading."

Here is also a post I found on the apple discussion forums:

I have:

Counter Strike : Source (med. settings)

Half-Life 2 (med. settings)

Battlefield 2 (low settings)

GuildWars (med. settings)

Civilization 4 (med. settings)

The Movies (med. settings)

All these games run exactly the same way they ran on my

Athlon XP 2000+

Radeon 9600XT

512Mb DDR Ram

They all run in native (1280x800) resolution, with a decent framerate (27+) when looking with FRAPS.

The most graphically intense game I ran on the Macbook to date is Battlefield 2, but with low settings, I can run it just OK.

BTW, my Macbook is a 2.0Ghz + 1Gb RAM + 60Gb HD

Games run way better I thought they would have run with such hardware...

I'm very happy with my purchase, no problem to date... I've had it for one week yet I have no whine at all, some mooing when I run CPU intensive task (Photoshop in Rosetta, HD Playback, ...) and no discoloration yet, altought I'm currently VERY scared about that and I'm about to buy a protective film to prevent its apparition.

Oh man I am so buying one

#397175

I'm very happy with my purchase, no problem to date... I've had it for one week yet I have no whine at all, some mooing when I run CPU intensive task (Photoshop in Rosetta, HD Playback, ...) and no discoloration yet, altought I'm currently VERY scared about that and I'm about to buy a protective film to prevent its apparition.

I have the same fear about my iMac.

#397187

talking about Macbook's GMA950, does anyone know whether it supports coreimage (is Dashboard ripple effect supported?)?

#397206

oooh baby ^^

http://youtube.com/watch?v=RH_1UOgSvm0&search=macbook

@duyvan82: Yeah it does Even the old ibook did

#397207

talking about Macbook's GMA950, does anyone know whether it supports coreimage (is Dashboard ripple effect supported?)?

I strongly believe the ripple effect is supported...

oooh baby ^^

http://youtube.com/watch?v=RH_1UOgSvm0&search=macbook

Nice and fast!

#397209

I wonder how certain games behave when they come across the uncommon for Windows 16:9 display aspect ratio. Age of Empires II for example (yes, I still play that) gives you the option of 800x600, 1024x768 and 1280x1024 resolutions.

Number 1 in my wishlist is that these games recognize the screen resolutions available on the machine. Number 2 is that they use 1024x768 pixels without distorting the picture.

Have you seen any such games on a MacBook?

#399076

I'm playing Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus on my Macbook. It's native resolution is 640x480 and it gets stretched horizontally. I guess it depends on the game though.

#399303