List of games working great on a Macbook pro 13 inch 2.26Ghz, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M

Wizardtwist · Nov 2, 2009

Hi everyone!

I have had a macbook pro 13 (base model) for a month now and i have to admit the pc days are officially over for me!lol

However having stated this, I have juz ordered windows xp sp2 so that i can play PC games via boot camp. This way i can have best of both worlds.

My question is: Which games work SMOOTHLY (and on high graphic settings) on a macbook pro 13 inch and 2.26 Ghz Processor??

I am not a hardcore gamer and didnt buy the mac strictly for games as such but once in a while i do like to chill out and play high def games as opposed to playing the crappy 2D puzzle games!!

I have read several posts and haven't found anyone outlining which games work smoothly without any pop locking breaks and freezes during gameplay (if you get what i mean

) on a macbook pro 13 inch on 2.26ghz setting..

Has anyone tried quality games on this model?? and if yes would it be possible to list those games and maybe elaborate a lil?

Hope to hear from you guys soon!!

BradenG · Nov 2, 2009

I've only tried two games, both using Windows XP SP3 on a Bootcamp partition. Half Life 2 - works perfectly...and Team Fortress 2 - works perfectly.

Specs below..base default specs except the ram, I bumped it up to 4gb.

Wizardtwist · Nov 2, 2009

Thanks dude! yeh may consider increasing my ram in the near future aswell!

Alright i'll take your word and get half life 2.

Have u tried GTA 4 or any other games (Cod 4, fallout 3, etc)? Because i actually wouldnt mind tweeking the graphic settings even slightly as long as the performance and graphic levels are decent?

tymy19 · Nov 2, 2009

Hey dude, i'm french sorry for my bad english: i have a mbp 13" 2,26ghz with 9400M and 2GO of RAM. I have windows seven on bootcamp and many games:

- GTA 4 : works in 800x600 very well but with a higher resolution

- Unreal Tournament III : works perfectly in 1280x800, it's beautiful

-Mirror edge: like UT III in 1280x800 very well for a 13" laptop

-CS source: verry well on high

-garry's mod: like cs source

-left 4 dead: works perfectly in 1280x800 with high/medium

- trackmania nation: works very good in 1280x800

To conclude i'm verry happy about my mbp 13", it's very powerfull for this size.

If you have any question ask me

BlizzardBomb · Nov 2, 2009

Wizardtwist said:
I am not a hardcore gamer and didnt buy the mac strictly for games as such but once in a while i do like to chill out and play high def games as opposed to playing the crappy 2D puzzle games!!

Sorry but modern games will only play nicely at resolutions close to or around 800x500 so no high-def unless it's a light or old game.

Wizardtwist · Nov 3, 2009

BlizzardBomb said:
Sorry but modern games will only play nicely at resolutions close to or around 800x500 so no high-def unless it's a light or old game.

Yeh i know what u mean..actually let me rephrase "high def" to "decent looking graphics". Like i said in my previous post i wouldn't mind tweaking graphic settings as long the game doesn't fully lose its graphic quality as such.

Some modern games such as Batman arkham asylum apparently require a minimum of 3ghz or sth, which i personally wouldn't bother playing even with lower graphic settings on my macbook pro.

Wizardtwist · Nov 3, 2009

tymy19 said:
Hey dude, i'm french sorry for my bad english: i have a mbp 13" 2,26ghz with 9400M and 2GO of RAM. I have windows seven on bootcamp and many games:

- GTA 4 : works in 800x600 very well but with a higher resolution

- Unreal Tournament III : works perfectly in 1280x800, it's beautiful

-Mirror edge: like UT III in 1280x800 very well for a 13" laptop

-CS source: verry well on high

-garry's mod: like cs source

-left 4 dead: works perfectly in 1280x800 with high/medium

- trackmania nation: works very good in 1280x800

To conclude i'm verry happy about my mbp 13", it's very powerfull for this size.

If you have any question ask me

Cheers mate! much appreciated! and i agree, you do have to give credit to the macbook pro 13. It really and truly isn't bad for its size!

Just had a look at dude playing GTA4 on exactly the same specs as my macbook pro on youtube and was quite impressed! He played it via bootcamp (obviously!) and gave a full description on how to tweak the graphic settings.

Thats the kind of thing i'm looking for, just with different games which are worth playing on the mbp 13"...

tymy19 · Nov 3, 2009

I have test tweak for GTA 4 but they don't work,no difference with or without tweak.

Can you post the link please?

Wizardtwist · Nov 3, 2009

tymy19 said:
I have test tweak for GTA 4 but they don't work,no difference with or without tweak.

Can you post the link please?

I'm not sure whether it would make a difference as i haven't got the game yet, but i've juz ordered it online. Sure the link is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHsj...FF97008B&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=51

tymy19 · Nov 3, 2009

Yes i know this video, but in reality we can see a lot of pixel with 800x600 and it's

! In this video he doesn't use cars and the lagging when you drive ( in 1280x800)

edit: when i played in 800x600 it's not in full screen, i can't select 16:10 ratio :s

EnigMoiD · Nov 3, 2009

On the 2.53 with 4gig of ram, I can say that:

COD4 Mac: Great at medium resolution and medium-high settings

Spore Mac: Great at high resolution and medium settings

Mirror's Edge plays great as tymy has said

Devil May Cry 4: Great at low resolution and medium-high settings

UT3, as tymy has said, plays great

All Source games play great. (HL2, ep2, Portal, etc.)

GRID: Good at low resolution and medium settings

The specs are a little higher but the GPU's the same, so you should expect comparable performance.

iPorFerLuis · Nov 3, 2009

Hi everyone

I have the MBP 13" base model too, 2 Gb ram for now, and will instal Windows 7 via boot camp within a week..

Has anyone tried "FIFA 2010" or "PES 2010" or "NFS: Shift" in this machine?? I won´t invest on the games until I know for sure if it will work fine or not..

I did not install any game so far, just Football Manager 2010, but that is not a windows exclusive game XD loool..

Until the next time to everybody..

bsamcash · Nov 3, 2009

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

I'm able to play Oblivion on XP through Parallels on high and at native resolution full screen pretty smoothly. It only hick ups when there's more than like 20 characters on the screen at once. The 9400m is a damn decent card.

Fuchal · Nov 3, 2009

I've been playing the new Telltale Monkey Island games and they've been working perfectly.

Wizardtwist · Nov 4, 2009

EnigMoiD said:
On the 2.53 with 4gig of ram, I can say that:

COD4 Mac: Great at medium resolution and medium-high settings

Spore Mac: Great at high resolution and medium settings

Mirror's Edge plays great as tymy has said

Devil May Cry 4: Great at low resolution and medium-high settings

UT3, as tymy has said, plays great

All Source games play great. (HL2, ep2, Portal, etc.)

GRID: Good at low resolution and medium settings

The specs are a little higher but the GPU's the same, so you should expect comparable performance.

Cheers mate! Great fan of Devil may cry but i'll have to dump the idea coz don't really see the point in playin such an awesome game in lower graphics especially with the processor i've got that's literally soldered in my mac. Every person to their own i guess. However, i'm thinking of raising ram to 4gb, see how that works out.

Wizardtwist · Nov 4, 2009

iPorFerLuis said:
Hi everyone

I have the MBP 13" base model too, 2 Gb ram for now, and will instal Windows 7 via boot camp within a week..

Has anyone tried "FIFA 2010" or "PES 2010" or "NFS: Shift" in this machine?? I won´t invest on the games until I know for sure if it will work fine or not..

I did not install any game so far, just Football Manager 2010, but that is not a windows exclusive game XD loool..

Until the next time to everybody..

With regards to FIFA 2010, it will run BUT it's not recommended with the stats we've got. Go on this website and put in the details of our system. I got a red cross saying dump the idea really!
http://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=582&game=FIFA 2010

click on check specs and find out for urself..

zw-gator · Nov 4, 2009

I just bought Age of Empires III and unless I cranked up my fan on my 13"MBP, my CPU hits 90* after one 1min

IMO, that's unplayable. I'd hate to see what temps I hit during a battle.

namoeg · Nov 4, 2009

zw-gator said:
I just bought Age of Empires III and unless I cranked up my fan on my 13"MBP, my CPU hits 90* after one 1min

IMO, that's unplayable. I'd hate to see what temps I hit during a battle.

I've personally never had AoE III run that hot, even when it running dual screens, w/AoE on the external monitor.

I have had other games run 90+C, though. Eve Online is pretty bad for this, especially in full-screen mode, unless I switch to Boot Camp, and run under Win 7. The fan sounds like a jet engine after a while.

bsamcash · Nov 4, 2009

zw-gator said:
I just bought Age of Empires III and unless I cranked up my fan on my 13"MBP, my CPU hits 90* after one 1min

IMO, that's unplayable. I'd hate to see what temps I hit during a battle.

Really? I used to play it on my old BlackBook, and while it ran hot, it was playable. That was the X3100 generation.

tjcampbell · Nov 4, 2009

Tetris (black and white only)

EnigMoiD · Nov 4, 2009

Wizardtwist said:
Cheers mate! Great fan of Devil may cry but i'll have to dump the idea coz don't really see the point in playin such an awesome game in lower graphics especially with the processor i've got that's literally soldered in my mac. Every person to their own i guess. However, i'm thinking of raising ram to 4gb, see how that works out.

Devil May Cry actually plays pretty well -- maybe I'm understating. Here's an album with a couple of time-demo screenshots, complete with FPS: http://img42.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=63423378.png
That's 960x600 in a window with high detail, high shadows, and low textures.
(I usually turn off shadows in the forest area)

Gameplay is about the same as the tech demos, but I'm not sure how the bump down in clock speed will affect things.

And the real-time cutscenes will have shadows whether you turn them off or not; those look fantastic, and play just fine for a movie.

Bevz · Nov 4, 2009

Got the following working smoothly (ie high frame rate with no stalls - I'm a frame rate junky!) via boot camp (win XP SP3):

Colin mcrea rally 4: maxed out settings

COD4: medium settings with res reduced to 800x600.

Protoype; medium settings with low res. Fairly decent frame rate but gets choppy when a lot is going on... Yet to try on low settings.

MacrosTheBlack · Nov 5, 2009

I've been playing Dragon Age Origins on my unibody white MacBook with 2GB of RAM. Most setting are on medium at 1280x800 resolution. So far it plays great!

BradenG · Nov 5, 2009

MacrosTheBlack said:
I've been playing Dragon Age Origins on my unibody white MacBook with 2GB of RAM. Most setting are on medium at 1280x800 resolution. So far it plays great!

Yea? That's good to know, I'm thinking about picking that up.

macfanboy · Nov 5, 2009

COD4 demo running on boot camp didn't work well for me (10-20 fps average)

but cod4 for mac runs better, strangely enough.

WC3 runs at 30 fps under boot camp; 120-130 on mac os x

IIRC, companies write games for DirectX (windows) and port them to Mac OS X. that sounds like the performance should be worse on Mac OS X (unless OpenGL is that good)

List of games working great on a Macbook pro 13 inch 2.26Ghz, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M

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