Considering Macbook Air but I'm looking for answers...

go for it!

As long as you get 8Gb of RAM you'll find the Air to be incredibly fast and effecient in every way! I upgraded from a mid 2010 Pro and have been so happy!!

iLaughingSaint said:

As long as you get 8Gb of RAM you'll find the Air to be incredibly fast and effecient in every way! I upgraded from a mid 2010 Pro and have been so happy!!

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You didn't answer his question.

Yes gaming will be affected, HD 4000 is not as good as the 8600GT and your gaming experience will suffer considerably.

Perhaps asking this question at a gaming hardware specific forum would be more time efficient for u?

Dookieman said:

I'm assuming you know it's the 8600m GT, not the standard 8600GT. If that makes any difference.

Thanks!

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It makes a difference yes but still HD 4000 is amazing for HD videos but for gaming, not so much. I might be wrong though, can't find any comparative benchmarks.

My advice to you would be to Youtube videos of people testing games on the Macbook Air and see if that is a fit for you.

Dookieman said:

I did have my heart heart set on updating to another MacBook Pro from my current one which I bought in mid-2007 (Which is finally showing age now that I'm on ML). The main reason I wanted a MBP was due to the dedicated GPU, since I do some light gaming, mainly blizzard games and Torch Light.

Now, my current GPU is a 8600GT and can only play games on minimum settings. How does the HD 4000 hold up against a 8600GT since I know most integrated GPUs are garbage? I'm not the type that needs to play games on high or bust.

Any word on the HD 5000 compared to the HD 4000?

Thanks!

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Just got our base model MBA today, was testing out WoW a little bit running around questing i was getting 45-50 FPS on "fair" presets and 25-30 on "good" presets im sure i could tweak things and get better results.

This is at 1440x900 native res as well. I will be trying out d3/sc2 next.

Dookieman said:

Thanks! I would love an update!

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Tried SC2 in 1440x900 Mac OSX on Low... Online 4v4 I was getting ~60 FPS during begining of the game ~30-40 FPS mid game and ~15-20 end game battles.

Here are some benchmarks:

NVIDIA-GeForce-8600M-GT
3DMark Vantage 1040
3DMark 06 3347.4
3DMark 05 6174.8

Intel-HD-Graphics-4000
3DMark Vantage 3151.2
3DMark 06 4710.3
3DMark 05 8607.8

Seems fairly conclusive - the HD4000 is way better.

If you're doing some light gaming, then it's fine. The fans might be a little noisy but other then that, it's a great machine.

I tell everybody who considers to buy a MacBook Air the same.

This device is freaking awesome! I've never loved a laptop soo much. Seriously.

It's fast, light & powerful. The HD4000 is good enough for light gaming. WoW, SC2 are running smoothly on MEDIUM settings.

Dookieman said:

I did have my heart heart set on updating to another MacBook Pro from my current one which I bought in mid-2007 (Which is finally showing age now that I'm on ML). The main reason I wanted a MBP was due to the dedicated GPU, since I do some light gaming, mainly blizzard games and Torch Light.

Now, my current GPU is a 8600GT and can only play games on minimum settings. How does the HD 4000 hold up against a 8600GT since I know most integrated GPUs are garbage? I'm not the type that needs to play games on high or bust.

Any word on the HD 5000 compared to the HD 4000?

Thanks!

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I own a base model 2012 13" MBA with 4 GB of RAM. I was very actually pleasantly surprised by the HD 4000 integrated GPU. I can run Torchlight at 45 F/s, and Minecraft at >60 F/s. In other words, they hold up fine when it comes to light/casual games, but by all means don't purchase the MBA if you want to do serious gaming (Borderlands, Assassin's Creed, etc...). However, the fan does get a little loud while gaming, but it's no big deal, especially if you use headphones.

Other than that, the MBA really is a great laptop, and I would highly recommend it. If I were you, I would upgrade to 8 GB of RAM if/when you buy it.

Dookieman said:

That's all I needed to know! Like I said, my gaming consists of Blizzard games and some random non-graphically intensive ones. Medium on SC2 is better then what I can play now!

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I always look for some gameplay demos on YouTube to see if it works .. Here is one example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlrkkiMJoDk

Dookieman said:

That's all I needed to know! Like I said, my gaming consists of Blizzard games and some random non-graphically intensive ones. Medium on SC2 is better then what I can play now!

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If you're playing with medium online in 3v3 or 4v4 you're gonna lag out. I reckon you'd be able to play campaign in medium no problem though

jemesouviens said:

Here are some benchmarks:

NVIDIA-GeForce-8600M-GT
3DMark Vantage 1040
3DMark 06 3347.4
3DMark 05 6174.8

Intel-HD-Graphics-4000
3DMark Vantage 3151.2
3DMark 06 4710.3
3DMark 05 8607.8

Seems fairly conclusive - the HD4000 is way better.

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Thank you! I couldn't believe how some people were just rushing and "helping" without fact checking.

FYI, if you can wait another 6 months or so (you've been waiting since 2007 with your old 'book) the new Intel Haswell processors are supposed to be another significant gain over the HD4000 graphics.

I have a 2009 MBA and I love it! It is way more portable than a regular MBP, and it handles every reasonable task I throw at it. I even played Skyrim on it for 2 months, until I decided I really did need a PC for that (and other programs).

Just went to the notebook check site to look at the HD4000 benchmarks, and saw they had this advance entry on the HD4600, which will be on the next-gen Intel processors:

The exact features of the graphics unit are still unknown. It has been confirmed though, that the HD 4600 supports DirectX 11.1, OpenCL 1.2 und OpenGL 4.0. The HD 4600 also features an improved decoder for 4K videos and the fast Quick Sync encoder.

The HD Graphics 4600 is expected to have 20 EUs (HD 4000: 16 Execution Units), which should improve performance compared to the HD 4000 by about 20 %. This would be in range of former mid-range cards like the GeForce GT 525M.

So, a 20% increase will be nice (not earth shattering, but nice). The integrated graphics processor will never beat a dedicated GPU, but with good performance, and low power consumption, it will be perfect for a laptop and "light" gaming!

blesscheese said:

Thank you! I couldn't believe how some people were just rushing and "helping" without fact checking.

FYI, if you can wait another 6 months or so (you've been waiting since 2007 with your old 'book) the new Intel Haswell processors are supposed to be another significant gain over the HD4000 graphics.

I have a 2009 MBA and I love it! It is way more portable than a regular MBP, and it handles every reasonable task I throw at it. I even played Skyrim on it for 2 months, until I decided I really did need a PC for that (and other programs).

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No worries!