Macbook Pro Gaming from External HD

[SC68Cal]

Hello everyone. I recently purchased a Macbook Pro, and felt that a definitive answer was in order for those of us with limited hard drive space in our Macbooks.

Basically I use Windows to play a few games (right now) and my hard drive is packed full, and I do not wish to use anymore internal space for Windows.

So, I'm installing games onto my Maxtor USB2.0 hard drive. I'll let everyone know how I make out.

Currently:

I have used Orbiter (http://www.orbitersim.com/) and I am very happy with the results. Framerate is a steady 60FPS, even using the Hi-Res Textures. Load time was extremely fast and I'm very impressed. Very fast zoom from 1m out to orbit, which is very demanding as well.

Planning on:
Half Life 2
Doom 3
Quake 4
Wolfenstein ET
World of Warcraft

Granted, I need to purchase the first three titles. But overall I'm hopeful that I will not see a performance hit using an external hard drive.

 

[macjonny1]

Dont think it will be a problem

I haven't tried it on a mac as I'm in the market for one. But I do store WoW on an external 7200rpm drive via USB to my work computer and my laptop at home. I don't notice any problem and it actually runs better on my laptop because it is a slower hard drive. My laptop by the way is a pathetic PIII 1.13ghz with a 32MB GeForce2go, 512 MB RAM. I had to tweak the mobile GPU drivers to get WoW to run, but hey, it does it on low settings just fine. If this laptop can do it no problem anyone's can.

 

[Gordy]

I did a lan with my macbook pro a while back and I ran several games from my external hard disc. Worked fine.

 

[SC68Cal]

I cranked up my settings, I'm running native resolution with 8X AA and the works and still getting 60+ FPS on Orbiter.

One downside of playing games is the fact that I have to put up with all the Windows BS that I have to deal with at work. Had to install 50+ security updates from a fresh XP Pro install.

Talk about not-so-fond-memories of a time not long ago......

The good news is I just run back to OS X and hug it more tightly