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So, 13 inch owners, you got your sandy bridge with intel HD 3000 now. Happy?
- Thread starter hcho3
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Depends on what you do. I've tried Sims 3 with mediumish settings and runs fine - fans are loud though. I'm happy, and I came from desktop HD5770. The CPU is a powerhouse!
Depends on what you do. I've tried Sims 3 with mediumish settings and runs fine - fans are loud though. I'm happy, and I came from desktop HD5770. The CPU is a powerhouse!
Why the animosity? The GPU works great for what I do. If you need a more powerful GPU, buy the 15". I feel like that's how it always is.
From the games I have played on it rangeing from starcraft to crysis it has always worked up to about medium-mid high on starcraft and low in crysis. (windows 7)
Older games run excellent and superb. The only problem is the fans get a bit loud when gaming.
But overall love the speed of the laptop especially coming from a 2008 macbook
Core i7 13 inch here, I only play starcraft 2 from time to time, runs awesome on medium. Runs everything I do with speed and performance. Its not like the 320M was a good GPU for games either.
I also have a desktop with quadcore amd and 1gb 6850HD, ps3, and xbox360 for gaming though, so my situation may not be the same as everyone else.
Lets make it clear. Apple did not "upgrade or downgrade" its GPU in the 13" line at all. The transition from 320M to HD3000 is very much the same. Except that the HD3000 requires a bit more ram than the 320M.
I have a 2.7Ghz MBP and i am extremely happy about the cpu and the gpu too. I easily play Toca Race Driver 3 with also antialiasing 4x activated. Also Need for speed carbon goes fine.
And finally with 8gb of ram i run Win7 in Parallel as a breeze.
Only bad point is the fan. It gets loud when playing but that happen on every macbook and PC notebook too.
And finally with 8gb of ram i run Win7 in Parallel as a breeze.
Only bad point is the fan. It gets loud when playing but that happen on every macbook and PC notebook too.
The same or not I think most people don't play games on their 13". And besides, it's not meant to be a powerhouse like the 15" or 17".
They're not targeting gamers with the 13-inch MBP – not anything more than casual gamers, at least. They want the more serious gamers to pony up for the high-end 15-inch machine or above.
Besides, it shouldn't be a surprise that they don't offer another GPU option – Apple never has on the low-end machine, not since the Intel transition anyway.
Besides, it shouldn't be a surprise that they don't offer another GPU option – Apple never has on the low-end machine, not since the Intel transition anyway.
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Extremely happy!
Extremely happy!
1. The GPU is not "really bad" unless you're comparing it to a high end discrete GPU, and why would you?
2. The Intel 3000 GPU is the same power (overall) as the 320m it replaces; faster video encoding/decoding, better flash performance, lower performance than the 320m in some games but higher in others.
Personally, I am enjoying the laptop. it feels quite faster than the previous gen in just about every task (including gaming)
Happy?
13" notebooks are made pretty much with one purpose in mind.....
PORTABILITY!!!!
Gaming ........ Not at all!!
You can complain about the GPU in the 13" all day long, it doesn't do anything to make you look smarter.
PORTABILITY!!!!
Gaming ........ Not at all!!
You can complain about the GPU in the 13" all day long, it doesn't do anything to make you look smarter.
It seems that you have already owned a MBP 13" and found the Intel graphics unacceptable for your needs according to your posts in the MBA forum. And it is readily apparent that you have strong feelings about this. I have read a few reviews of the new 13" and I haven't seen any that said the graphics performance was terrible. And judging from what has been posted in this forum it seems that most are quite happy with the performance. Unfortunately it doesn't have the performance that you require but Apple must have felt that it would be fine for the majority of users. Maybe the Ivy Bridge version will be able to meet your needs or one of the 15" MBP's.
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All of the early benchmarks that I saw showed the the standard 13 and 15 having significantly weaker GPUs than the 2010 models.
So I'm not sure how you can conclude that the performance did not change.
This pretty much hits the nail on the head....NO, the HD 3000 is not an amazing GPU....but neither was the 320m. In OSX at least, the HD3000 offers extremely comparable performance (maybe even a tad better in a few games). For those who are bitching about it not being an improvement....how many times did they use the 9400m? The plastic macbook has had it for the last 2 versions, and the aluminum macbook as well as its spiritual successor the 2009 13" pro both used it...
Coming from a baseline 2009 13" pro to the baseline 2011 13" pro, I can confidently say it's an improvement. Bottom line is that NO, the HD 3000 is not going to be a big improvement on the 320m from 2010 like everybody wants, but it's still perfectly capable of doing everything you SHOULD expect the 13" machine to do. If you're happy with the 2010 w/320m, stay with it. Nobody is forcing you to upgrade. The simple fact of the matter is that transitioning to the newer CPU necessitated the intel graphics...you may not like it, but that's how it had to be. Stick with your C2D machine if it upsets you so much.
And most the benchmarks that came out when the machines were actually released showed them as nearly the same or better. Six of one and half a dozen of the other.
I'm just curious, which benchmarks did you see that showed overall better GPU performance?
'Graphic" performance that includes other subsystems and CPU maybe improved. However, overall GPU performance appears to be down at this point. This is also suggested by the Macworld benchmarks (http://www.macworld.com/article/157893/2011/02/2011macbookpro_benchmarks.html). In that benchmark, most performance in their tests were improved except Call of Duty frame rates. Hell, the 2010 MBP 13 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo outperformed the 2011 MBP 13 2.7Ghz i7 in the Call of Duty test! They all tied in the CineBench test. I've 2 other benchmarks that suggest the same.
This might all change with better drivers or with applications that are written or compiled differently. That doesn't seem to be the case so far.
Having said all of that that though, no one buys a MBP 13 and expects kick-ass graphic performance or 60 frames per second playing Call of Duty while connected to a 1920x1080 display. The 2011 MBP 13 are probably "good enough".