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Unibody macbook pro INSANE gaming performance

TheSVD

TheSVD

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 3, 2008
594
1
The Jolly Ol' Midlands, England
Before i start this thread, i know a fair few people probably wont believe me, say its done on another computer, fake, etcetc, but i guess your going to have to go with me on this one :)
Theres no real way i can actually prove this is on my Macbook Pro, people say record it with FRAPS, but that slows my fps down!
I have taken the liberty of at least taking some screenshots.
Perhaps i can borrow a friends decent camcorder or something and prove this is my macbook pro doing this!
Right, anyway...

I recently picked up a new Samsung Syncmaster ( i forget the model) But its the 23" one with the 2048x1152 resolution. I got this for gaming ( i did query had the lappy would game at this res) and for some photoshop and FCP. Firstly i would like to say i had had no trouble with this whatsoever, as many people have been having troubles with their monitors - Mini display port to DVI, DVI-D "Dual link" (NOT the one from apple, it is a single cable, no USB or anything, but it is called "Dual Link", or thats what the website said anyways!) No issues with screen scrambling, problems after sleep - works perfect. And yes, DVI can power this RES, its minimum is not 1920x1200.

I received the monitor whilst my MBP was at the apple store being fixed, and so today have finally had a chance to test some games on it. I must say, im very impressed, and here goes...
I am using the baseline Unibody MBP with 2.4GHz, 2GB of RAM and the 9600M GT w/256MB of VRAM. Via bootcamp i have installed windows student (pro, basically) edition 32 bit, SP2. Also running with default bootcamp Nvidia drivers.
The listed is a mix of the games settings, and any changes i made to the default NVIDIA Control Panel Settings.

Test Drive Unlimited
  • 2048x1152
  • No Anti Aliasing - Would just be too slow! Still looks great though, see the screen shot.
  • 16x Antisotropic Filtering
  • Textures at highest
  • Trilinear Mipmaps
  • Antisotropic sample optimisation
  • Trilinear Optimisation
  • Texture Filtering - Quality
I must say, i was very impressed with this! TDU is a very graphic intensive game and i was amazed at how it ran! Very smoothly! (Will get FPS reading soon)

S.T.A.L.K.E.R - Shadow Of Chernobyl
  • 2048x1152
  • 2xAA
  • 16xAF
  • All textures and shadows at maximum
  • HDR
  • AA transparency - multisampling
  • Trilinear Mip Maps
  • Quality Texture FIltering
Again, Very impressed here, especially being able to run 2xAA! Was able to run at 6xAA but when the action got heavy, it lagged too much. Very steady gameplay though, im guessing a good FPS as theres no lagging whatsoever. Looks stunning though cause of HDR! :D

Half Life 2
  • 2048x1152
  • 6xAA
  • 16xAF
  • All textures, shadows, reflections at Max
  • Multisampling antialiasing transparency
  • HIGH quality texture filtering
  • ~70 FPS!!!
Half life 2 doesnt take a great lot to run, but again, very impressed by this performance. If you take a look on the attatched screen shots, you can see in the top right that the FPS is 71 FPS idle, and was even 71 FPS when i was lobbing that turret through the window! Very good :D

Left4Dead
  • 2048x1152
  • 4xAA
  • 16xAF
  • All textures at max
  • Trilinear Mip Maps
  • Quality Texture Filtering
Again, quite impressed here! No FPS reading, but a good steady gameplay with no lagging and crystal clear graphics.

I also seem to be a lucky fella as my MBP responds to temperatures in boot camp, and the fans come on after about a minute of gaming. The highest reported temperature GPU-Z Gave me was about 75 C, which isnt bad considering some people have been reporting 100 C!

Im happy to ask answer any questions about any of this, and im getting prepared for the amount of non belief that is no doubt going to ensue :p
 

Attachments

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Very impressive indeed.

I didn't purchase my macbook pro as a gaming machine, but since it has the power why not.
 
Sounds pretty normal to me. I played Source based games with the same quality settings on my old Macbook Pro just fine (2.16 ghz rev a.)
 
Source based games aren't very graphically demanding, any modern card should be able to push those settings easily.
 
Ah cool :)
But keep in mind the huge res, and things like TDU and STALKER require alot more than source games...
And l4d seems to take alot more than some other source games too!
 
I played TSU during the beta and my computer then couldn't really handle the game. I guess I'll buy it now since it's cheap.
 
Well, technically, the Windows world of laptops have many "laptops" with much more gaming power.
 
alphaod said:
I played TSU during the beta and my computer then couldn't really handle the game. I guess I'll buy it now since it's cheap.
Click to expand...
yeahh do, its avery good game :)

raymondu999 said:
Well, technically, the Windows world of laptops have many "laptops" with much more gaming power.
Click to expand...
and yeahh i guess, but im reviewing this one :)
Theres always going to be something better, but what im saying is its very good for its spec, and the MBP is often frowned upon for gaming by windows fanboys. Just showing how good it is really :D
 
very nice! and awesome screenshots!
btw, yes dvi-i dual link and dvi-d (dual link) can power higher resolutions till smth. like 2600x1600... even more by lowering the framerate. single link cables are limited to 1600x1200pix (uxga) or 1920x1200pix (wuxga). :)
 
fil3333 said:
very nice! and awesome screenshots!
btw, yes dvi-i dual link and dvi-d (dual link) can power higher resolutions till smth. like 2600x1600... even more by lowering the framerate. single link cables are limited to 1600x1200pix (uxga) or 1920x1200pix (wuxga). :)
Click to expand...

DVI-D is DVI digital, not DVI dual link.
You get DVI-D single link and DVI-D dual link.
Go check the bible: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/DVI_Connector_Types.svg :D
Sorry if you meant this btw :)
 
TheSVD said:
I did take a look for this actually, but fraid it got discontinued :(
It may reappear though!
i got it from www.ebuyer.com :D

Scrap that, here it is :) http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130568
Click to expand...

thanks :D just wanted to check out whether it is a standard dvi-d cable which it is. i never understood whats apples dual link adapter (99$) is for? is it just for use with the new cinema display? :confused: do you know whats its main benefit?
 
fil3333 said:
thanks :D just wanted to check out whether it is a standard dvi-d cable which it is. i never understood whats apples dual link adapter (99$) is for? is it just for use with the new cinema display? :confused: do you know whats its main benefit?
Click to expand...
Its for use with the 30" Cinema Display or Dell 30" or similar from other vendors. The big displays need it to work as the single dvi/mini display port can't drive the huge displays by themselves.
 
bay2sacto said:
Its for use with the 30" Cinema Display or Dell 30" or similar from other vendors. The big displays need it to work as the single dvi/mini display port can't drive the huge displays by themselves.
Click to expand...

thanks, yeah just asked a similar question in a 'apple dual link adapter' thread because this thread is actually about gaming performance. dont want to hijack :D
what i dont understand is whats the issue, because as mentioned above dvi-d dual link is able to transport such high resolutions....
 
I've actually been playing more recent games and while the settings aren't the highest (no AA enabled), the fps or the feel of the fps is quite impressive.

Games I've played on my UMBP: Tomb Raider Underworld, Need for Speed Undercover, Red Alert 3, Fallout 3.

Of all these, Need for Speed Undercover and Red Alert 3 felt the smoothest followed by Fallout 3 and Tomb Raider Underworld.
 
fil3333 said:
thanks, yeah just asked a similar question in a 'apple dual link adapter' thread because this thread is actually about gaming performance. dont want to hijack :D
what i dont understand is whats the issue, because as mentioned above dvi-d dual link is able to transport such high resolutions....
Click to expand...

Right...
DVI-D Dual link can actually support alot higher than 1920x1200, as you can see with the 30 inch display having DVI. When you use it with a mac pro for example, you dont need any extra dual link (the $99 one) cabling because it is straight up DVI > DVI connection.

The reason that 99 buck adapter is needed to power the 30 inch is cause of the mini display port - it needs actual extra wattage to be able to drive the monitor as such a high res.

I am nearly at the limit with the mini display port (runnigna monitor at 2048x1152); any higher of a res and i wouldve had to get the dual link!

Kapeesh? ;)


ALSO, there is much confusion here because you get DVI-D Dual link, which is what im using - however, apple have named their cable dual link because of it having 2 links - USB, and DVI. So yeah thats why many people get confused :D
 
TheSVD said:
Right...
DVI-D Dual link can actually support alot higher than 1920x1200, as you can see with the 30 inch display having DVI. When you use it with a mac pro for example, you dont need any extra dual link (the $99 one) cabling because it is straight up DVI > DVI connection.

The reason that 99 buck adapter is needed to power the 30 inch is cause of the mini display port - it needs actual extra wattage to be able to drive the monitor as such a high res.

I am nearly at the limit with the mini display port (runnigna monitor at 2048x1152); any higher of a res and i wouldve had to get the dual link!

Kapeesh? ;)
Click to expand...

thanks!
 
Not for nothing, but none of those games require a lot of power to run at max settings, even at high resolution. Try running some more recent games.

I'm hoping World of Warcraft will run at max settings @ 1920x1200 on the new 17" MBP. The 15" handled it at 1440x900 max settings just fine, so there's hope.

Before people say that the game is four years old, they've made many improvements to the engine and even newer system struggle with it in some of the new zones.

Glad to hear it can hold its own at high resolutions though. I didn't test the 15" unibody much when I had it, but I'll be putting the 17" to the test, right up against my gaming PC. I don't expect it to do as well as my PC but having games on the go would be nice.
 
Can u try doing this with COD4 and COD: WAW?

I seriously am in doubt whether it would run on 125FPS+ on some higher resolution than 1024x768 with a decent graphic settings on.
 
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