13"MBP Retina 2015 - How's gaming performance?

[pcollins590]

Hi All,

In the market to get a top end 13" MBP with the following specs:

• 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display
• 3.1GHz Dual-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.4GHz
• 16GB 1866MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM
• 512GB PCIe-based Flash Storage
• Intel Iris Graphics 6100

-Does anybody have any experience with this laptop, and how well the game War Thunder and other 2015 titles run on it?

-Other recent gaming experiences worth mentioning (2014/2015 titles)?

-Will I get better performance if I play through boot camp?


I currently play games on my 27" iMac (2012) through boot camp via windows 7, and get great performance (mid-high settings) while playing both air and ground battles. I'm trying to get a laptop for music production and to have something more portable but that can handle some gaming.


-Thank You!

 

[Samuelsan2001]

It's a dual core processor with integrated graphics, anything new and graphically intense will lucky to get 30fps on low settings.

Here is all the info for latest games a quick google search would have given this information very quickly....

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Iris-Graphics-6100.125591.0.html

 

[pcollins590]

Thanks, I have been searching the web for information regarding this, just wanted to get some hands on opinions of how the MBP runs.

I'm just wondering why the ouput is so low considering the card has some muscle. I wondering if it has anything to do with the Retina display, and pixel count? Not a tech head so trying to put all the pieces together.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

Thanks, I have been searching the web for information regarding this, just wanted to get some hands on opinions of how the MBP runs.

I'm just wondering why the ouput is so low considering the card has some muscle. I wondering if it has anything to do with the Retina display, and pixel count? Not a tech head so trying to put all the pieces together.

Well pixel count won't help of course but it's not that really high intensity modern PC games just aren't written to be played on integrated graphics, they are written for PC gamers that are running huge water cooled desktop PC's with top of the range graphics often in SLI outputting to multiple 4K screens etc etc etc etc.

It's just a case of not using the correct tool for the job, the "muscle" as you term it is still fairly weak on a iGPU compared to even a midrange desktop GPU this is of course by design the thermals and power output of a thin light laptop with a great battery life is just not up to the job of driving huge graphics processors.

iGPU's are fine for a bit of video editing some photoshop some light gaming etc, but the big budget games just aren't designed to be run on them. PC gaming is still a hobbyists niche and getting the most out of your rig and upgrading your graphics cards, being able to play the latest and greatest at ultra settings etc is all part of that hobby.

 

[pcollins590]

Well pixel count won't help of course but it's not that really high intensity modern PC games just aren't written to be played on integrated graphics, they are written for PC gamers that are running huge water cooled desktop PC's with top of the range graphics often in SLI outputting to multiple 4K screens etc etc etc etc.

It's just a case of not using the correct tool for the job, the "muscle" as you term it is still fairly weak on a iGPU compared to even a midrange desktop GPU this is of course by design the thermals and power output of a thin light laptop with a great battery life is just not up to the job of driving huge graphics processors.

iGPU's are fine for a bit of video editing some photoshop some light gaming etc, but the big budget games just aren't designed to be run on them. PC gaming is still a hobbyists niche and getting the most out of your rig and upgrading your graphics cards, being able to play the latest and greatest at ultra settings etc is all part of that hobby.

Thanks for the breakdown, yeah I figured as much, not expecting to get ultra setting out of any game being run on this comp, but just seeing if it's really just a dismal situation or passable to a degree to do a little gaming on this setup.