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Anyone with the new Macbook tried any games yet?

M

mklnz

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 6, 2007
212
101
Auckland, New Zealand
Just wondering if any of you that already have one of these babies tried any gaming on it? How does the 9400M _really_ stack up?

I'm keen to find out the FPS for:

World of Warcraft
Half-life 2
Counter-strike source
Team Fortress 2

Mine is coming...the week after I think :)
 
Good question Mate! I just ordered a MBP but I came to these forums cause I was wondering the same thing, and about those games :D. I think they should run pretty well, not with maxed settings or anything, but CS:S should be able to manage a respectable 80-90 fps I would think, with medium settings and low shader.
 
mklnz said:
Just wondering if any of you that already have one of these babies tried any gaming on it? How does the 9400M _really_ stack up?

I'm keen to find out the FPS for:

World of Warcraft
Half-life 2
Counter-strike source
Team Fortress 2

Mine is coming...the week after I think :)
Click to expand...

Haven't received mine yet, but as soon as I do, I'll be trying out a variety of games (Call of Duty, WoW, etc). Based on the specs we have from Apple and the Geekbench results people have posted on here, I'd expect a considerable improvement from the previous model MacBooks, more comparable to the previous low-end MacBook Pro models. Still, if you're going to do some heavy gaming on a regular basis, I'd strongly suggest springing for more memory and/or a higher-end MacBook Pro model in order to perform at a level comparable with Windows "gaming notebooks."
 
Yeah gaming isn't my top priority, I won't be gaming too much, mostly just WoW I think, but I have my desktop to do that.

I just want to know that if I do want to play some games, I can do so decently on low / medium at least. :)
 
I am mostly interested in comparing WOW on the 2.4 to my iMac (2.16 with 7600GT) to see if I can FINALLY replace my iMac with a laptop
 
This new Macbook is what I've been waiting for. Sure, I have a PC for games, but I want a 13-inch laptop that's able to play Starcraft 2 (and TF2). My friend's GMA X3100 Macbook's preformance was not good enough to play TF2 well, and SC2 was an unknown quantity. I have high hopes for the 9400 chipset.
 
I'm somehow skeptical that the new chip will make games like CS:S or TF:2 playable at relatively higher framerates. The relative 'newness' of the chip doesnt matter...what does matter is the number of pixel pipelines, shader pipelines, and GPU clock. These variables are extremely handicapped on lower-end GPUs, and the performance of the 9400M is probably very similar to the last-generation nVidia integrated mobile graphics chip.
 
mknawabi said:
I'm somehow skeptical that the new chip will make games like CS:S or TF:2 playable at relatively higher framerates. The relative 'newness' of the chip doesnt matter...what does matter is the number of pixel pipelines, shader pipelines, and GPU clock. These variables are extremely handicapped on lower-end GPUs, and the performance of the 9400M is probably very similar to the last-generation nVidia integrated mobile graphics chip.
Click to expand...

However, you have to remember the MB's relatively low native res. Sure, running it on an external display with be quite a hit... but when playing games on the go, the 9400M should put out decent FPS in Source games at medium settings... I'd guess at least around 30-50 depending on the action.
 
Gizmodo has posted a good comprehensive review of both the MBP and the MB here.

From the performance showing Spore running on the MB, how does that work out relatively towards WoW, TF2 and the like?
 
mattcube64 said:
However, you have to remember the MB's relatively low native res. Sure, running it on an external display with be quite a hit... but when playing games on the go, the 9400M should put out decent FPS in Source games at medium settings... I'd guess at least around 30-50 depending on the action.
Click to expand...

I sure as heck hope so; I'm getting a macbook soon and want to make sure that it can at least run counter-strike source
 
If anyone is playing Warhammer Online and have the new MB, a test would be so nice... :D
 
I have the 2.4GHz MacBook and have so far had the chance to play both WoW and Spore on it. As a really quick summary: if you have an iMac or a MacBook Pro from around 2006 (the versions with an ATI Radeon x1600), the gaming performance is roughly equal. I should know, I'm typing on just such an iMac and have likewise played both WoW and Spore on it.

WoW is fully playable and runs at or near 60 fps at 1280x800 with medium visual settings. I run the game with generally medium-to-high settings (texture and model detail on high, draw distance about three-quarters to maximum (remember that they increased the max draw distance in 3.0), spell effects on medium, glow effect off, etc) and get about 30-60 fps. This is a drastic improvement over the older MacBook that I'm replacing, which had an Intel GMA 950 and would cry horribly even with all visual settings reduced to near-minimum.

Spore is likewise quite playable. I don't know exactly what framerate I'm getting, but it feels like it's in the 40-60 fps range, and I'm running it at 1280x800 with more or less medium graphics settings.

While I have yet to install Windows on my MacBook and subsequently try Source games like Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source or Team Fortress 2, given the similar performance to my iMac I feel comfortable saying you will probably be able to play the older Source games with settings pretty much maxed out, and the newer Source games (including TF2 and Half-Life 2: Episode 2) at medium settings.

I hope that helps some people out. This machine has been surprising me at just how good its gaming performance is.
 
CyberGeek said:
I have the 2.4GHz MacBook and have so far had the chance to play both WoW and Spore on it. As a really quick summary: if you have an iMac or a MacBook Pro from around 2006 (the versions with an ATI Radeon x1600), the gaming performance is roughly equal. I should know, I'm typing on just such an iMac and have likewise played both WoW and Spore on it.

WoW is fully playable and runs at or near 60 fps at 1280x800 with medium visual settings. I run the game with generally medium-to-high settings (texture and model detail on high, draw distance about three-quarters to maximum (remember that they increased the max draw distance in 3.0), spell effects on medium, glow effect off, etc) and get about 30-60 fps. This is a drastic improvement over the older MacBook that I'm replacing, which had an Intel GMA 950 and would cry horribly even with all visual settings reduced to near-minimum.

Spore is likewise quite playable. I don't know exactly what framerate I'm getting, but it feels like it's in the 40-60 fps range, and I'm running it at 1280x800 with more or less medium graphics settings.

While I have yet to install Windows on my MacBook and subsequently try Source games like Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source or Team Fortress 2, given the similar performance to my iMac I feel comfortable saying you will probably be able to play the older Source games with settings pretty much maxed out, and the newer Source games (including TF2 and Half-Life 2: Episode 2) at medium settings.

I hope that helps some people out. This machine has been surprising me at just how good its gaming performance is.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that., do you think the gfx performance will take a big hit when the macbook is run from an external display with a higher res? Not too familiar with current PC games, can you still lower the res below native res of the external display to that of normal macbook res so the performance is not hit, and if so, would it look very blurry?
 
I am a big Age of Empires fan. I will try it on my 2.0 Macbook when I get it.
 
i0Nic said:
Thanks for that., do you think the gfx performance will take a big hit when the macbook is run from an external display with a higher res? Not too familiar with current PC games, can you still lower the res below native res of the external display to that of normal macbook res so the performance is not hit, and if so, would it look very blurry?
Click to expand...

Increasing the resolution of a game will obviously lower its performance, the degree that performance will be degraded depends on the resolution and the game. With my iMac (recall that I've found it to have roughly equivalent gaming performance to my new MacBook) I've found that for many games, 1280x800 tends to be the sweet spot where I'm able to strike a good balance between graphics quality and performance. This is partly why I'm so excited about my new MacBook, since its native resolution is exactly that sweet spot.

Going higher than 1280x800 gets tricky on newer games (the newest games (as in games that came out in the last year) are often difficult to run even at 1280x800), and at least in my experience I've found that I often need to sacrifice too much visual quality to pull off a decent framerate at those higher resolutions.

In terms of blurriness, I've again found 1280x800 to be the sweet spot on a 1680x1050 display. Resolutions below it tend to be painfully blurry, and resolutions above it tend to hit diminishing returns until you reach native resolution, when everything suddenly snaps into clarity.

To summarize: I don't think I would recommend trying to play games on a higher-resolution external display unless you're either planning to stick to older games, or you're willing to accept a degree of blurriness by not running at native resolution.
 
I've tried the 1080p video from Apple's HD gallery, and that plays fine. That's probably the most demand I will need from the graphics chip(as I don't play games on my computer) is to play HD videos.
 
CyberGeek said:
Increasing the resolution of a game will obviously lower its performance, the degree that performance will be degraded depends on the resolution and the game. With my iMac (recall that I've found it to have roughly equivalent gaming performance to my new MacBook) I've found that for many games, 1280x800 tends to be the sweet spot where I'm able to strike a good balance between graphics quality and performance. This is partly why I'm so excited about my new MacBook, since its native resolution is exactly that sweet spot.

Going higher than 1280x800 gets tricky on newer games (the newest games (as in games that came out in the last year) are often difficult to run even at 1280x800), and at least in my experience I've found that I often need to sacrifice too much visual quality to pull off a decent framerate at those higher resolutions.

In terms of blurriness, I've again found 1280x800 to be the sweet spot on a 1680x1050 display. Resolutions below it tend to be painfully blurry, and resolutions above it tend to hit diminishing returns until you reach native resolution, when everything suddenly snaps into clarity.

To summarize: I don't think I would recommend trying to play games on a higher-resolution external display unless you're either planning to stick to older games, or you're willing to accept a degree of blurriness by not running at native resolution.
Click to expand...

Thanks again, I guess I could play games in a window at native MacBook res on a bigger external display?
 
Thank you very much :)
Now I can have a peace of mind while I patiently wait for mine to arrive.

CyberGeek said:
I have the 2.4GHz MacBook and have so far had the chance to play both WoW and Spore on it. As a really quick summary: if you have an iMac or a MacBook Pro from around 2006 (the versions with an ATI Radeon x1600), the gaming performance is roughly equal. I should know, I'm typing on just such an iMac and have likewise played both WoW and Spore on it.

WoW is fully playable and runs at or near 60 fps at 1280x800 with medium visual settings. I run the game with generally medium-to-high settings (texture and model detail on high, draw distance about three-quarters to maximum (remember that they increased the max draw distance in 3.0), spell effects on medium, glow effect off, etc) and get about 30-60 fps. This is a drastic improvement over the older MacBook that I'm replacing, which had an Intel GMA 950 and would cry horribly even with all visual settings reduced to near-minimum.

Spore is likewise quite playable. I don't know exactly what framerate I'm getting, but it feels like it's in the 40-60 fps range, and I'm running it at 1280x800 with more or less medium graphics settings.

While I have yet to install Windows on my MacBook and subsequently try Source games like Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source or Team Fortress 2, given the similar performance to my iMac I feel comfortable saying you will probably be able to play the older Source games with settings pretty much maxed out, and the newer Source games (including TF2 and Half-Life 2: Episode 2) at medium settings.

I hope that helps some people out. This machine has been surprising me at just how good its gaming performance is.
Click to expand...
 
angemon89 said:
I've tried the 1080p video from Apple's HD gallery, and that plays fine. That's probably the most demand I will need from the graphics chip(as I don't play games on my computer) is to play HD videos.
Click to expand...

Does that force MB's fan on? I haven't heard anyone hear fan as loud as previous MB.
 
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