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Advice on buying a new MBP

W

will waters

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 19, 2011
155
0
Great Britain
Hi

I was looking at buying an new MBP for different things e.g. Final cut pro X, Virtual DJ iPhoto and obviously Word/pages, I currently do not own a gaming console (ps3, X box 360 etc), and as i am still a student (at boarding school) so being able to game would be really good (games like battlefield 3 and COD MW 3), i am also on a limited budget of about £1000 and i would like a 13 inch, which one would you suggest or should i wait until the new ones come out in 2012
Thanks Will
 
You kind of limited yourself to a 13" laptop, so that leaves you with either a MacBook Air or a 13" MacBook Pro. Neither one of them have a discreet GPU and if you intend to do more then casual gaming I'd say you could possibly choose better. Your budget is also the limiting factor as well.

If you only have a budget of £1000 that puts you squarely in the base 13" MBP or the MBA. I'd say go with the MBP if you want the optical drive and upgradable storage otherwise the MBA makes a great laptop
 
For MW3 I would recommend a 15" MBP with 6750M at least.
But for BF3 you should get a gaming notebook because even the 6750M will probably just barely play that at somewhat decent details.
You'd want a 460M or better for BF3.
 
If you want to play games, and you have a grand, get a desktop. If you need portability, look at the Windows side, e.g. Alienware or something.


As the first post stated, you won't be able to play those games with the 13 inch variant of the MBP, let alone the MBA which is even lower spec'd.

I love games as much as the next guy, but when it came down to it, I ended upg etting the MBP as it plays "current" (Portal 2, etc.) games "ok" and that's all I could pay for.
 
Suppose i can stretch my budget

I could probably stretch my budget to £1200, and i really need a portable, what do you think the new MBP's will be like?
 
will waters said:
I could probably stretch my budget to £1200, and i really need a portable, what do you think the new MBP's will be like?
Click to expand...

Well nobody knows when they'll come out, or what they will have. The rumor is that Apple will bump the processors i them up a couple hundred mhz, but since it's a Sandy Bridge, I doubt you'd be able to take advantage of that.

It'd be like wasting the 200 or so to upgrade the processor right now. But aside from that, the next "big" upgrade will be to Ivy Bridge, which, again IMO, will only be worth it if the energy saving gets better; that and they change the design or something (high res screen, removal of the opti, etc.)

I have a 2011 13 inch baseline right now and I would only sell this and upgrade if the next iteration (Ivy) brought something big beside performance.

I can run VMs, HD videos, and edit photos all at the same time and never go over 30 percent CPU usage. Of course, those things all don't require CPU usage at the same time, but you get my point.
 
will waters said:
I could probably stretch my budget to £1200, and i really need a portable, what do you think the new MBP's will be like?
Click to expand...
It is still a long time to come but you can bet that even the next gen 13" won't come with anything but the integrated Intel GPU which will only be 60% faster than the current Hd 3000 which is still way to slow for that kind of games.
You still will want to have a 15" MBP and they won't be cheaper just a lot faster with 28nm GPUs.

If the 1200 pound doesn't buy you a 15" with 6750M forget Apple Notebooks if you care about gaming. They work for those that do a little bit of gaming occasionally.
For BF3 I would recommend a notebook with at least a 460M or something comparable.

Alternatively look for the Samsung Series 7 15.6" Notebooks. They will be released soon. They offer very good mobility and the same speed as a 15" MBP. Quality isn't the same as a 15" MBP (most likely there aren't any reviews yet) but hey it costs almost half and with a 900p screen with probably less contrast, 9 hours battery life in specs at least, 1500 cycle battery, thin aluminium chassis, small form factor for a 16:9 notebooks it looks like a very good deal.
For BF3 I would still wait for some new AMD 28nm Heathrow GPUs and buy some notebook released with one.
 
i do not like PC's

I will not get a PC, (many reasons but mainly at school they only support apple not pc's what so ever) i will have to look at the MBP 15" i think
 
Just keep in mind that for the price of the highend 15" MBP which you'd need at least for playing these kind of games, you can buy a Desktop PC that destroys the 15" highend in terms for gaming performance and still buy a 13" MBP for the school stuff and what ever else.
Most decent Desktop displays have two inputs and it is easy to swtich. You can use at home both the PC and the 13" with keyboard, mouse and Display and elsewise only the 13".
A 6750M is sort of the minium for BF3 (forget the 256mb GPU in the lowend 15") and quite okay for a slim notebook but compared to a 6850 oder 6950 desktop class it is still a joke.

And a Desktop PC has the benefit of being easy and cheap to upgrade. After 2 years you put in a new GPU for 150 $ and you are ready to go for another 2 years and still be way better off than if you bought a new MBP at that time.

It is just really stupid to stick to Mac if you care about gaming especially 1st person shooter stuff.
 
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