Anticipated gaming improvement for 13" Haswell rMBP?

[Bittah Dreamer]

Hi guys

I don't know if this has been covered, but seriously thinking of buying the new 13" rMBP. It will be my first Mac.

I am not really a hardcore gamer, and bar Football Manager I don't really play games all that often. However, I would like the option of being able to play some games from time to time.

I'm not planning on playing Chrysis 3 or anything, or unduly worried about being able to run on the highest graphisc. But I would like to be able to play some fairly recent games at reasonable settings. Maybe Diablo 3, Civ 5, Sim City, Assassin's Creed 3, Portal 2 etc.

How do you expect the new 13" rMBP to fare? What type of boost can we expect from Iris graphics over the old HD4000 graphics?

Thanks

 

[Jinzen]

It won't play games well.

Heck, my 2013 Retina Macbook Pro with 650M struggles with Diablo 3 on 1440x900.

If you want any gaming capability, you should get the 15" Retina w/ 750M.

 

[Bittah Dreamer]

It won't play games well.

Heck, my 2013 Retina Macbook Pro with 650M struggles with Diablo 3 on 1440x900.

If you want any gaming capability, you should get the 15" Retina w/ 750M.

I've seen videos on youtube of 2013 MacBook Air's running Diablo III, on medium settings I think.

I would have thought with the better processor and graphics the new rMBP could do it better, no?

No looking for any fancy settings , just to get a playable game experience.

 

[0983275]

It won't play games well.

Heck, my 2013 Retina Macbook Pro with 650M struggles with Diablo 3 on 1440x900.

If you want any gaming capability, you should get the 15" Retina w/ 750M.

750m isn't that much faster over 650m.

Also, I'm running D3 @ 1440x900 just fine on my 2013 MBA, not sure why yours is struggling.

 

[Jinzen]

750m isn't that much faster over 650m.

Also, I'm running D3 @ 1440x900 just fine on my 2013 MBA, not sure why yours is struggling.

I guess anything under 60FPS w/ VSYNC on is unacceptable for a gaming experience for me, but if you can suffer through lower frame-rates and still be OK with that. I'd rather not play the game at all than play it with a sub-optimal experience. I have to turn off everything in Diablo 3 and run it at a low resolution to get a playable experience here.

 

[CausticPuppy]

I think older games would run just fine. Maybe not at native retina resolutions, but still decent enough.

Heck I played Portal 2 on my Mac Mini server with only an HD3000 GPU, and it was playable at 1920x1200 with the graphics settings turned down. It wasn't great but it was definitely playable.

Haswell should be much much better since it's two generations newer.

 

[Leudast]

Can anyone comment on the 2.6 i5 vs the 2.8 i7 in terms of gaming? (for the 13")

I'm not going to be doing anything serious, but will the i7 have a better gaming experience? Or is is nearly all dependent on the iGPU?

 

[yabot]

It won't play games well.

Heck, my 2013 Retina Macbook Pro with 650M struggles with Diablo 3 on 1440x900.

If you want any gaming capability, you should get the 15" Retina w/ 750M.

then yours must be ****ed, mine ran it on ultra at 1080p with ease.

 

[koppie644]

much better than HD4000

QUOTE=Bittah Dreamer;18225619]Hi guys

I don't know if this has been covered, but seriously thinking of buying the new 13" rMBP. It will be my first Mac.

I am not really a hardcore gamer, and bar Football Manager I don't really play games all that often. However, I would like the option of being able to play some games from time to time.

I'm not planning on playing Chrysis 3 or anything, or unduly worried about being able to run on the highest graphisc. But I would like to be able to play some fairly recent games at reasonable settings. Maybe Diablo 3, Civ 5, Sim City, Assassin's Creed 3, Portal 2 etc.

How do you expect the new 13" rMBP to fare? What type of boost can we expect from Iris graphics over the old HD4000 graphics?

Thanks[/QUOTE]

 

[neteng101]

It should be a bit better than the MBA HD 5000 scores seen here...

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7085/the-2013-macbook-air-review-13inch/5

I'm seeing 1210 vs. the MBA 1080 for 3DMark 11, on a 2.6 i5-4288U 13".

A 750M runs around 2655 according to Notebookcheck. That's more than double what the Iris 5000/5100 can do. It also shows the Iris Pro 5200 at 2290 and 5100 at 1413.

Without the eDRAM of the Iris Pro, Iris just isn't a good iGPU for gaming.

 

[iosuser]

There's not that many Iris reviews yet, but from the couple of articles I read, Iris should be similar to the Geforce 640M which is more than acceptable for me for a non-discrete video controller.