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OS X Anyone 'game' with the Iris Pro?

M

mattdanielc

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 17, 2015
31
0
Hi guys,

Bought myself the middle 21.5" imac last week - arrived last night. The only upgrade I did was to get the SSD.

Anyway, anyone with the Iris Pro.... is it any good for gaming?

I was wondering if I could play games ok - I will buy Bioshock as it's on sale now - but was just wondering if anyone has experience of gaming with the Iris Pro.

Thanks for any views.
 
Well I game fine with the HD4000 in my Mini. Although the most "demanding" games I have are Doom 3, Day of Defeat:Source, Counter Strike: Source, and Half Life 2. I would imagine the Iris Pro would be quite a bit better than the HD4000.
 
The Iris Pro is good for an integrated GPU, but if gaming were even a slight consideration, you would have been better off purchasing an iMac with a discreet one.
 
I remember when Sound Blaster cards was what real gamers had to use. Today, people are perfectly happy with the integrated sound components on the motherboard. Maybe this trend will be repeated with GPUs in a few years.
 
BornAgainMac said:
I remember when Sound Blaster cards was what real gamers had to use. Today, people are perfectly happy with the integrated sound components on the motherboard. Maybe this trend will be repeated with GPUs in a few years.
Click to expand...

Correct.
Integrated grfx (and / or other integrated components) are catching up. Games still are demanding more horsepower, but I feel the need for more is starting te ease up a bit.

• A few years ago integrated grfx meant: No 3D performance at all (forget gaming)
• Now: integrated grfx: 3D performance "all right", but no way great (casual gaming on modest settings, but it works)
• In a couple of years: integrated grfx: "good enough" (casual gaming fine, more demanding games: modest settings)

Of course dedicated grfx will always be better, but the difference will diminish.

IMHO, iPad is a great example of this.
 
I don't have one yet but i've used my Intel HD 4000 to play games fine, and I hear its about equal to the 650m which I also play on just fine. If you play benchmark games it may be more difficulty if ur going for ultra, or at 1800p. The most popular games tho (Blizzard games, League of Legends, CSGO, Hearthstone) shouldn't give you many problems tho. I'd probably be perfectly fine using it to stream from a rMBP but I also wanna stream which is pretty demanding on a laptop, so I have to look at building a PC now:(

Also i've been seeing people use the Intel HD 4600 on desktop processors to game now. They hook up faster DDR3 or stock DDR4 and they get over 60fps in BF4 on high settings I think? Cant remember the exact settings but I hear the Iris Pro is good for gaming regardless.
 
I've played games on my late-2013 rMBP with Iris Pro. It is very good. It is significantly better than the Nvidia Geforce 9600M GT in my Mid-2009 MacBook Pro.
 
You sure can, but perhaps not ideally at maximum resolution and settings.

I do some light gaming on my Lenovo with an Intel HD 4600, a bit lower than an Iris Pro. I game at 1920x1080 with the following games via Steam:

BioShock
BioShock 2
Borderlands 2
Braid
Dota 2
FEZ
Left 4 Dead 2
Portal
South Park: The Stick of Truth
Super Meat Boy
Team Fortress 2
Torchlight II
Trine
Trine II

Used to play Diablo 3 a bit, but I think I had to tone down the resolution a little to ensure fluid gameplay at all time.

So it will definitely work. Maybe not maximum settings, but more than enough to get 30+ FPS playing some decent games.
 
Last edited:
I have the Iris Pro in my 15" Machine (no dedicated) - as I've been through 3 Macs where the dedicated card has died so I'm looking for some decent games i can play :)
 
MarcusCarpenter said:
I have the Iris Pro in my 15" Machine (no dedicated) - as I've been through 3 Macs where the dedicated card has died so I'm looking for some decent games i can play :)
Click to expand...

If you are looking for a game:
War Thunder.
Nuff said.
Amazing game
I recently found.
And it's free.
 
I had an older 13" MBP with the just the HD 3000 and it decently ran CS:GO and WoW, Diablo 3 from what I remember. I think you'll be okay for most things in the app store too, but I wouldn't waste your money on The Witcher 2 unless you like getting down on the low/medium setting.
 
Anandtech shows Bioshock running acceptable but slower than a GT 640M. http://anandtech.com/show/6993/intel-iris-pro-5200-graphics-review-core-i74950hq-tested/7

Older and less strenuous games run better. Diablo 3 runs great at 1366x768 on HD4600 in Windows. With the extra 128MB eDRAM cache, the Mac version should do even better.

Should have gotten the 750M for strenuous games. It isn't that much more, considering you also get a somewhat faster CPU.
 
DougTheImpaler said:
With the extra 128MB eDRAM cache, the Mac version should do even better.
Click to expand...

That specific part would really surprise me if it was true, considering that D3 has double the fps when running under windows - in comparison with the os x version - on the very same machine.
 
Yup - its not too bad as a gaming card. But I will never use it as such - it runs so hot and I cant figure out a way to keep the CPU under 100 degrees regardless of any game settings I use. The only game that I've managed to keep under 90 degrees on its minumum settings is minecraft.

I use Steam in-home streaming now which utterly, utterly awesome! I wrote a bit of a post about it here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/20754526/
 
lJoSquaredl said:
I don't have one yet but i've used my Intel HD 4000 to play games fine, and I hear its about equal to the 650m which I also play on just fine. If you play benchmark games it may be more difficulty if ur going for ultra, or at 1800p. The most popular games tho (Blizzard games, League of Legends, CSGO, Hearthstone) shouldn't give you many problems tho. I'd probably be perfectly fine using it to stream from a rMBP but I also wanna stream which is pretty demanding on a laptop, so I have to look at building a PC now:(

Also i've been seeing people use the Intel HD 4600 on desktop processors to game now. They hook up faster DDR3 or stock DDR4 and they get over 60fps in BF4 on high settings I think? Cant remember the exact settings but I hear the Iris Pro is good for gaming regardless.
Click to expand...

The HD 4000 is nowhere near as powerful as the 650M when it comes to gaming. The Iris Pro machines should do fine with most games that came out in 2012 and 2013 (for moderate settings), but the newer stuff will struggle. The Iris Pro was t necessarily made with gaming in mind, but other kinds of graphically intense work. Not that it can't game, it just doesn't do it as well as other tasks.
 
bhayes444 said:
The HD 4000 is nowhere near as powerful as the 650M when it comes to gaming. The Iris Pro machines should do fine with most games that came out in 2012 and 2013 (for moderate settings), but the newer stuff will struggle. The Iris Pro was t necessarily made with gaming in mind, but other kinds of graphically intense work. Not that it can't game, it just doesn't do it as well as other tasks.
Click to expand...

Mistype I meant to say the Iris Pro is somewhat on par with 650m or 640m. Either way I play games designed to run on potatoes so i'm good. A lot of people just play WoW, Hearthstone, League of Legends, I think most could get by with Iris Pro or other integrated graphics.
 
Integrated gfx are somewhat similar in performance to low end mobile cards, but only on low gfx settings.

When you start increasing resolutions, polygons and textures, these start to rapidly fall apart into low digit fps.

I play wow on my intel iris and it runs at 30 fps on low-mid settings @1920.
 
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