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Exactly, how bad is the HD 3000?

G

glztt

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 24, 2011
3
0
Hi! I was planning to replace my 2006 iMac with one of the new 13' macbook pros. From the benchmarks it looks like the HD 3000 is slighty better then the Radeon HD 2600 I have now, but all the hating on the 3000 is making me unsure.

The most graphic intensive tasks I would do are Photoshop and playing gamecube games on dolphin, would I get worse performance on the new macbook?

(Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask, I usually just lurk :( )
 
I am a web admin and I plan on hooking the 2011 MBP 13" to a 27" cinema display.

I multitask heavily, having open DreamWeaver, PhotoShop, ScreenFlow (screen capturing software), FTP, up to 4 firefox windows, etc. All at once.

Will the GPU be able to handle that?

Thanks!
 
KohPhiPhi said:
I am a web admin and I plan on hooking the 2011 MBP 13" to a 27" cinema display.

I multitask heavily, having open DreamWeaver, PhotoShop, ScreenFlow (screen capturing software), FTP, up to 4 firefox windows, etc. All at once.

Will the GPU be able to handle that?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Yeah it's fine for all this 2d stuff.
 
KohPhiPhi said:
I am a web admin and I plan on hooking the 2011 MBP 13" to a 27" cinema display.

I multitask heavily, having open DreamWeaver, PhotoShop, ScreenFlow (screen capturing software), FTP, up to 4 firefox windows, etc. All at once.

Will the GPU be able to handle that?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Of course it will. Even the old GMA 3100 would be able to handle that.

Anyway, "bad" in HD 3000 regards to the fact that it represents a low-end 3d graphics performance. It is still better or on par with low-end dedicated GPUs.
And yes, you can play Crysis with it (check youtube for videos).

The HD 3000 is actually a great thing because its the first time that Intel has created an integrated GPU which actually does not suck. Yes, it may be a tad slower then what Nvidia can do, but it is sufficient for basic 3d tasks and most importantly, it sets the reference for gaming. The HD 3000 is fast enough for any modern 3d game, if the game developer is willing to tweak their title accordingly. BTW, its way faster then GPUs used in the gaming consoles ;)
 
In MOST cases the CPU horsepower will compensate for the 'slightly' weaker GPU with these new models (excluding those that have the discrete gpu's alongside the IGP)

However for 'gaming' you may get a few fps less.
 
I'm going to be working in the mobile graphics department at Intel this summer. Hopefully by the time what I will be working on gets released, people won't be frightened by the concept of Intel graphics.
 
My concern if future proofing, if i get a 13" mbp i want to be able to use it for the next 5-6 years. we have two imacs in our house one with a x1600 and one with a gma 950, they're roughly the same age, but the imac with the x1600 is worlds apart in terms of general tasks such as video streaming/youtube and playing recent games on, WoW on the imac gma 950 wasn't good when we got the machine, now it's un-playable on it whereas the x1600 has stood the test of times and still works very well.
Looking at the game benchmarks, the HD 3000 is well of the pace on medium settings when compared to the 320m in the old macbook, yes on low settings it's ok because the CPU compensates, but when actual Graphics performance is needed i.e. putting up the settings it falls behind the 320m
 
Macmadant said:
My concern if future proofing, if i get a 13" mbp i want to be able to use it for the next 5-6 years. we have two imacs in our house one with a x1600 and one with a gma 950, they're roughly the same age, but the imac with the x1600 is worlds apart in terms of general tasks such as video streaming/youtube and playing recent games on, WoW on the imac gma 950 wasn't good when we got the machine, now it's un-playable on it whereas the x1600 has stood the test of times and still works very well.
Looking at the game benchmarks, the HD 3000 is well of the pace on medium settings when compared to the 320m in the old macbook, yes on low settings it's ok because the CPU compensates, but when actual Graphics performance is needed i.e. putting up the settings it falls behind the 320m
Click to expand...

You don't have to worry about future proofing, because you won't be able to play even current games at high settings on the thing anyhow. It's a 13" laptop. Expecting it to be able to play future games is not reasonable.
 
solarein said:
You don't have to worry about future proofing, because you won't be able to play even current games at high settings on the thing anyhow. It's a 13" laptop. Expecting it to be able to play future games is not reasonable.
Click to expand...

I'm not really a Gamer that much, i just occasionally dribble in and out of some games. It's more the fact that if i'm stuck with something that's fairly poor now, how will it be able to perform in the future and i'm not just talking about games, as i said earlier about the imacs and streaming video/youtube video's, we don't know how well this will stand up in 2 or 3 years time.
 
glztt said:
Hi! I was planning to replace my 2006 iMac with one of the new 13' macbook pros. From the benchmarks it looks like the HD 3000 is slighty better then the Radeon HD 2600 I have now, but all the hating on the 3000 is making me unsure.

The most graphic intensive tasks I would do are Photoshop and playing gamecube games on dolphin, would I get worse performance on the new macbook?

(Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask, I usually just lurk :( )
Click to expand...

I SERIOUSLY doubt the hd 3000 will run games on dolphin emulator smoothly.
 
solarein said:
You don't have to worry about future proofing, because you won't be able to play even current games at high settings on the thing anyhow. It's a 13" laptop. Expecting it to be able to play future games is not reasonable.
Click to expand...

My mid-2009 baseline 13" MBP might not be able to run everything at high, but has handled everything I throw at it at mid-high settings. The same cannot be said for the new Intel garbage that's about to come out.

Stop being so arrogant; it is reasonable and Apple has delivered it before.
 
dtodor said:
With a 27" display at 2600x1440? I wouldn't be too sure about that.
Click to expand...

That's my concern: I need an external 27" 2560x1440 monitor to display plenty of windows at once (I multitask plenty of applications at once), and I need to drag them around smoothly. Do you think the HD3000 will be able to manage that?
 
leman said:
BTW, its way faster then GPUs used in the gaming consoles ;)
Click to expand...

Not by a long shot. The PS3 uses a GPU that's roughly equivalent to a desktop 7800GT, while the 360's GPU is in the same neighborhood as AMD's desktop 3800 series GPUs. Both of them were built off of what was high-end desktop GPU technology at the time, and both of them still beat the pants off of the HD 3000.
 
KohPhiPhi said:
That's my concern: I need an external 27" 2560x1440 monitor to display plenty of windows at once (I multitask plenty of applications at once), and I need to drag them around smoothly. Do you think the HD3000 will be able to manage that?
Click to expand...

If I were you, I would test this setup at a local Apple store.
 
ScholarsInk said:
My mid-2009 baseline 13" MBP might not be able to run everything at high, but has handled everything I throw at it at mid-high settings. The same cannot be said for the new Intel garbage that's about to come out.

Stop being so arrogant; it is reasonable and Apple has delivered it before.
Click to expand...

This is exactly the point i was trying to make, glad someone could understand what i was saying.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUCmXwbsUec

Here is the video of crysis running on a hd 3000 but here's the problem, he is running it with a top of the line i7 2600k (3,40 ghz 8mb cache) and 8gb of probably faster ddr3 ram than the macbook pro 13.

I highly doubt this hd 3000 will really narrow the gap with what nvidia and ati has to offer, hell, sometimes games or certain apps are not even compatible with those chips.

And those who say : who wants to play games on a mac ? Well i think it's quite normal when you buy a 1500 bucks or more laptop that you expect to be able to play games on it along with other things.
 
panzer06 said:
You'll have to buy a PC for that. :) That's the only reason I have a Windows laptop in my sig! High end gaming is weak on Macs.

Cheers,
Click to expand...

I think I'm ready for it with my Hackintosh. A 27" display and a second GTX 480 would be nice though. My 20" display is feeling tiny compared to the two 27" iMacs in my house.
 
Lol your ATI Radeon 2600 pro was better. Why you might ask? Yours is a dedicated graphics card while the Intel 3000 is a chipset, getting its vram from the ram itself and that equals to crappy performance.

You'll be lucky to play Crysis on low at 1200x800 lol.
 
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