Future MacBook Pros - Video cards

[nick4884]

Hi,

I'm interested in purchasing a new MacBook Pro in the next few months. As I would like to play some 3D games - some old; (gotta lot of catching up to do - Doom 3, Quake 4, HL2); some new (ie Bioshock 2) and obviously games coming out in the next 12 months. A 15" Pro would be perfect - resolution and price suit me fairly well there.

My main concern is that the current Macbook Pro, with the dedicated Geforce 9600M wont cut the cheese when it comes to playing new 3d shooters - well, without taking the graphics down a notch. Am I right in assuming this? Or does the 9600 do fine with the resolutions that the 15" can display?

Which causes me to look forward a bit. A new MacBook Pro should come out in the next 4-5 months, and I guess that they will revise their graphic card offering. Would you guys have any educated guesses as to what we can expect from apple? Dual dedicated GPU's? Something with a bit more grunt that can handle the latest and greatest of blood n gore?

Many thanks for your time. Nice to see a strong community here!

Cheers

Nick

 

[Shivetya]

What I found is that it was the 5400rpm drives that caused me more grief than the video card.

 

[rekhyt]

I highly doubt that they would do dual-dedicated, since it would increase the space/size and they would have to redesign the MacBook Pro again. One integrated and one dedicated is the max that they can go right now in my opinion.

Hoping for the ability to run them both at once though. I don't think that the graphics card would be the latest and the greatest though for the laptops.

 

[sn0warmy]

What I found is that it was the 5400rpm drives that caused me more grief than the video card.

Sorry to thread jack. But I think Shivetya just answered my question:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/806591/

nick4884 - My issue may help you out as well.

 

[PVIllustration]

I have a midrange 15" MBP with the 256 MB 9600GT. In OSX it performs equally to my 8800GTX which resides in my desktop. It will rip through Doom3, Quake4 and HL2 no problem. Bioshock is a newer gen game, and you might want to take might run that on medium quality settings to have a high steady framerate. Same with Crysis, Farcry and games in that league.

For casual gaming the 9600GT is great.

Now the 9400M will do games, but it will not deliver the same punch. If playing games is a big thing for you, I highly suggest spending abit more buck to get the discreet 9600GT.

 

[nick4884]

thanks for the answers guys - i might see if I can hold out for the next release. cheers!

 

[Richard1028]

I'm not sure if this applies but there's an Apple performance update to deal with HD stalls (I think).