Games run poorly on 2015 rmbp 13"

[Antairez]

How is that not the right question or attitude? Because someone tells the truth about gaming on Macs?

Gaming on a Mac is like buying a Windows phone and expecting to have a great app experience compared to the iPhone.

At the end of the day, Macs have their expertise and it's not games. A Windows device is FAR superior as a gaming machine. Even then, laptops are sketchy choices for games anyways. Casual games maybe, but getting past that gets really expensive fast.

As a software developer and a casual gamer, I see no problems in buying the macs for some leisure gaming. If its x86, it can be a gaming machine. Sure thing gaming is not Macs expertise, but that doesn't imply Macs can't do gaming. It is 2015, the advanced technology should allow us to do some casual gaming without switching OSs. But if you really want to extract every last bit of juice of power from your macs just to game, boot camp is always an option.

Spec wise speaking MacBook Pro comes with "far above average" spec when comparing to your average laptops. The machine is indeed capable of some gaming performance if we are talking about pure hardware processing power, please note the word "hardware". Judging from your reply I suspect you had a bad time gaming on a Mac, but you might be surprised how far mobile gaming has come so far in the recent years, and will continue to impress us in the following years.

Lastly, to answer OP's question, rMBP comes with a beautiful display for photo editing/filming work, it is also very nice to look at just for regular web browsing experience, but definitely not suitable for gaming when you only have a integrated GPU. Your "native resolution" is some bad ass resolution that requires a proper gaming rig to perform nicely when doing serious gaming. I will be more than happy if the current rMBPs lineups can do 1080p gaming properly, that should be your targeted gaming resolution on an integrated GPU.

 

[mikeo007]

What's the basis for the 4x estimate?

I'm looking at architectural specs, such as here and elsewhere:

http://wccftech.com/intel-skylake-p...features-72-execution-units-128-mb-edram-llc/

http://www.kitguru.net/components/c...ions-of-intel-skylakes-graphics-cores-emerge/

Note that the gt4e is only for the quad cores. The dual cores have a gt3e. gt3e without onboard RAM == Intel Iris 6100. gt3e with onboard RAM == Intel Iris Pro 5200.

In other words, it looks an awful lot like the GPU is going to be the same or very similar for the rMBP 13", unless you think they're going to bump up to the same integrated GPU+RAM as the current rMBP 15".

The 'e' in gt3e denotes the fact that it will have onboard eDRAM. There are no gt3e parts without onboard RAM. The 28w Skylake SKUs (13" rMBP) are the first 28w Intel chips to sport the eDRAM that for the last 2 generations has been reserved for the higher wattage SKUs.

The gt3e in the (Iris 5200, 2013 15" rMBP) was almost twice as fast as the gt3 (Iris 5100, 2013 13" rMBP).

On paper, the new Iris 6100 (2015 13" rMBP) is about a 25% improvement over the 2013 Iris 5100.

The Skylake GPUs are expected to show even better gains on paper over Broadwell, plus the addition of eDRAM will double performance on its own.

So I'd say we're looking at a minimum of 2x better GPU performance in the Skylake 13" Macbook Pro. That number could easily be higher though depending on other factors.

 

[simmo0916]

I'm happy with it so far...obviously not running most games at a ridiculous 2560 x 1600....that is way too many pixels for an integrated card to push. You will get great clarity at a lower setting.

Sim City - 1080p, all settings medium, AA off, super smooth

Diablo 3 - 1080p, settings med/hi, aa off, only slight lags when the screen is loaded with enemies

Good to know those games work nicely - Anyone got any of the Civ games working yet? Im thinking more along the lines of Beyond Earth if anyone is playing it on the new 13"?

 

[geoelectric]

The 'e' in gt3e denotes the fact that it will have onboard eDRAM.

...

So I'd say we're looking at a minimum of 2x better GPU performance in the Skylake 13" Macbook Pro. That number could easily be higher though depending on other factors.

Ah, nice. Thanks for the correction on that!

That'll require some thought once it comes out. I ended up upgrading in a year between 2010 and 2011 MacBook Air with no regrets. If the gaming performance on the laptop doubles I might have to seriously consider doing the same again here.