Gaming on a Retina Macbook Pro

[Beta Particle]

At this resolution, anti aliasing is completely unnecessary, and AF doesn't help much.

Anisotropic filtering is important at any resolution.

Notice how textures in the distance are completely blurred without the use of AF. (left)


While I've heard people say that anti-aliasing is less important at higher resolutions, I'm not convinced. The lack of anti-aliasing in iPad games that run at native resolution, such as the initial Galaxy on Fire 2 HD update before they reduced it, was very noticeable to me, and that is a higher density screen than the new Retina MacBook Pro has.


Out of interest, is there anyone playing the new Civilization: Gods and Kings? I'm really enjoying that on my PC right now, but am curious about how well it runs. (note: the game will run very well at the start, but when you get above 300-400 turns, it will run considerably slower)

And for the people playing Diablo 3, I would suggest disabling anti-aliasing. Diablo uses post-processing FXAA rather than traditional multisampling AA, which is essentially a filter that tries to blur aliased edges. The game should look much sharper with it off, and probably run better too.

 

[mattonthemoon]

I play D3 at 2880x1800. It's very playable.

-I have everything on high, except shadows are off. For some reason Blizzard sucks at implementing shadows, across all games, brings any gpu to its knees. --Vsync on.


Love it.

Oh, yes AA is off, as it's basically no longer needed at this res

 

[Sambo110]

Oh, yes AA is off, as it's basically no longer needed at this res

Not to mention it blurs the whole picture and makes it look terrible.

 

[Fortimir]

While I've heard people say that anti-aliasing is less important at higher resolutions, I'm not convinced. The lack of anti-aliasing in iPad games that run at native resolution... that is a higher density screen than the new Retina MacBook Pro has.

At 2880, I really can't see AA having any effect worth the processing power. But I'd say it will still help at even 1920. The viewing distance is also different, which I think cancels out the density part of the equation.

 

[Fynd]

How sharp does it look at 1680x1050? Does it look as good as the 15" Macbook HR-AG native resolution? Or how bad does it look? I've been thinking about selling my late 2011 MBP for a retina but I'm not complete sold on one yet.

I had a 2011 MBP HR MBP previously, though not AG. It looks identical, basically, with much better performance.

 

[satchow]

Boot camp or OSX?

I was a little off, I posted those numbers at work.
I just tested SC2 out in OSX and I got about 70-80fps on Ultra in 1440x900.

 

[Fatt]

DayZ

Still waiting for my rMBP, but has anyone tried running Arma 2, or more specifically the Dayz mod? Would love to hear your input!

By the way, if you guys haven't already seen it, you should definitely check out the Arma 2 mod called Dayz. It's an ultra realistic zombie apocalypse survival simulator; yes I said simulator as it's more than just a game!

 

[topocalypse]

I feel like the GT 650 is not fast enough. I was hoping for GTX class gpu, but I totally understand and respect the reason apple uses GT 650 instead.

 

[Shaunyac]

Anyone played Guild Wars on their rmbp? I (still) play it and know it should run fine but, just want to see if it looks nice or not

Will also be getting Guild Wars 2 in August when it's released, obviously both going to have to be run in bootcamp.

 

[leman]

While I've heard people say that anti-aliasing is less important at higher resolutions, I'm not convinced. The lack of anti-aliasing in iPad games that run at native resolution, such as the initial Galaxy on Fire 2 HD update before they reduced it, was very noticeable to me, and that is a higher density screen than the new Retina MacBook Pro has.

Than it probably was not native resolution. The whole point of AA is to make scenes look as if they were rendered at a higher DPI. Note: its not resolution that matters but DPI! Even a 4K resolution will be jaggy if presented at a 100" display.

 

[Lord Appleseed]

I feel like the GT 650 is not fast enough. I was hoping for GTX class gpu, but I totally understand and respect the reason apple uses GT 650 instead.

You should read more threads here, people habe posted benchmarks of the GPU that show the rMPBs 650 is even better than a GTX 660 due to higher clocking and such.

 

[dndandrea]

Anyone played Guild Wars on their rmbp? I (still) play it and know it should run fine but, just want to see if it looks nice or not

Will also be getting Guild Wars 2 in August when it's released, obviously both going to have to be run in bootcamp.

I'm also wondering about this. I played it on the 2011 current 21" iMac i5 and I had to move the settings down really low to play. Plus I wonder how hard it is on 15" screen with with half the resolution I had on my iMac.

 

[KingArthurVI]

D3 ran smoothly on my rmbp at 1680x1050, the pixelated phenomenon is more noticeable at 1440x900.

On a side note, my fan turned on 1 minute into the game and it was quite loud. Just wondering, how do you guys play games on a macbook pro this way, isn't it a bit too noisy?

 

[jzj687]

Hey everyone,

I'm not a gamer at all, but I really wanna try a game out on my rMBP...

Any recommendations for a fairly unskilled (in terms of games) user like myself?

 

[melterx12]

Great three replies and no one have answered my question

"Does the game look blurry/fuzzy at 1440x900, 1650x1050 or 1920x1200 when playing games on Retina Macbook pro? For most monitors it looks like crap when it's not on the native resolution. "

ALL monitors look like crap when not on native resolution. The further your resolution is away from native the fuzzier it will look. So yes, games not on native resolution do look fuzzy on the retina display. At 1440x900 text looks quite blurry in diablo 3, but the game is very smooth and looks decent.

At 2880x1800 diablo 3 looks very nice but is quite choppy and I would say nearly unplayable. Hopefully blizzard will increase performance with a patch in the future.

 

[DeafZebra]

I've been playing Team Fortress 2 at 2880x1800 resolution and at High detail, and it is nothing short of amazing. There are some certain issues with the menus and the options window when you set that resolution, also you have to set the resolution every time you start up the game, but these issues don't affect gameplay at all.

 

[doh123]

I feel like the GT 650 is not fast enough. I was hoping for GTX class gpu, but I totally understand and respect the reason apple uses GT 650 instead.

You should read more threads here, people habe posted benchmarks of the GPU that show the rMPBs 650 is even better than a GTX 660 due to higher clocking and such.

true... Apple clocked it up, and its benchmarking faster than many stock GTX 660M GPUs are doing. The GPUs in these are no slouch.

 

[PhaserFuzz]

I did a complete play through of Diablo 3 in Hell mode with everything High and shadows Low in 2880x1800. Not sure what my FPS were because they're not showing up anymore after the patch, but it was easily playable. Hardly any slowdown at all. Not sure why people are saying it's so unplayable? I'm sure when Blizzard releases the Retina patch, it'll be near perfect. I have the 2.6GHz model, but I doubt that's much of a difference from the 2.3GHz one.

 

[moclippa]

Out of interest, is there anyone playing the new Civilization: Gods and Kings? I'm really enjoying that on my PC right now, but am curious about how well it runs. (note: the game will run very well at the start, but when you get above 300-400 turns, it will run considerably slower)

I second this, anyone playing Civ V G&K on the rMBP? Hands down the game I push the most hours into year after year.

 

[DeafZebra]

I second this, anyone playing Civ V G&K on the rMBP? Hands down the game I push the most hours into year after year.

I'm downloading Civilization V (not Gods and Kings) as we speak, I will let you know how it goes after it finishes.

 

[Vegasboricua702]

ALL monitors look like crap when not on native resolution. The further your resolution is away from native the fuzzier it will look. So yes, games not on native resolution do look fuzzy on the retina display. At 1440x900 text looks quite blurry in diablo 3, but the game is very smooth and looks decent.

At 2880x1800 diablo 3 looks very nice but is quite choppy and I would say nearly unplayable. Hopefully blizzard will increase performance with a patch in the future.

I disagree. I play at full res and maxed setting except i turn off AA and its quite playable. Very few times I get lag or choppyness

 

[Beta Particle]

Hey everyone,

I'm not a gamer at all, but I really wanna try a game out on my rMBP...

Any recommendations for a fairly unskilled (in terms of games) user like myself?

My recommendation would be Civilization V. It’s a turn-based strategy game so there’s a bit of thinking involved, but it doesn’t require fast reflexes like a lot of games would.

Than it probably was not native resolution. The whole point of AA is to make scenes look as if they were rendered at a higher DPI. Note: its not resolution that matters but DPI! Even a 4K resolution will be jaggy if presented at a 100" display.

Galaxy on Fire 2 HD has the option to render at 2048×1536. The framerate is terrible, but aliasing is very noticeable even at that resolution.

Aliasing occurs regardless of resolution or pixel density. Perhaps once you are approaching 400+ PPI, aliasing will not be a concern, but 264 certainly isn’t enough, and even then I’d have my doubts that antialiasing wouldn’t be required.

I doubt the Retina MacBook Pro has enough power to use antialiasing at 2880×1800, or even to render most games at playable framerates at that resolution at all though.

Too bad that Mac Pros and retina cinema displays are probably at least a year away…

I disagree. I play at full res and maxed setting except i turn off AA and its quite playable. Very few times I get lag or choppyness

I think it depends how much of a gamer you are, and what you’re used to. I have a Windows machine here for gaming because it can play anything at 60fps for completely fluid gameplay, whereas I’d expect to have 30fps or less on the Retina MacBook Pro. That would seem choppy to me, but might be fine for people who are used to gaming on something like an iPad or a games console.

 

[Macbro17]

I dont understand what everyone is talking about, my rmbp runs skyrim 2880 by 1800 ultra settings at 120fps and it's amazing, I load out mods and never notice lag at all....(in case you didn't notice I'm still waiting for mine as the above has only happened while I was sleeping)

 

[pHeNom]

I installed D3 on my Retina base model with 16gb ram with regular/basic settings no change at all my fans goes off right away.. maybe 30 secs to 1 min into the game? just mines or happens to everybody else.. it runs warm to touch fast!

 

[topocalypse]

You should read more threads here, people habe posted benchmarks of the GPU that show the rMPBs 650 is even better than a GTX 660 due to higher clocking and such.

I have read that. I forgot to mention what I meant was GTX that are like GTX 675m 680m. GTX 660m wouldn't be enough for Retina display to run smoothly in demanding applications like games either. GTX 680m would be my dream rMBP, but I know the cost would be crazy and the heat would cause the machine to throttle.

Peace