Gaming on the MBP 13"

W

WarpSpawn

macrumors member
Please excuse me if this has been asked and answered countless times before. But what sort of gaming performance can one actually expect from the current baseline version of this machine?

And yes, I am fully aware that it is not a gaming powerhouse and is not for serious gamers, but alas, the 15" models are out of my price range and my main purpose for considering one is not gaming. I am merely curious how well if can handle the odd game here and there, especially as I have a few games on Steam that are supposed to work on Windows and Mac OS.

How well does Civ 5 run, for example? I notice that the HD 3000 is on the list of supported cards at least.

Thanks in advance.
 
Well, it's not a gaming machine...but you already know that.

I don't know about the Macbook Pro but I have a White MB with 4GB of RAM and an nVidia 320M. I think that they are similar though

You should be able to play older games smoothly but don't expect it to be able to handle Crysis 2 ;) Never played Civ 5 but from reading the requirements, your macbook should run it well.

These are the games I have now and they do run very well: GTA 3, VC and SA (never tried GTA4), Oblivion, Rainbow Six Vegas, Half Life 2, Tomb Raider Anniversary, The Movies and Portal 2. Apart from Oblivion, others run on max/mid-max settings and 1280x800 resolution.

Oh, and I run them from OS X: some are "native" and some others do live inside a cider wrapper. If you use bootcamp you should get better performance
 
I must admit, that does not sound too bad. I know from experience that when a machine is declared sub par for games, it is still possible to have some fun if you lean towards older games and/or are willing to sacrifice eye candy. Like running World of Warcraft on a netbook, for example. Not great but playable.

Incidentally, talking of WoW, I am led to believe that it limits the video options for onboard chipsets. Is this correct?
 
WarpSpawn said:
How well does Civ 5 run, for example? I notice that the HD 3000 is on the list of supported cards at least.
Click to expand...

Not at all. I remember when I asked this sort of question. Fortunately for you I can provide a first class answer now I've experienced it first hand.

I love Civ 5. It runs brilliantly on here. No problems at all. :D And I wouldn't put too much faith in their supported video cards-I got the game to run fine on my 2009 iMac with Nvidia 9400 graphics.

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NorthDakota91 said:
I don't know about the Macbook Pro but I have a White MB with 4GB of RAM and an nVidia 320M. I think that they are similar though
Click to expand...

The Core 2 Duo processor is a decided step down from the Sandy bridge processors around now. But on the other hand the Nvidia 320M graphics card was pretty awesome against the HD Graphics 3000. Mind you I've got 384 MB Vram. Now that's better than the Nvidia graphics of old. :)
 
I'm curious about this too, so if you don't mind me hijacking your thread a little bit...

What kind of performance can I expect running WoW and StarCraft II on an Early 2011 2.3GHz 13" MBP? I don't need them to run at max settings, just playable. How much would upgrading the RAM from 4GB to 8GB help?
 
warvanov said:
I'm curious about this too, so if you don't mind me hijacking your thread a little bit...

What kind of performance can I expect running WoW and StarCraft II on an Early 2011 2.3GHz 13" MBP? I don't need them to run at max settings, just playable. How much would upgrading the RAM from 4GB to 8GB help?
Click to expand...

A bit I'd imagine. But if I were you I'd get a better processor. i7 quad core if possible. Dual core if not. You can upgrade the RAM later yourself if you want-it's quite easy. You'd have a hell of a time trying to change the processor yourself though. A soldering iron would help for instance. ;)
 
warvanov said:
I'm curious about this too, so if you don't mind me hijacking your thread a little bit...

What kind of performance can I expect running WoW and StarCraft II on an Early 2011 2.3GHz 13" MBP? I don't need them to run at max settings, just playable. How much would upgrading the RAM from 4GB to 8GB help?
Click to expand...

Not at all. The more the merrier. I expect the two are similar in performance anyway.

I do not have Starcraft II but this is another game I am interested in.
 
szolr said:
A bit I'd imagine. But if I were you I'd get a better processor. i7 quad core if possible. Dual core if not. You can upgrade the RAM later yourself if you want-it's quite easy. You'd have a hell of a time trying to change the processor yourself though. A soldering iron would help for instance. ;)
Click to expand...

Unfortunately the 15" MBP, and therefore quad core, is entirely out of my budget right now.
 
warvanov said:
Unfortunately the 15" MBP, and therefore quad core, is entirely out of my budget right now.
Click to expand...

Ah OK. I had that feeling when I got my 13 inch Pro. Is the i7 13 inch within your budget? Basically what I'm trying to say is forget the RAM for now. Get the best processor you can afford.

It'll be worth it as it'll increase the time before you next feel your computer's slow and you need a newer one. :)
 
Gaming on Intel integrated graphics? If you are not serious at all about gaming and only want the game to run decent on lowest settings then this computer is for you. Again, if you are not a gamer but want your computer to be able to play games at the bare minimum then it will be perfectly okay.
 
szolr said:
Ah OK. I had that feeling when I got my 13 inch Pro. Is the i7 13 inch within your budget? Basically what I'm trying to say is forget the RAM for now. Get the best processor you can afford.

It'll be worth it as it'll increase the time before you next feel your computer's slow and you need a newer one. :)
Click to expand...

There's many ways to look at this. I usually but the lowest end cpu, because the cpu isn't the bottleneck in most cases... in gaming the GPU is... which is identical, and in day to day use an SSD makes far more impact than a minor cpu upgrade.

Also if I buy the mbp for 999... I just end up selling it when a new model comes out for 700$... the 300$ I saved from not buying a faster cpu allows me to upgrade to the newest model every year (I don't buy apple care for this reason, as I'm always under warranty)
 
I use MSI Afterburner to overclock while in bootcamp. I gained 30% FPS by over clocking my 320M. It allowed me to bump most setting from low to medium while retaining the same FPS in most games.

I get 30+ in Civ 5 on small battles with my 2010 13" MBP.

If there's a way to overclock the HD3000 it would be worth looking into. Just watch your temps and slowly increase settings, don't max it immediately.
 
Zwhaler said:
Gaming on Intel integrated graphics? If you are not serious at all about gaming and only want the game to run decent on lowest settings then this computer is for you. Again, if you are not a gamer but want your computer to be able to play games at the bare minimum then it will be perfectly okay.
Click to expand...

So if you can't run a game on the highest settings your not a gamer?

You have won the idiot post of the week :rolleyes:
 
MVRL said:
is a bad idea.

(finished the sentence for you XD)


- Macs aren't built for gaming
- Integrated GFX chips suck
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Like I said, World of Warcraft on a netbook.

I don't have first hand experience of playing games on a 13" MBP, which is why I am asking. But are you honestly telling me that with the significantly better CPU, later generation integrated GPU and the option of bootcamp, it is not even possible to find an older game or two that will keep a person amused between more serious tasks? Really?
 
szolr said:
Not at all. I remember when I asked this sort of question. Fortunately for you I can provide a first class answer now I've experienced it first hand.

I love Civ 5. It runs brilliantly on here. No problems at all. :D And I wouldn't put too much faith in their supported video cards-I got the game to run fine on my 2009 iMac with Nvidia 9400 graphics.

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The Core 2 Duo processor is a decided step down from the Sandy bridge processors around now. But on the other hand the Nvidia 320M graphics card was pretty awesome against the HD Graphics 3000. Mind you I've got 384 MB Vram. Now that's better than the Nvidia graphics of old. :)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I know that the sandy CPU's are better than mine :) What I wanted to say is that the MBP is not worst than mine MB so if I can handle a game decently then a MBP will run the same game decently, if not better :)
 
I have the 2011 MBP 13" and it has run my games perfectly. COD4, Civ5, Borderlands, Bioshock have all been run natively in OSX with no hiccups.
 
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