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HL2 on 13" MBP i5 rocks!!!

P

prism

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Dec 6, 2006
1,091
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I just sold my 2010 15" i5 for a very good price and bought the 2011 13" i5.
I dont do much gaming but always went for a laptop with a good GPU so I was a bit hesitant with the HD 3000 after reading some of the posts on this forum.
Well, I for one am a very happy camper. I fired up Half Life 2 and was very impressed with the native resolution results! I realize this is an old game and I realize that its not a fair comparison with my 2010 15" which had a HR screen but boy I wasnt expecting it to be this good!!!
Anyways, FWIW, I just wanted to share my personal experience on this ongoing debate.
 
Are you running in osx or windows? And do you have an average framerate you could share? Thanks!
 
ddehr026 said:
Are you running in osx or windows? And do you have an average framerate you could share? Thanks!
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Actually running on OSX, havent had time to bootcamp windows and also I was curious after reading the anand review. I guess I am in the 40-50fps range.
 
ddehr026 said:
Cool. What do you have the gfx settings at?
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Dont remember, would have to check again, but it was running native and the detail seems very sharp. The odd thing is that it really felt more fluid than the 2010 15" i5 I had previously which I find rather astonishing.
 
ddehr026 said:
Maybe because it was running at 1280*800...Shouldn't take as much power?
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Thats probably the case, the screen rez plays a significant role but the key here is playing in native rez and it just works great on this puppy.
 
prism said:
I just sold my 2010 15" i5 for a very good price and bought the 2011 13" i5.
I dont do much gaming but always went for a laptop with a good GPU so I was a bit hesitant with the HD 3000 after reading some of the posts on this forum.
Well, I for one am a very happy camper. I fired up Half Life 2 and was very impressed with the native resolution results! I realize this is an old game and I realize that its not a fair comparison with my 2010 15" which had a HR screen but boy I wasnt expecting it to be this good!!!
Anyways, FWIW, I just wanted to share my personal experience on this ongoing debate.
Click to expand...

Half life 2 runs even maxed out on an ancient computer with a pentium 4. :p
 
mark28 said:
Half life 2 runs even maxed out on an ancient computer with a pentium 4. :p
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Not sure about that, for example, on my 2010 15" equipped with a way more powerful 330m, it didnt run as well!
 
ddehr026 said:
Definitely not true.
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Yes it does. :rolleyes:

In my garage I still have an old PC from 2001 or something, it maxed out games like HL2 without a problem with the ATI 2600. ( it originally had an ATI 9800 pro but I had to replace it cause it broke )

You think nobody could run HL2 back in the old days? It ran even fine with the ATI 9800 pro.

I would hardly describe maxing out HL2 as an accompllishment :p
 
I remember playing HL2 on a Nvidia 7600gt :) Given that HD3000 should be around performance levels of a 8600gt, its not surprising it can play HL2.
 
mark28 said:
Yes it does. :rolleyes:

In my garage I still have an old PC from 2001 or something, it maxed out games like HL2 without a problem with the ATI 2600. ( it originally had an ATI 9800 pro but I had to replace it cause it broke )

You think nobody could run HL2 back in the old days? It ran even fine with the ATI 9800 pro.

I would hardly describe maxing out HL2 as an accompllishment :p
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I highly doubt this, maybe it ran well in 1024x768 or some other lowish res, but I doubt it could max it out with full AA/Anistropic filtering/HDR/etc
 
leman said:
I remember playing HL2 on a Nvidia 7600gt :) Given that HD3000 should be around performance levels of a 8600gt, its not surprising it can play HL2.
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the 7600gt is a far cry from that other guy that says he could run it on a ati 9800 from 01.

I would believe it ran well enough on a 7600gt :)


I think a 9800 would give you 30-40 on low at a low res, though, possibly.
 
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Nathe said:
I highly doubt this, maybe it ran well in 1024x768 or some other lowish res, but I doubt it could max it out with full AA/Anistropic filtering/HDR/etc
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A 17" LCD back in the old days had 1024 x 768. It was good specs back then. The 17" LCD's were pretty much the standard.

AA was definetly on. I don't believe HDR was implemented back then, I believe it's something new.

So I don't really see maxing out HL2 as a real accomplishment, which very old PC's can even do.

So you think everybody was playing HL2 and Counterstrike Source on low details with shockingly low frame rates? :p

( counterstrike source was a bit more resource hungry I remember. I had to run it at medium for some reason )
 
mark28 said:
A 17" LCD back in the old days had 1024 x 768. It was good specs back then. The 17" LCD's were pretty much the standard.

AA was definetly on. I don't believe HDR was implemented back then, I believe it's something new.

So I don't really see maxing out HL2 as a real accomplishment, which very old PC's can even do.

So you think everybody was playing HL2 and Counterstrike Source on low details with shockingly low frame rates? :p

( counterstrike source was a bit more resource hungry I remember. I had to run it at medium for some reason )
Click to expand...

Whatever,
the fact that an IGP today is equivalent to a 8600gt of 2007 is pretty impressive in my books! I know that the GPU in the high end 2011 15" will blow the HD 3000 out of the water but that laptop is significantly bulkier and way more expensive which makes it a dealbreaker for me.
 
From the Anandtech Review
 

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The HL2 engine now is significantly different now (called OB or 2007) compared to the one people (myself included) played on their 64mb AGP Radeon 8500 beasts back in the day, which is why it has higher system requirements.

If you want to run with EVERYTHING (including AA) on full, you are going to need a 1gb graphics card if you want 60FPS ;-)

I wasn't really impressed with the performance of the HD3000 but then again I play with vsync on because tearing annoys the f### out of me.
 
I was playing HL2 on a laptop I bought from aldi with the 6600gt full whack. That was 5 years ago.

HL2 was released in 2004, so welcome to 7 years ago. It is amazing for.... wait for it... a mac. :p
 
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