I am going to buy a new mac, some suggestions please!!

[slientkiller]

A friend of mine and I are going to buy new macs.
We know that the leopard will be released any moments next year, so we will wait for the new OS.
But we concerned two things.
First, the price is considerably different between a macbook and and a macbookpro, and their differences are only the video cards and CPU processor. We are college students, so we dont know which one are we going to buy.
Second, if we bought macbook, there are still some games we would like to play, like warcraft III, the frozen throne and Starcraft. And i need some info that how does warcraft III perform on current macbook. I mean if you let the graphics, sounds, videos be the maximum, will the game become slower? That is our primary concern.

I know if we buy a macbook we are not going to play high performance FPS games, and we accept this truth. And the only two games I played is Starcraft and Warcraft. Starcraft will be no problems, my concern is Warcraft III.
Thanks your tip, and we are expecting the leopard!!

 

[mgargan1]

you also get a bigger screen.

I don't know what WC3 will run like on the intel graphics, but i used to play that on my old titanium 1GHz powerbook and it was fine. It had an ATI 9000 graphics... which is pretty old...

 

[lmalave]

First, the price is considerably different between a macbook and and a macbookpro, and their differences are only the video cards and CPU processor.

I know if we buy a macbook we are not going to play high performance FPS games, and we accept this truth. And the only two games I played is Starcraft and Warcraft. Starcraft will be no problems, my concern is Warcraft III.

Hi there! I think the main difference between the MB and MBP are actually: video cards and screen size. The MacBook and MacBook Pro actually both have the Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, so that is not a major differentiator.

That being said, I can play World of Warcraft and Civilization IV smoothly on my MacBook, so Warcraft III and Starcraft shouldn't be an issue. I don't play them though, so I can't say. I guess the only issue would be if those games haven't been ported to OS X for Intel, then they would run on Power PC emulation mode, which might make them slower. But still, the Core 2 Duo CPUs are so much faster than the PPC chips, that I'll bet even in emulation mode Warcraft III runs just fine. Or are you playing Warcraft III in Windows XP anyway? If so, then Warcraft III will definitely not have a problem.

 

[Nym]

Are you gonna use it for gaming more than work? If so I would recommend the Macbook Pro, I know it's expensive but the MacBook is not made for gaming IMO. And altough you can run some games in it, I'm not sure you'll have a much enjoyable experience If you've got the cash, go for the Pro

 

[CrackedButter]

Save yourself some cash and get an iMac. They are cheaper, come with bigger screens, more powerful and even the best 17 inch iMac is only 2 kilos heavier than the 17 inch MBP.

 

[Nym]

Save yourself some cash and get an iMac. They are cheaper, come with bigger screens, more powerful and even the best 17 inch iMac is only 2 kilos heavier than the 17 inch MBP.

Nice option too But as students he'll probably want a laptop to go.

 

[CrackedButter]

Nice option too But as students he'll probably want a laptop to go.

He hasn't mentioned portability though. In any case, it isn't hard to lug an iMac in its box to a friends house for some gaming.

 

[Nym]

Yep, that's probably doable with the 17" one, I thought I would do that with my 24 Incher too but when I got it out of the box I thought "this is never getting out of my desk again", eheh.

 

[slientkiller]

Yeah, thanx guyz.
We just discussed about what shall we buy though.
I think we'd better go for MBs. MBPs is professional but they are not suitable for us~.
We seek for portability, and flexibility.

​

 

[FFTT]

If you are serious about gaming performance, then a refurbished 2.0 MBP
with 2 GB RAM is probably your best choice.

If that's too much for your budget, then you must configure any MacBook with
2 GB RAM since the VRAM is shared memory.

 

[lmalave]

Yeah, thanx guyz.
We just discussed about what shall we buy though.
I think we'd better go for MBs. MBPs is professional but they are not suitable for us~.
We seek for portability, and flexibility.

​

Good choice

I would actually get the 2.0 GHz white MacBook - it's the best deal right now IMO, since you get 1 GB of memory so you don't need to buy a separate upgrade, a bigger hard drive(80 GB vs. 60 GB), and a superdrive. Well worth it, IMO. You can go to MacMall.com and get it for $1200 after rebate, with free shipping and no sales tax (unless you're in California).

For example, when I got my MacBook the 1.83 GHz model and the 2.0 GHz model both had a base of 512 MB memory. So i ended up buying the 1.83 GHz one and spending something like $90 for a 1GB upgrade. So if I were to buy today, I would definitely go for the middle MacBook, since after you consider the cost of additional RAM (512 MB is not enough IMO, so you would need to buy a 1 GB chip anyway), youre basically getting the upgrade to Dual-layer DVD burner and 20 GB larger hard drive for just $100 or so.

 

[cwong5]

I've been running my MB- Black since launch. I highly recommend the white model. (Black is just a matter of color preference for me, not really worth the money). One word of advice, max out your ram. It will speed things along.
MBP actually have a better video card than the onbard Intel graphic card. Mind you though, it's enough for most of my daily applications. (Even my photoshop didn't whine too much)