Is a macbook pro appropriate for gaming?

[putrinaila]

Rather than having a ps3, i'd rather just play games on my laptop, im hoping to get a new laptop in the new year, i had my eye on a macbook pro, but im not sure if it is suitable for playing a variety of games, im sure theres not a lot of titles available for mac, or even if a macbook pro is all that capable of gaming? and maybe a mac is just an over hyped, over priced piece of crap, and i should just get a new PC, if so, which laptop should i get? for the most part i will be using my laptop for internet, watching movies, and gaming.

 

[Quu]

No it's not.

The 15" is the only one that can be purchased with a dedicated GPU and it has the 750m one of the lowest end GPU's you can get. Iris Pro while a very good integrated graphics chip is woefully out of its depth when it comes to gaming.

Not to mention as soon as you start up a game the laptops sound like there about to take off as the fans ramp up to full speed to handle the load.

If you just want it for the occasional game now and then it'll get by. It can physically play games. But it won't be a great experience and laptops even half the cost of the 15" with 750m come with much better graphics cards and cooling designed specifically for a hot GPU.

I'd advise you to check out the Asus GX500 (coming out soon) or the Razer Blade. Both thin and light notebooks with high DPI displays similar to the Retina MacBook Pro that deliver great gaming experiences.

 

[TechGod]

Mac's certainly aren't over priced pieces of crap, and it depends on what games you want to play. Team fortress 2, DOTA 2, Minecraft run very nicely here on my 13" late 2013 rMBP.

 

[yjchua95]

Rather than having a ps3, i'd rather just play games on my laptop, im hoping to get a new laptop in the new year, i had my eye on a macbook pro, but im not sure if it is suitable for playing a variety of games, im sure theres not a lot of titles available for mac, or even if a macbook pro is all that capable of gaming? and maybe a mac is just an over hyped, over priced piece of crap, and i should just get a new PC, if so, which laptop should i get? for the most part i will be using my laptop for internet, watching movies, and gaming. Image

My 750M 15" rMBP can play BF4, 1680x1050. 16xAF, FXAA, mix of high and ultra settings, and get 47-50 fps on average, with the lowest being 35 fps and easily shooting past 60 fps in quite a number of situations.

 

[GoldfishRT]

It's certainly not good price-performance but a MacBook Pro can make a good gaming notebook. You have to get the one with the dedicated GPU though. Despite what many will tell you, the 750m is very capable and will play all modern games just fine.

If you want similar build quality to a MacBook but want more gaming power, I recommend the Razer Blade. It's the only thing that comes close in form factor and build quality. It's also quite expensive, but, offers far more gaming power than a MBP.

If build doesn't mean as much to you as performance, the Y5XX series is probably your best bet for a good compromise between performance and build quality for the money. They run about $800 last I checked.

 

[leman]

Please do not feed the flame thread. As the matter of fact, this should be locked.

 

[maflynn]

Rather than having a ps3, i'd rather just play games on my laptop, im hoping to get a new laptop in the new year, i had my eye on a macbook pro,

I'd say gaming on the rMBP is probably not its main strength. Can you do it, sure. Are there better options for a more pleasing user experience and game performance yes.

 

[Intelligent]

So many Apple haters in this thread. The Macbook Pro can do gaming great, if you buy it for using as a normal computer then gaming is a side thing. But if you are rich you could buy it for just gaming, because according to me (angry fanboys incoming) windows sucks. It sucks so hard, i have tried it a few times at my friends house and every 5 minute i asked: How do i do this on Windows? And my friends response was: What?!? You can do that on OS X?

 

[maflynn]

So many Apple haters in this thread. The Macbook Pro can do gaming great,

I don't know about doing gaming great. True they can play games, but I've always had better performance and better user experience in windows then OS X.

Just my $.02

 

[Intelligent]

I don't know about doing gaming great. True they can play games, but I've always had better performance and better user experience in windows then OS X.

Just my $.02

This is a legitimate question, I'm not trying to be rude. How come if you think that windows has better performance AND better user experience, then whats the point of using OS X at all? (for you) Or are you just talking about the games?

 

[Merode]

This is a legitimate question, I'm not trying to be rude. How come if you think that windows has better performance AND better user experience, then whats the point of using OS X at all? (for you) Or are you just talking about the games?

OS X is better at pretty much everything in my opinion. The only exception is playing games but it's rather the weakness of computers (GPUs) rather than OS.

And it comes from Apple fanboy. I'm just not fanatic.

 

[MartinAppleGuy]

My 750M 15" rMBP can play BF4, 1680x1050. 16xAF, FXAA, mix of high and ultra settings, and get 47-50 fps on average, with the lowest being 35 fps and easily shooting past 60 fps in quite a number of situations.

I second the 750m, runs games great for me at 1080p o my iMac.

----------

This is a legitimate question, I'm not trying to be rude. How come if you think that windows has better performance AND better user experience, then whats the point of using OS X at all? (for you) Or are you just talking about the games?

Games do appear to run better with their Windows counterparts unless the devs spend a lot of time with the OS X version. X-Plane appears to run a lot better on OS X over Windows, and a few App Store games run better than their Windows counterparts. Can a Mac game: yes. Can it game in OS X: yes. Can in game in Windows: Yes.

I once considered getting Windows 8 for my iMac for games, but decided not to just because I couldn't be bothered with it. OS X has enough games for me.


PS - Isn't Steam OS an option? It's free and would have almost every game.

----------

OS X is better at pretty much everything in my opinion. The only exception is playing games but it's rather the weakness of computers (GPUs) rather than OS.

And it comes from Apple fanboy. I'm just not fanatic.

It is to do with the OS when it comes to games though. When I was comparing X-Plane 10 performance with the same game settings, a Hackintosh with an i7 and the GTX 670 got 10-15fps lower than my 750m in my iMac. In Windows, it would be the other way around. I'm guessing this is because of Apple writing the drivers for the 750m...

When it comes to other games though, the Windows counter parts can run better due to Direct-X over OpenGL on the OS X side. This is the problem, devs can't justify spending lots of time optimising for OpenGL. Some do, but not all so that is why there can be a slight increase i performance on Windows over OS X.

 

[maflynn]

This is a legitimate question, I'm not trying to be rude. How come if you think that windows has better performance AND better user experience, then whats the point of using OS X at all? (for you) Or are you just talking about the games?

Better user experience in gaming. Sorry I was not as precise as I should have been

 

[MartinAppleGuy]

Better user experience in gaming. Sorry I was not as precise as I should have been

This is a legitimate question, I'm not trying to be rude. How come if you think that windows has better performance AND better user experience, then whats the point of using OS X at all? (for you) Or are you just talking about the games?

For example, you can get Nvidia Experience on Windows but not on OS X. OS X is still good for gaming (a lot better what what it was), but if you are a full on gamer, you will most likely bootcamp into Windows.

 

[leman]

This is a legitimate question, I'm not trying to be rude. How come if you think that windows has better performance AND better user experience, then whats the point of using OS X at all? (for you) Or are you just talking about the games?

Obviously it is only about playing games. The drivers in OS X suck in comparison to Windows and very little games actually take advantage of what OS X can do. But its obvious that OP only cares about gaming performance, so he should get a gaming laptop. I mean, it's kind of obvious, get a tool which best suits the job.

On a different note, the OP's attitude towards Apple computers is very obvious, as is his intent when opening this thread. It is also very obvious that he although I am fairly belongs to that weird group of kids that measure the merit of a computer by its gaming ability. So why do you even bother discussing stuff here?