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It's all about gaming.

S

Slayergramp

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 17, 2012
23
0
This Christmas, I'll be getting myself a new Macbook Pro, to replace my current mid-2008 Macbook, which I've treated like *******, and I can start to tell it's on it's last breaths.

First of all, don't give me "Don't buy a mac for gaming, herg-da-gerg" I KNOW PCs are better for gaming! I just think OS X is a gajillion times better than windows 7, and I won't be using it just for gaming, it's just a big part.

Now the way I see it, is the regular Macbook Pro 15" will support better graphics with a higher framerate, because it has a lot lower resolution, yet the same graphics card and cpu as the rMBP. Plus, having a CD drive is a pretty big thing to me to.

Right now I have my eyes totally set on the Macbook Pro 15", because looking at the specs, I believe it will have better gaming performance, it has a disc drive, and it's cheaper.
 
You know what I'd do? Skip the rMBP and try to get hold of a refurb 17" MBP classic. Mine eats games, has a better real-estate ratio, and you should save yourself quite a few $$ too.

Take the RAM up to 8GB, Bootcamp if you want, and away you go. It's also a great work tool too. If you want to you can replace the HDD with an SSD or use the optical bay for that purpose.

Tip: The last ones made are going to be sought after one day so look after it.:)
 
Macman45 said:
You know what I'd do? Skip the rMBP and try to get hold of a refurb 17" MBP classic. Mine eats games, has a better real-estate ratio, and you should save yourself quite a few $$ too.

Take the RAM up to 8GB, Bootcamp if you want, and away you go. It's also a great work tool too. If you want to you can replace the HDD with an SSD or use the optical bay for that purpose.

Tip: The last ones made are going to be sought after one day so look after it.:)
Click to expand...

I looked into this, I have a friend with a 17", and another friend with a 15", the 15" feels so perfect to look at the screen, and perfect for portability, but the 17" is hard on my eyes looking around so much.

Also, something someone super awesome could do, is simply play any high graphics game (Crysis 2, Starcraft 2, Battlefield 3...) play on the same resolution, same graphics and compare the framerate...

But how many people have a 15", and a 15" retina...
 
If you're mostly using it for gaming then the RMBP can be a better choice still. As you may know, it has overclocked graphics so it will outperform the CMBP. Also because of the SSD. This asuming you'll not make any upgrades to which ever machine you decide to buy. So the RMBP will outperform vastly the CMBP. Besides cooling is more efficient and better designed.

RAM, as I've read before, will be possible to upgrade thanks to OWC making specific parts for it, but I believe they are not out yet.

Also, if you don't care much about screen resolution then you can play games in 1200p resolution in the Retina and they will still look better than the 1050p resolution on the CMBP, that is if you get the "hi-res" version.

And I will dare to say that given the Retina's default clocks, which is much higher than normal MBP, it will show excelent frame rates with previously mentioned resolutions and at high settings in most games.
 
ivoruest said:
If you're mostly using it for gaming then the RMBP can be a better choice still. As you may know, it has overclocked graphics so it will outperform the CMBP. Also because of the SSD. This asuming you'll not make any upgrades to which ever machine you decide to buy. So the RMBP will outperform vastly the CMBP. Besides cooling is more efficient and better designed.

RAM, as I've read before, will be possible to upgrade thanks to OWC making specific parts for it, but I believe they are not out yet.

Also, if you don't care much about screen resolution then you can play games in 1200p resolution in the Retina and they will still look better than the 1050p resolution on the CMBP, that is if you get the "hi-res" version.

And I will dare to say that given the Retina's default clocks, which is much higher than normal MBP, it will show excelent frame rates with previously mentioned resolutions and at high settings in most games.
Click to expand...

I'm looking into a High end CMBP, with 8gb Ram, and a 750gb hard drive. I would get an SSD, but I download a LOT of ****, and I download tons of movies, videos and pictures, and 500gb is probably the minimum I could go for, and I'm not paying an additional $500 for that.

Also, SSD doesn't contribute whatsoever in gaming. It makes it load levels faster, which isn't a need. It doesn't affect performance.

And I'm afraid of buying the rMBP, because of it's lack of hard drive and additional features. I'm not too sure that all of the positives outweigh the negatives. I couldn't care less about the resolution. I've played with rMBP, and the resolution is great, but I can't stand how tiny everything is on-screen. I have ****** vision, and the tiny words, kill me.
 
I have the retina now, and it eats games like nothing. I have it set to 1920x1200 and I find it perfect, 13" was too small and 17" is too big I wanted the most power I could get out of a 15". The better cooling system, the SSD and the 8gb standard are HUGE pluses. The video card is clocked higher in the rMBp compared to the cMBP and if your game chugs at 2880x1800 you can always bump it down to 1920x1200 and it will still look great! (I run 1920x1200 almost all the time). Also the speakers in this thing are SERIOUSLY overlooked, they've been upgraded compared to the cMBP and they are FANTASTIC!

Also, to jump on what someone said earlier, the RAM is NOT UPGRADEABLE, it's soldered in. Im assuming he meant to say SSD, which is upgradeable but pricey. I went with the 2.6/16/256gb just because it couldn't be upgraded in case I ever need it.

Also, I'd like to know where you found your info about SSD's not affecting gaming performance, while the big factor is that it loads levels faster the drive still needs to feed constant information to the processor and video card to show what's coming on screen. That constant feed is made a lot simpler and quicker with an SSD, also the lack of heat expensed and energy consumes allows for the computer to have a better thermal range and doesn't throttle based on power consumption or heat.
 
Mabyboi said:
I have the retina now, and it eats games like nothing. I have it set to 1920x1200 and I find it perfect, 13" was too small and 17" is too big I wanted the most power I could get out of a 15". The better cooling system, the SSD and the 8gb standard are HUGE pluses. The video card is clocked higher in the rMBp compared to the cMBP and if your game chugs at 2880x1800 you can always bump it down to 1920x1200 and it will still look great! (I run 1920x1200 almost all the time). Also the speakers in this thing are SERIOUSLY overlooked, they've been upgraded compared to the cMBP and they are FANTASTIC!

Also, to jump on what someone said earlier, the RAM is NOT UPGRADEABLE, it's soldered in. Im assuming he meant to say SSD, which is upgradeable but pricey. I went with the 2.6/16/256gb just because it couldn't be upgraded in case I ever need it.

Also, I'd like to know where you found your info about SSD's not affecting gaming performance, while the big factor is that it loads levels faster the drive still needs to feed constant information to the processor and video card to show what's coming on screen. That constant feed is made a lot simpler and quicker with an SSD, also the lack of heat expensed and energy consumes allows for the computer to have a better thermal range and doesn't throttle based on power consumption or heat.
Click to expand...

Hellhammer said:
What does SSD speed up?

While I said the performance difference is enormous, it is still limited to certain tasks. It can’t speed your encoding times because the drive is not the bottleneck, it’s most likely the CPU. In games, it may speed up game loading times but the actual frame rate and graphics will not be improved, again because the drive is not the bottleneck.

SSD will speed up anything that involves reading or writing of the drive. Tasks like that include but are not limited to: booting, launching apps and file transfers. People say that the OS feels more responsive with an SSD, which can be true because your slow HD was the bottleneck before. If your OS is in the SSD, then the swap file will be there too so in case you run out of RAM, the system shouldn’t feel as unresponsive as with an HD because the SSD is so fast.
Click to expand...

That's where I got my info, but what you say does make a lot of sense. I don't think the SSD will benifit it THAT greatly however. I don't mind that it takes 6 seconds longer to open firefox.

The price of that rMBP is killing me though. You guys are making me want it :(
 
Slayergramp said:
I'm looking into a High end CMBP, with 8gb Ram, and a 750gb hard drive. I would get an SSD, but I download a LOT of ****, and I download tons of movies, videos and pictures, and 500gb is probably the minimum I could go for, and I'm not paying an additional $500 for that.

Also, SSD doesn't contribute whatsoever in gaming. It makes it load levels faster, which isn't a need. It doesn't affect performance.

And I'm afraid of buying the rMBP, because of it's lack of hard drive and additional features. I'm not too sure that all of the positives outweigh the negatives. I couldn't care less about the resolution. I've played with rMBP, and the resolution is great, but I can't stand how tiny everything is on-screen. I have ****** vision, and the tiny words, kill me.
Click to expand...

You definitely have a good point and is what I feared you'll be telling me. I'm also a BIG storage type of guy. In this case I would get a USB 3 or a Thunderbolt drive to store all of my stuff which can come very handy.

About the SSD, of course I will not improve gaming, but it will help you in some other stuff like read/write times, loading, booting up, etc.. But as you implied if its not necessary then its not worth it.

For the bigger part. Scaling is actually pretty good in OS X with the Retina. So I recommend you give it a try to both and then pull the trigger.

***Not trying to convince you in any way. Just helping you see all of the points before making a decision and then you may feel a lot better about what you buy! Good luck and happy shopping!!

EDIT: BTW I would buy the CMBP due to upgradeability and ODD. Also because of Ethernet and HDD upgrades... But this is for my personal needs.
 
Gaming ... Oh Yeah!

Yes it is. Recently I've decided to get back into gaming just for fun.

It's the one exception to my predominant preference towards Macs.

I've built several desktop windows machines over the years. Many of them for friends. So I decided to dive in & build a water cooled, full throttle gaming machine. With all the great component choices of late, there's no reason not to use Windows as a gaming platform.
 
Depending on what you are playing, a SSD could actually do more than just improve your loading times. Look at Skyrim for example : Lots of transitions in that game, dialogue, objects, menus and all that other stuff being loaded from the harddrive. I still have the 2011 MBP with the 5.400RPM harddrive and i can tell you that very often it is really annoying having to wait for a few seconds for some dialogue to show up.

I ordered my rMBP 2.6 with a 768GB SSD and i personally cant wait to finally play games the way they are meant to be ;)
 
I have the 2.7ghz rMBP with 16gb of memory and I love gaming on it. I had an old unibody 2008 MBP before i replaced it with this and I had to run Skyrim all on low, and D3 on all low and only 800x600 graphics. It was tough lol. When I got my new rMBP I plugged it into my 27" Thunderbolt display, hooked up one 24" Dell monitor through DVI -> Displayport, and another 24" Dell monitor through DVI -> HDMI. Now I am running Skyrim on all high (not ultra, although I haven't really tested that setting yet(bootcamp)), D3 on all high, Guild Wars 2 (bootcamp) on all high, everything i play is on the highest settings. I now also have two extra monitors for a video maybe, and skype/misc websites on the other while the games are still playing on high :p. (I actually have this setup for programming but it works amazing for gaming too) Needless to say, rMBP is where it's at.
 
I'd say jump for an Rmbp. Mine is great for gaming. I play everything on 1920x1200. With all settings as high as they can go. On mw3 I get 50fps tf2 I get 65 and portal 2 I get 65 fps.
 
I have a base rMBP and much to some peoples annoyance i bought it because i like to game and wanted apple. This fits the bill, even under heavy load its flawless, and the fans do make a noise but nothing like the custom built fancy gaming laptop i replaced. And i have a LG screen which so many folks moan about, I'm a very happy camper!
 
Slayergramp said:
That's where I got my info, but what you say does make a lot of sense. I don't think the SSD will benifit it THAT greatly however. I don't mind that it takes 6 seconds longer to open firefox.

The price of that rMBP is killing me though. You guys are making me want it :(
Click to expand...

It will speed up anything from level loads to cutscenes to QuickTime events to level detail, you'd be surprised how much of a difference It can make. Also I was curious, you said the resolution on the retina makes all the text way too small? I'm assuming your friend had it set to 2880x1800? I have poor eyes as well and I have mine at 1920x1200 and the text is still quite large, ive played with 2560x1600 as well but I just find 1920x1200 to be a lot more comfortable.

The retina is SUPER powerful for games, but grab whatever makes you happy. My personal vote goes to the retina.
 
Base retina here. Playing BF3 Armored Kill at 1600x900 at high settings. 40-50 fps steady.

1600 may not sound like much but running it at that resolution makes things a bit easier to see in game than 2880.
 
I can't say for the performance of the non-retina - but I can play Starcraft II at 2880x1800 resolution, with high settings, and stay within the 40 FPS range.

It's important to remember the GPU in the rMBP is factory over clocked. I do not think that is so in the non-retina version. I may be wrong.
 
wiznet said:
I can't say for the performance of the non-retina - but I can play Starcraft II at 2880x1800 resolution, with high settings, and stay within the 40 FPS range.

It's important to remember the GPU in the rMBP is factory over clocked. I do not think that is so in the non-retina version. I may be wrong.
Click to expand...

I believe this is true. I remember reading something about this when I was deciding what to buy.

rockyroad55 said:
Base retina here. Playing BF3 Armored Kill at 1600x900 at high settings. 40-50 fps steady.

1600 may not sound like much but running it at that resolution makes things a bit easier to see in game than 2880.
Click to expand...

I find I have to res down for most games just for playability. I could play in the retina resolution, but if a game like Guild Wars 2 has a lot of text in it, I need to wear binoculars to see it on 2880.
 
If you want to play games, the retina MBP is a better choice. Better screen + faster GPU. You can play most games at 1920x1200 resolution.
 
Regarding SSDs and games:

In a FPS, I would bet money that the game preloads the entire level and textures required into RAM at the start of the level. This would make an SSD worthless once the level is loaded.

However, in an open world game like WoW, Skyrim or others, the world is loaded as needed and that is where an SSD will improve game performance.
 
I play WoW/D3 on my 2010 MBP in sig no problem at all. I recently popped in a 256gb M4 SSD and it zips along now. Rarely see a beachball unless it's accessing the slave 500gb HDD that now lives in the optibay.
 
I recently (about a week ago) was finally able to take the plunge into a brand new MBP. I was previously using an early 2008 pre-uMBP. However, it had 512 MB dedicated video memory and 4 GB of RAM, it seemed to run Diablo 3 fine at lower frame rates. But, the wife finally decided she wanted to switch to all Mac and was willing to take the 2008 MBP from me since she does not use computers for much more than Word Processing and web. So, then, I was able to upgrade (kinda tight on expenses so I was not expecting the sudden chance).

I was unable to afford the new hottness, so I got a great deal from MicroCenter for a brand new (not refurb) late 2011 MBP 2.5 GHz i7, 1920x1200 anti-glare, 1GB Radeon 6770M version . While it only has 4GB of RAM, I can upgrade that later. I was able to afford to upgrade the HDD to a Momentus XT 750 GB drive for the added boost in HDD speed without the momentus price of an SSD. I, like you, needed large storage capacity of my drive but could not afford the SSD prices, so I went this route.

All those things considered, I spent about $500 to $700 less than a 2012 model non-retina and got a perfectly acceptable gaming machine for my use with D3.

Just an idea. YMMV
 
Slayergramp said:
I looked into this, I have a friend with a 17", and another friend with a 15", the 15" feels so perfect to look at the screen, and perfect for portability, but the 17" is hard on my eyes looking around so much.

Also, something someone super awesome could do, is simply play any high graphics game (Crysis 2, Starcraft 2, Battlefield 3...) play on the same resolution, same graphics and compare the framerate...

But how many people have a 15", and a 15" retina...
Click to expand...

I don't remember the exact framerates that I get on my rMBP with Crysis 2 but it plays great on all extreme settings. I haven't noticed any jerkiness due to low frame rates. It runs buttery smooth. I don't have a 15 in cMBP to compare it to though. It should run great on either though. People have played those games before on cMBPs and it has worked fine.
 
i would get the 15" cMBP also if gaming where part of my usage, the bigger hard drive for your bootcamp partition alone is important, and like you say the graphics card is not working as hard to the lower res(but still great) screen. It cost less if you dont know the SSD and RAM upgrades and has the CD drive which will allow you to install your games easier than having to go out and buy a external CD drive. Its been years since i played PC games but do some still require you to leave the CD in while playing? if so thats another plus.
 
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