Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
MacBook Air 13" (Late 2010) - Gaming Benchmark Thread!
- Thread starter colinthejanitor
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
* "NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory"3
3. "Memory available to Mac OS X may vary depending on graphics needs. Minimum graphics memory usage is 256MB."
here
Please add:
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Thank you
It ran fine on my 11" on high settings, native res (w/o shaders, AA and vsync)
Has anyone been able to compare the differences in gaming performance between the new 11" and 13"?
13" should be faster because of the faster CPU, but then it also has to render in a higher resolution so I don't know how much that would stress the GPU.
13" should be faster because of the faster CPU, but then it also has to render in a higher resolution so I don't know how much that would stress the GPU.
I am happy to report that my base 13" late 2010 is running WoW beautifully considering its specs. I can run around Dalaran at 30fps and had no trouble on our H LK last night and the rest of ICC earlier this week. It seems to run just as smoothly as my 15" i7 w 512MB GT330M. I am quite impressed to be raiding smoothly on such a beautiful machine and only weighing in at 3 lbs. IMO that Alien M11X is hideous. 
FTW
FTWYou can search in google, type performance fix for fallout new vegas first one should be a link that takes you to a site called falloutnexus. From there you can download it and it will tell you where to install it. It fixes stuttering issues.
I am happy to report that my base 13" late 2010 is running WoW beautifully considering its specs. I can run around Dalaran at 30fps and had no trouble on our H LK last night and the rest of ICC earlier this week. It seems to run just as smoothly as my 15" i7 w 512MB GT330M. I am quite impressed to be raiding smoothly on such a beautiful machine and only weighing in at 3 lbs. IMO that Alien M11X is hideous.
I agree that the Alienware m11x is not as sexy as the MBA but in terms of gaming performance there is no comparison. Of course if you game more than anything you'd pick up the m11x. If you want OS X, something that looks professional, and better screen quality you pick up an air. I am fortunate enough to have the best of both worlds
I don't know if anyone cares but I'll let everyone know anyway. Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl runs pretty well with resolution at native res. Even with the Stalker Complete pack installed that enhances the effects in the game as well as graphics in general. I get a solid 50FPS indoors and it dips down to 30FPS outside but it's very playable.
That question has been asked in this thread a few times already.
Unless someone states otherwise, I'd assume all these tests are being run in native Windows under Bootcamp. With very few exceptions, you simply can't game reliably under VMware/Parallels and the OSX native versions all seem to suffer from hiccups or stuttering during play.
For example, playing Left4Dead2 and Day of Defeat:Source on Steam:
Under OSX, both games suffer from stutter. DOD:S only stutters during kill scenes...which is irritating as it makes you "feel" like if you had full control at that moment you may have been able to avoid being killed. In reality, you were already dead and the stutter was due to the sudden shift in focus for the screen redraw (game zooms in and freeze-frames your killer for you). L4D2 stutters anytime there's a bunch happening onscreen.
Under Win7 on Bootcamp, both games play without these stutters.
Those are the only games I have for both Mac and Windows (via Steam) so can't give other comparisons.
But if you see it in this thread and its not stated otherwise, I'd just assume the guy is playing it in Bootcamp.
I haven't tried Day of Defeat Source yet but I've been playing Left 4 Dead 1 & 2 and I am not experiencing any issue with it. I'm running it at native resolution with all settings on medium-high with no AA and it runs great. Oh and this is in OS X not in Windows.
Interesting.
What level of difficulty are you choosing during play?
I haven't checked the AA settings. I just took whatever setting the game 'suggested' and left them at that.
How about playing for 1 to 2 hour intervals? (not too lengthy I suppose?
) Does the MBA 13" get very hot? Does the fan get annoyingly loud?
Last edited:
I am happy to report that my base 13" late 2010 is running WoW beautifully considering its specs. I can run around Dalaran at 30fps and had no trouble on our H LK last night and the rest of ICC earlier this week. It seems to run just as smoothly as my 15" i7 w 512MB GT330M. I am quite impressed to be raiding smoothly on such a beautiful machine and only weighing in at 3 lbs. IMO that Alien M11X is hideous.
Were you playing WoW in bootcamp or native?
How about playing for 1 to 2 hour intervals? (not too lengthy I suppose?
Does the MBA 13" get very hot? Does the fan get annoyingly loud?
It would depend on how intensive the game is. Source games won't be too much of an issue, but newer games may be.
I play on expert and haven't noticed any lag what so ever. Longest I've played so far is about 1 hour and it was fine the whole way thorough.
How about playing for 1 to 2 hour intervals? (not too lengthy I suppose?
Does the MBA 13" get very hot? Does the fan get annoyingly loud?
It does get a tad hot on the bottom while playing games in OS X. After playing Left 4 Dead for an hour the bottom of was warm but not a burn to the touch kinda warm. The fan during the game was a bit noticeable, spinning at about 6500RPM. Not any better in Windows 7 either, it gets noticeably warmer while playing games. I definatly recommend picking up a cooler. I have a aluminum cooler which disperses the heat more and it has a huge fan right in the middle of it.
I have now also tried mass effect in windows 7 and it runs great. All settings at max at native resolution with no AA. Game looks great and during firefights and cut scenes it runs with no lag at all.
OK, checked AA on both DOD:S and L4D2 under native Steam for OSX. Both were set at 2X AA which was the "recommended" setting automatically determined by the game.
After turning this to "none" for AA the game runs a LOT smoother. No hiccups or stuttering.
I had no idea this was such a horsepower sink. Thanks for the tips!
After turning this to "none" for AA the game runs a LOT smoother. No hiccups or stuttering.
I had no idea this was such a horsepower sink. Thanks for the tips!
Yeah having AA on can really make or break playability, as well as texture settings. I always like to have a higher resolution to play on than AA but that is just my preference
Call of Duty Black Ops - 13 inch, 2gb of ram 2010 model.
Thought some of you might like to know how this little beast runs the latest game...
I'm running 1280x720, everything turned off or down as low as possible.
AA is set at 2x (because the difference in FPS is very minimal)
I average 36 fps while playing, it goes as high as 44 and as low as 27 (only when things get REAL busy).
With AA OFF I average around 37-39, rarely goes below, sometimes goes as high as 47.
Turning most anything else on makes it worse.
So bottom line? The game runs fine, looks alright, plays well, has good enough FPS.
If you're a hard core gamer... you'll be dissapointed (I don't play as much as I'd prefer but even I would enjoy 60fps), but if you play casually, it's more than fine.
It stays above 30fps at 1280x720 with 2xAA. That's pretty cool
I'm running Windows 7, 32bit, in bootcamp. (Obviously)
Thought some of you might like to know how this little beast runs the latest game...
I'm running 1280x720, everything turned off or down as low as possible.
AA is set at 2x (because the difference in FPS is very minimal)
I average 36 fps while playing, it goes as high as 44 and as low as 27 (only when things get REAL busy).
With AA OFF I average around 37-39, rarely goes below, sometimes goes as high as 47.
Turning most anything else on makes it worse.
So bottom line? The game runs fine, looks alright, plays well, has good enough FPS.
If you're a hard core gamer... you'll be dissapointed (I don't play as much as I'd prefer but even I would enjoy 60fps), but if you play casually, it's more than fine.
It stays above 30fps at 1280x720 with 2xAA. That's pretty cool
I'm running Windows 7, 32bit, in bootcamp. (Obviously)
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)
Great! Thank you for a legitimate breakdown of performance. Glad to see this can handle brand new games ok.
mistafreeze said:Call of Duty Black Ops - 13 inch, 2gb of ram 2010 model.
Thought some of you might like to know how this little beast runs the latest game...
I'm running 1280x720, everything turned off or down as low as possible.
AA is set at 2x (because the difference in FPS is very minimal)
I average 36 fps while playing, it goes as high as 44 and as low as 27 (only when things get REAL busy).
With AA OFF I average around 37-39, rarely goes below, sometimes goes as high as 47.
Turning most anything else on makes it worse.
So bottom line? The game runs fine, looks alright, plays well, has good enough FPS.
If you're a hard core gamer... you'll be dissapointed (I don't play as much as I'd prefer but even I would enjoy 60fps), but if you play casually, it's more than fine.
It stays above 30fps at 1280x720 with 2xAA. That's pretty cool
I'm running Windows 7, 32bit, in bootcamp. (Obviously)
Great! Thank you for a legitimate breakdown of performance. Glad to see this can handle brand new games ok.
Thanks for the Black Ops test, sounds promising...
Could someone please test Mafia 2 Demo ? (just download the demo over Steam on Windows) and run the benchmark tool or test it ?
There's nothing to pay, it will take you just a few minutes and will actually tell a lot to us, you know Black Ops is not that demanding game, its basically like MW, MW2 but Mafia 2 has a minimum GPU requirements cards like 8600 GT.
I just tested Mafia 2 Demo on my notebook with ATI HD 3650 (roughly the same power as the 320m GPU in the MBA ) and got just about 18-21 FPS on native resolution everything low.
It would be interesting to see if DDR3 Ram and SSD would make any difference. (That notebook of mine has 4GB DDR2 Ram, 2Ghz C2D, HDD)
Thanks to everybody who join this test.
Could someone please test Mafia 2 Demo ? (just download the demo over Steam on Windows) and run the benchmark tool or test it ?
There's nothing to pay, it will take you just a few minutes and will actually tell a lot to us, you know Black Ops is not that demanding game, its basically like MW, MW2 but Mafia 2 has a minimum GPU requirements cards like 8600 GT.
I just tested Mafia 2 Demo on my notebook with ATI HD 3650 (roughly the same power as the 320m GPU in the MBA ) and got just about 18-21 FPS on native resolution everything low.
It would be interesting to see if DDR3 Ram and SSD would make any difference. (That notebook of mine has 4GB DDR2 Ram, 2Ghz C2D, HDD)
Thanks to everybody who join this test.
It's interesting to see these kind of game benchmark results from something not as thick as a pancake. Though I hardly use WoW as much of a benchmark anymore. Ever since the Macbooks started using graphics cards like the 9400M, Wow has hardly ever been a factor for performance. It has fairly mild demands. On the other hand, I've seen coverage of a stock 13" MBA late 2010 model, run Starcraft 2 OSX on all medium settings, like a champ. A setting, in particular, a late 2009 13" MBP (with 4GB ram) struggles on using the 9400M chip, but with a significantly faster CPU. That newer video card, in the Air, makes the difference.
Of course, for tests that require much more CPU-intensive tasks (like Logic/Garage Band/Photo editing/Final Cut), the performance comparison would reverse. It's interesting to see how the 11" Air can perform some surprisingly decent gaming results (for the spec) yet struggle to do more than the basics in Garageband.
Of course, for tests that require much more CPU-intensive tasks (like Logic/Garage Band/Photo editing/Final Cut), the performance comparison would reverse. It's interesting to see how the 11" Air can perform some surprisingly decent gaming results (for the spec) yet struggle to do more than the basics in Garageband.
ok, i've read through the entire thread and figured i'd add my contribution - i've been busy trying my best to break this thing..
So i'm running an 11" ultimate -
I still have Civilization 3 left to test. .
If requested i could certainly test FPS, fan speed / heat - if requested.
This little machine can do everything!
I'll see if i can get my hands on any other games and post up..
So i'm running an 11" ultimate -
- Call of Duty 4 Modern Warefare - (COD4 is well documented and works just fine using decent settings.)
- Need for Speed Most Wanted - (This game plays just fine under high settings. I've played this game at length for hours at a time without issue)
- Need for Speed Pro Street - (This game plays just fine under medium settings.)
- Command and Conquer 3 - (This game plays just fine under low settings.)
- Assassins Creed - (This game plays just fine under low settings. I've had limited time with this game..)
- Sims 3 - (This game plays just fine under low settings. Played for hours)
- Starcraft 2 - (This game plays just fine under low settings. I've had limited time with this game..)
I still have Civilization 3 left to test. .
If requested i could certainly test FPS, fan speed / heat - if requested.
This little machine can do everything!
I'll see if i can get my hands on any other games and post up..