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Kind of. The fan disperses heat to help keep it cool. The real damage protector is the fact the haswell chip will clock down or shut off when it hits 100 Celsius (212 fahrenheit). That's insanely hot.

I'm curious. Where do you read that? It is perfectly normal that the cpu gets about 90°C warm when under full load. They are designed for that. I had my Core 2 Duo constantly under those temperatures. I didn't experienced any problems.
 
I'm playing Eve Online with Performance preset and some effects active in 1280x800 windowed mode.

it's awesome :) and very useful with osx for switching in apps

fluid, perfectly silent (no fans active)

mba 13", i7, 8go, 256go
 
I'm curious. Where do you read that? It is perfectly normal that the cpu gets about 90°C warm when under full load. They are designed for that. I had my Core 2 Duo constantly under those temperatures. I didn't experienced any problems.

I almost **** myself when I saw your comment. Constantly at 90 degrees *Celsius*?!?!! That can't be good for your computer.
 
I almost **** myself when I saw your comment. Constantly at 90 degrees *Celsius*?!?!! That can't be good for your computer.

If 90°C while idle, yes - that's bad. But 90°C at full load? That's quite normal. These chips are designed to reach 100°C before shutting down to cause any issues.

This is a very relative example, so no quoting me with one-offs - but --
Think of it like running a car - driving your normal, modern sedan down the road at a steady 70mph, you would never want to see the RPM sit at 6000+, as that means something is amiss. But! The engine is designed to reach 9000+ RPM before fuel-cut off comes about. And if you've ever put your foot down, you'll see that RPM gauge climb. It doesn't hurt anything...the cpu/engine is designed to take that stress; it's ok. You just wouldn't want it to perform that way 24/7.

The CPU temps are ok and within range of running a very strenuous task of a game, or video encoding - especially on a mobile platform. Now, if you all you're doing is looking at Facebook and your temps are around 90°C, then you need to check something...
 
I almost **** myself when I saw your comment. Constantly at 90 degrees *Celsius*?!?!! That can't be good for your computer.

...constantly while under load / while playing, of course. idle temperatures were between 50 and 60°C if I remember correctly. I often encoded dvds over night. That process often took longer than 10 hours. No problems. I sold my Macbook about a year ago.
 
Can anyone recommend any games with built-in benchmarks to try under OSX? I'll be installing the latest 10.8.5 beta tonight, which includes new graphics drivers. I'd like to do a before and after.
 
How do

Left 4 Dead 2 and League of Legends run on the 2013 MBA?

I cant find the specs needed for LoL but for L4D2 it says I need a Dual-core Intel processor with 2GHz or better.

Hopefully my new 1.3GHz MBA can run it?
 
How do

Left 4 Dead 2 and League of Legends run on the 2013 MBA?

I cant find the specs needed for LoL but for L4D2 it says I need a Dual-core Intel processor with 2GHz or better.

Hopefully my new 1.3GHz MBA can run it?
Don't worry. It will run circles around it.
 
XCOM & fans

XCOM Enemy Unknown plays very well in OSX. Not sure on FPS really, but with most setting high on native resolution it's smooth... So I'm guessing it's 20-30 at a minimum.

Glad to read your comment. I'm interested in this game. I'd like to know how the fans behave when you're playing XCOM.
I have the new MBA (Haswell) 13" i7/8gb/256gb. I have been playing Civ 5 for the past few weeks. It plays really well on default settings (medium to high), the fans kick in every 5-10 minutes for about 5-10 minutes. I didn't realize how quite the fans are while playing Civ 5, until I downloaded the free NCR Racing game from the App store. This game really gets the fans going. I uninstalled it as I didn't love it and I don't like to strain the machine too much.
I wonder if XCOM plays like Civ 5?
Thanks very much.
 
Skyrim is a good test to the new Intel 5000, and also to the CPU, as it will be most likely CPU, limited.

Its good to hear that CIV5 plays well.
I just bought mine yesterday. Still waiting for Apple to ship it to me. Bought an i5. I wasnt very sure if I should go for am i7, but the afraid for high temperatures and lower batterry life made my choice a little bit easier.

I'd like to see, besides skyrim in bootcamp mode, the comparisons of Diablo III, starcraft II and league of legends performance under this new version of OSX.
It shall have a nice boost to the performance of these games.

----------

I'm so frustrated that no reviewer such as ANANDTECH, TECHRADAR, or any other has revealed some comparison about performance of the core i5 version vs the coe i7, running games in bootcamp!

Improving graphics performance is the main reason the Intel 5000 was conceived in the first place. Why not compare these versions?
 
Glad to read your comment. I'm interested in this game. I'd like to know how the fans behave when you're playing XCOM.
I have the new MBA (Haswell) 13" i7/8gb/256gb.
My 13" i7/8gb/256gb is set to arrive on Monday and XCOM is the very first game on my list to try out. Although I think somebody already tested it earlier in this thread.
 
Glad to read your comment. I'm interested in this game. I'd like to know how the fans behave when you're playing XCOM.
I have the new MBA (Haswell) 13" i7/8gb/256gb. I have been playing Civ 5 for the past few weeks. It plays really well on default settings (medium to high), the fans kick in every 5-10 minutes for about 5-10 minutes. I didn't realize how quite the fans are while playing Civ 5, until I downloaded the free NCR Racing game from the App store. This game really gets the fans going. I uninstalled it as I didn't love it and I don't like to strain the machine too much.
I wonder if XCOM plays like Civ 5?
Thanks very much.

There are definitely fans. As I'm playing with background noise and the volume up I'm not bothered at all by them and would have to listen to perceive them but YMMV. Anyone know how i can find out my fps?

Edit: Ok after one and a half hours of playing... Fans did get up to 6500RPM, heat wasn't bad at all with 65C the maximum at Mem Bank A.
 
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Rome Total War on native resolution and high detail runs perfectly. No fans and barely gets warm after extended periods. Installed SC2 awhile ago but haven't gotten around to playing. Will report back on that soon.
 
I'm curious. Where do you read that? It is perfectly normal that the cpu gets about 90°C warm when under full load. They are designed for that. I had my Core 2 Duo constantly under those temperatures. I didn't experienced any problems.

It's on the intel site for this haswell chip. The Tjunction is 100c... not mention of the tjuction max (where it will possibly shutdown). http://ark.intel.com/products/75114/

It's highly unlikely this computer in stock (no overclock) will ever shutdown.

My test show an idle temp of around 60-65c. When browsing / music, I can hit 85-90.

Skyrim, games, etc - it hits 100c instantly and stays there the entire time I'm playing.

It's not that having it hit 100c is bad, it's designed for that to be the tjunction. Many chips in many computers run at this point constantly.

There is way too much temp info out there, and I'm not confident I have any idea what I'm talking about. So, yeah.

i7/256/8gb
 
**For Skyrim tests, I let the laptop heat up fully for 20 minutes before benchmarking, as it seems to have thermal throttling. Game plays much smoother during first few minutes of play when laptop is cool

Windows 8 Professional, latest updates, Intel performance setting to max performance, processor minimum speed set to 100%, driver version 9.18.10.3165
13” Macbook Air 2013, 128gb SSD, 1.7ghz i7, 8gb RAM.

Skyrim – Medium / No AA / FXAA enabled, Intro of game during Dragon Chase
(Newest version, no texture packs, max performance settings in win8)
Avg Framerate – 27.6 fps
Min Framerate – 16 fps
Max Framerate – 38 fps
(Not playable, Game goes to 16-20 fps during any graphically intense situation, such as when the dragon breaths fire or particles fly in the air. Laptop gets extremely hot on the top left side. Minor artifacting in shadows only.)

Skyrim – Low / No AA / FXAA disabled, Intro of game during Dragon Chase
(Newest version, no texture packs, max performance settings in win8)
Avg Framerate – 29.8 fps
Min Framerate – 19 fps
Max Framrate – 40 fps
(Playable, only went below 20 fps once, when the dragon broke through the tower wall, Laptop gets extremely hot on the top left side. Shadows look terrible)
 
It's been interesting reading the performance on the MBA (i7/8GB/512GB here), but I found it interesting that people were having issues loading Windows 7 on the machine.

I loaded Win 7 64 bit second go via bootcamp. It took 2 goes, as my old iso that I used with the old MBA would not work, but lucky I had a real DVD version I had not used, so created the ISO and it installed fine. The last MBA booted to windws modt of the itime, but this time I installed Mac versions of CS5, Office etc and am enjoying using them in OSX rather than windows.

The one thing I can say about some of the games here (Not a serious gamer at all, but son has loaded a couple on there now) is they are FAST on this little beast.
 
Quick question.. Seemed the MBA is great for gaming but all you guys are talking about native Mac gaming right? How well is it on BootCamp? Is the Windows drivers good at all?
 
SoundChaos

Thanks for reporting the testing!
Unfortunately I already ordered a MBA 13" i5 version. I got too afraid of the high temps and lower battery life in the last minute, then I took this decision.
Hope I won't regret this decision... Maybe I'll return it to apple if it doesnt meet my needs. (Gaming included, though I do not expect to run any heavy game on it, besides Skyrim).

Do you think there'll be a huge drop in performance by choosing the core i5? Skyrim is CPU-limited it seems so I don't really know, but hopefully it won't be THAT slower (AnandTech is reporting 20% advantage for core i7 which is a huge gain).

BTW... How can I install win8 using bootcamp? The other windows versions were quite easy as there as a media to install from, but this one is download-only, isn't it?
 
Already did.

I was very disappointed that Anand did not test the Macbook Air performance under Windows 8. We know some games are CPU limited while others are GPU limited. Skyrim in the 2012 MBA was clearly GPU limited, as driving any quality settings up would heavily impact the performance.

This year's model is another story entirely. The new GPU from Intel should give it a boost of about 40% over the last generation. It would be very nice if he did test some games under W8 to see what kind of improvements we're getting.
 
World of Warcraft

Hey guys I recently purchased the Macbook air mid 2013, i7/8GB/512

I've been playing WOW on it for about three days on low-fair graphics the FPS i'm getting is 90-97 no lag and it runs like a beauty, I've played on good as well just for the hell of it and it also runs like a charm.

The fans start kicking in about 10-15min into my game play and the the air gets hot on the upper left side, about an hour into gameplay it gets pretty warm. They keys are fine and the trackpad is fine and the back of the screen is fine.

My question is should I be worried about the fans working hard? also how long can I play WOW?

I ask because this is a $1800 machine and i'm worried about the internals. I mostly use the computer for my studies, but I like to play WOW at the end of the day to take a break from reality.

Thank you.
 
.......

I ask because this is a $1800 machine and i'm worried about the internals. I mostly use the computer for my studies, but I like to play WOW at the end of the day to take a break from reality.

Thank you.

I hope this helps. I gamed (WoW primarily) on my 2012 13in Air for almost a year, before selling it for a new 2013 model. My 2012 machine got hot and loud, but I never had any problems with it. I plan on doing the same with the my new 2013 model.
 
I hope this helps. I gamed (WoW primarily) on my 2012 13in Air for almost a year, before selling it for a new 2013 model. My 2012 machine got hot and loud, but I never had any problems with it. I plan on doing the same with the my new 2013 model.

AHH okay, how long were you playing the game without a break? 2hrs, 3?

When the fan kicks in, it is not an annoying sound, you can barely hear it. I'm just worried about the internals.

thanks for the info.
 
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