this! there's a bunch of benchmarks and reviews out now but not one with 3dmark06 or 3dmark11 scores yet
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 2013 Gaming Performance (Intel HD 5000)
- Thread starter Yixian
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
this! there's a bunch of benchmarks and reviews out now but not one with 3dmark06 or 3dmark11 scores yet
lazer, DOTA 2 should be fine and playable at enjoyable settings, there are some videos of games running in Boot Camp and performing quite well. Benchmarks for native OSX gaming are also good. If you're going to be gaming in Boot Camp, I would suggest opting for the 8gb RAM upgrade.
its also a little bit disappointing that NONE of the major review sites even have a review beyond info that was given on monday
what is going on here
what is going on here
Any particular reason why I should opt for the 8gb?
Enjoyable settings, does that include 1080p? Because my current viao z can only handle 700p in medium settings. That's with the 330m graphics.
And just to be sure, theres no problem with bootcamp and the new air?
Enjoyable settings, does that include 1080p? Because my current viao z can only handle 700p in medium settings. That's with the 330m graphics.
And just to be sure, theres no problem with bootcamp and the new air?
Last edited:
I also plan to hook up through a 1080p display and play with mostly high settings. 8gb will afford your system more resources to drive more intense graphics at that resolution and it's an overall good idea to have more memory for more demanding gaming, especially when you have no dedicated/discrete GPU.
There are videos on YouTube of folks running Boot Camp games on base models with great performance. So Boot Camp should not be an issue.
My '11 MBP i5/8gb could output 1080p at low/medium settings in WOW raids. Keep in mind that was Intel Graphics 3000 and no SSD, and definitely not the new PCI-E SSDs. These new MBAs will handle it just fine!
There are videos on YouTube of folks running Boot Camp games on base models with great performance. So Boot Camp should not be an issue.
My '11 MBP i5/8gb could output 1080p at low/medium settings in WOW raids. Keep in mind that was Intel Graphics 3000 and no SSD, and definitely not the new PCI-E SSDs. These new MBAs will handle it just fine!
8gigs is only going to make a difference with the highest texture settings on larger resolutions than the Air screens, I did a load of research into 4 vs 8 and even the most hardcore of gamer said that the extra 4 gigs of ram would not have an appreciable effect on performance in most games.
I think that much ram is really needed for multitasking and virtual machines.
Does it help with external displays?
I think that much ram is really needed for multitasking and virtual machines.
Does it help with external displays?
1080p is larger than Air's max resolution.
I believe it could matter because you're still driving the graphics into a higher resolution environment, internal or external monitors shouldn't make a difference. Not 100% on it, but it makes sense, hehe. ;pGo for 8gig. It's a must
Beside the new gpu, the other reason makes me upgrade from the Air 12 to the new one is because of ram. 4gig is so small for most applications today. Consider that the GPU alone already sucked up 1gb. It only cost 90usd with education price.
Beside the new gpu, the other reason makes me upgrade from the Air 12 to the new one is because of ram. 4gig is so small for most applications today. Consider that the GPU alone already sucked up 1gb. It only cost 90usd with education price.
Yup, the i7-3667u is the MacBook Air 11" that I have, bought it last year late June. FPS on Cinebench Open GL 22.6.
This year i5-4250u bench by LaptopMag ran 21 FPS(The other picture that was loaded in the earlier post), as mentioned earlier I feel that the score might be a tad low. I was thinking it should be at least about 35fps considering all the advancement that HD 5000 brings.
Either way apple did say UPTO 40% faster, vastly different from 40% faster. Could be non matured intel drivers, could be that Cinebench OpenGl is not a good indicator. Can't say for sure.
well yeah, if i were to buy the air, i'd get it in 128gb, 8gb RAM and the i7.
costing me 1350.
was just browsing around the net to procrastinate (exams), and decided that Vaio Pro, as nice as it looks wont cut it due to bad iGPU. but the asus zenbooks might stand a chance..? esp the infinity. not sure how much it will cost though.
costing me 1350.
was just browsing around the net to procrastinate (exams), and decided that Vaio Pro, as nice as it looks wont cut it due to bad iGPU. but the asus zenbooks might stand a chance..? esp the infinity. not sure how much it will cost though.
Well I'm completely new to Macs, just got the new Haswell 13"/i7/8GB/128GB MBA for my son. He installed Minecraft and has been playing it on battery power. Now there may be some settings I need to tweak, but I'm a little disappointed in the battery life while he's playing the game. According to the status bar he has 61% battery left, which it is estimated will last 1 hour and 10 minutes! Also the fan is on almost constantly while he is playing. The remaining battery % is dropping almost by the minute.
Aside from the battery drain it plays fine.
Is this typical?
Aside from the battery drain it plays fine.
Is this typical?
well yeah it's typical... playing games on a ultrabook + not plugged in = bye bye battery
Thanks. He's off Minecraft and I'm using it for browsing the Internet. Now it says 46% and 5 hours remaining battery. Phew!
Gaming is probably the most intensive thing a laptop can do, all bets are off when it comes to battery life while gaming haha.
Ok guys, I'm gonna go try Farcry 3. ThrottleStop isn't working on my Haswell but I'll use GameBooster and install the latest drivers from Intel, apparently much better than Apple's included Windows drivers.
Good news suckers, finally got everything working and as I suspected... This machine is a closet beast.
Farcry 3 on a mixture of medium and high settings at native resolution running butter smooth. Still has the classic Farcry "jutter" that can be fixed by limiting the framerate, which I haven't done yet, and I can also enable FXAA with another app for basically some free, subtle anti-aliasing.
For some reason I couldn't get the FPS to display so I'm going to have to install FRAPS and let you guys know but whatever it is, it's high, in fact it's high enough that I think I can turn up my settings quite a bit more.
MSAA is an absolute no go, turn that on and say hello to 15fps.
Made a Vine video but doesn't do it just it seems, I'll make a YouTube vid later when I have done all the both.
https://vine.co/v/hBWuE9q1PeA
EDIT: Hmm using dxtory to display FPS, apparently I'm only getting about 20! And that's even in the menus.. No amount of fiddling with settings seems to change that, even going from DX9 to DX11. Farcry 3 is kinda notorious for FPS problems, and suddenly it does feel choppier.
Farcry 3 on a mixture of medium and high settings at native resolution running butter smooth. Still has the classic Farcry "jutter" that can be fixed by limiting the framerate, which I haven't done yet, and I can also enable FXAA with another app for basically some free, subtle anti-aliasing.
For some reason I couldn't get the FPS to display so I'm going to have to install FRAPS and let you guys know but whatever it is, it's high, in fact it's high enough that I think I can turn up my settings quite a bit more.
MSAA is an absolute no go, turn that on and say hello to 15fps.
Made a Vine video but doesn't do it just it seems, I'll make a YouTube vid later when I have done all the both.
https://vine.co/v/hBWuE9q1PeA
EDIT: Hmm using dxtory to display FPS, apparently I'm only getting about 20! And that's even in the menus.. No amount of fiddling with settings seems to change that, even going from DX9 to DX11. Farcry 3 is kinda notorious for FPS problems, and suddenly it does feel choppier.
Last edited:
That does look impressive even with 9 seconds from Vine, thanks
How does Bioshock Infinite run?
again, why are you guys testing high end games? I know you want to get an idea of the capabilities, but lets be honest here... who is going to play fc3 on a mba thats going to put it through the temperature gauntlet?
Why not mid range titles like:
dead space(s)
csgo
civ v
kerbal sp
dishonored
LoL/Dota2
Chivalry
Fallout NV
The Walking Dead, etc..
So yeah, requesting those
Why not mid range titles like:
dead space(s)
csgo
civ v
kerbal sp
dishonored
LoL/Dota2
Chivalry
Fallout NV
The Walking Dead, etc..
So yeah, requesting those
Sigh...
I have my 13" 256GB/i5 sitting here just waiting to be opened, I was just hoping for some more results before I broke the seal. I very much appreciate all of the testing you guys are doing, the bleeding-edge early adopters/testers!
It sounds like the 5000 is considerably better than the 4000, but Notebook check ranking it above a GT 540 in terms of performance may also be somewhat inaccurate.
I was really hoping for some 3dmark scores as well. I know it's a synthetic benchmark, but is still a decent indicator of performance.
Again, thanks to everyone who is donating their time to provide testing data!
I have my 13" 256GB/i5 sitting here just waiting to be opened, I was just hoping for some more results before I broke the seal. I very much appreciate all of the testing you guys are doing, the bleeding-edge early adopters/testers!
It sounds like the 5000 is considerably better than the 4000, but Notebook check ranking it above a GT 540 in terms of performance may also be somewhat inaccurate.
I was really hoping for some 3dmark scores as well. I know it's a synthetic benchmark, but is still a decent indicator of performance.
Again, thanks to everyone who is donating their time to provide testing data!
Why are you waiting to open it? If you have it, can't you test it yourself? If you are concerned about returning it there shouldn't be a restocking fee or anything (unless you bought it from a third party).
The HD 5000 is definitely not disappointing, even at 20fps I have Farcry 3 looking better than it does on the PS3 and that's a perfectly playable fps.
But I'm an FPS stickler, I like 30 minimum, and there's always ways to get your fps up without losing any or much fidelity so I'm gonna keep tweaking and let you guys know.
I wonder if the CPU is actually bottle necking, I hope that Windows 8 knows to turbo it and its not running at 1.3Ghz right now haha.
But I'm an FPS stickler, I like 30 minimum, and there's always ways to get your fps up without losing any or much fidelity so I'm gonna keep tweaking and let you guys know.
I wonder if the CPU is actually bottle necking, I hope that Windows 8 knows to turbo it and its not running at 1.3Ghz right now haha.
I'm the same way, I really like having a smooth experience when playing games. It's conceivable that it's the CPU bottle-necking or throttling maybe. But again, thanks for posting your results for everyone!
The weirdest thing is thing in Farcry 3, I get no performance gain (or loss, depending which way round you go) from all settings on medium in DirectX 11 with sme post-processing effects turned on, and everything on low in DirectX 9 with post-professing off...
Exactly the same 15-25 fps for both, wtf?!
Exactly the same 15-25 fps for both, wtf?!
Good news again amigos!
http://youtu.be/5PdJRYD1WSY
BOOM! That's what happens when you drop down to 1280x800, muchhhhh better. Runs like butter now and still looks incredible.
http://youtu.be/5PdJRYD1WSY
BOOM! That's what happens when you drop down to 1280x800, muchhhhh better. Runs like butter now and still looks incredible.
Don't feel so bad, we're on the same boat. I got 13" 128GB/i5 sitting in a bag all sealed up. I just want all the reviews and bench testing to be done so I can decide. Silly, I know, but I rather return it all sealed up and not get hassled if I decide not to keep it.