Macbook Air Gaming

[ee13lbp]

Hi all
Just before I start, please don't bombard me messages telling me to buy an alienware or what not, just because I want to play some games on a mac. I've been using mac hardware since the green/blue iMac (G3 I think), and I have my own reasons for using OSX.

Now that that's out of the way, can somone who owns a MBA 2012 tell me what the performance is like when you play older games from the PS2 gen? I know the MBA can even handle stuff like Battlefield 3 on low graphics, but I want to know specifically what it is like to play older games. Does the fan still spin at super spead and the machine get terribly hot, or can I play ps2 gen games confortably on my lap etc.

Thanks in advance

 

[Devyn89]

I play Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic on my 2012 Air which is a PS2 generation game (although it only came out on Xbox originally). It runs really well but the fan does kick in and the machine gets hot. I was worried at first but people told me not to be worried so I stopped. I just found a box to put between my lap and the Air which was fine. A lap desk would work as well. Hope that helps.

 

[shamash]

I've been playing WoW and TF2. You may not get the best graphics, but it seems to play fine. TF2 with recommended graphics had a bit of stutter, so I had to turn the graphics down, cause stutter in FPS = bad.

 

[filmbuff]

Can we get two new stickies - "Macbook Air Gaming" and "Should I upgrade my RAM"? Those are the only two topics anybody wants to know about, apparently.

 

[dwburnell]

I just downloaded team fortress 2 and I play Starcraft 2 on low graphics. All run well, just don't look as good as a higher end graphics card.

 

[mikeray]

I just started playing Half Life 2 on my 2012 11" Air. It runs fine at 2560x1440 !

 

[OnceYouGoMac]

Can we get two new stickies - "Macbook Air Gaming" and "Should I upgrade my RAM"? Those are the only two topics anybody wants to know about, apparently.

The MacBook Air forum is full of threads on those topics. Oh and there's a few topics about SSD upgrades in there.

 

[DeNachtwacht]

I just started playing Half Life 2 on my 2012 11" Air. It runs fine at 2560x1440 !

That would be a bit of a suprise since the monitor doesn't support that resolution. You would be playing in Retina+ mode on a 11" with that resolution