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Macbook gaming?

T

thajay2012

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 3, 2008
9
0
Well I've been looking into notebook computers and I think I might get a macbook.
I'll use it mainly for surfing the web and photoshop and making videos and such.
I barely ever really game that much but I want to know if the Macbook can run some of my more played games:
Unreal Tournament 2004
Gmod 11
CS:S (I'm ok with going to CS 1.6 if necessary)
WoW
Diablo 2 LoD

I was also looking into Team Fortress Classic and Audiosurf.
And I heard Battlefield 2 ran good on a macbook, is this true?
 
newer games will not run at a playable frame rate on the macbook. the sims 2 runs at about 10fps on my macbook on lowest settings. i would expect any other game that came out during or after that time to run at similar frame rate.
 
I can gurantee that all of those games will run exceptionally because I've played everysingle one of them on a MacBook :D.

Also you won't have to sacrifice your CSS for CS 1.6 because CSS runs just fine.

Only exceptions are the settings for WoW, BF2, Gary's Mod and Audisurf are going to need to have their settings turned down a bit.

Another thing that might help is maxing out the ram (4gb) if you can. It definetly does help the performance in games. (Do it on your own and not through Apple)

Enjoy :)
 
airjuggernaut said:
I can gurantee that all of those games will run exceptionally because I've played everysingle one of them on a MacBook :D.

Also you won't have to sacrifice your CSS for CS 1.6 because CSS runs just fine.

Only exceptions are the settings for WoW, BF2, Gary's Mod and Audisurf are going to need to have their settings turned down a bit.

Another thing that might help is maxing out the ram (4gb) if you can. It definetly does help the performance in games. (Do it on your own and not through Apple)

Enjoy :)
Click to expand...

Yea I was planning to upgrade RAM and I kind of went wtf when I saw the $200 Apple wants for an upgrade to 4 gb of RAM. It look easy to install pretty much as easy as it was to up my PC to 1 gb the only harder thing I could thing of is the screws but that should be a breeze.

Also, just to clarify, what level base are you speaking of? The $1099, $1299, or $1499.


To everyone: Is there a guide to the OS X GUI because before switching I would like to learn a little about the conversion from the Windows GUI to the Mac GUI. I toyed around for about 10 minutes on my cousins Macbook before she left to go back to texas and the dock and desktop seem very simplistic (not in the bad way). But what about the rest of the Mac GUI such as browising folders, finding programs, etc.
 
thajay2012 said:
But, is this cake a lie? ;)
Click to expand...
THE CAKE IS A LIE
THE CAKE IS A LIE
THE CAKE IS A LIE

:p

The cake really isn't a lie :p, the Mac OSX GUI is beautiful and very simple to understand.

You're best bet to learn it would be to just use it for a few days, and ask or google any questions you have about it.

I don't think you will understand and appreciate the interface as much if you read about it rather than actually looking at it and using it.

If you still want to read you're best bet would be to read the guides section we have on macrumors http://guides.macrumors.com/Category:Guides

As for which model, well all of the MacBooks have the same GPU (GMA X3100) with the same amount of VRAM so it would not matter which model you got, they all perform the same graphically.
 
thajay2012 said:
Yea I was planning to upgrade RAM and I kind of went wtf when I saw the $200 Apple wants for an upgrade to 4 gb of RAM. It look easy to install pretty much as easy as it was to up my PC to 1 gb the only harder thing I could thing of is the screws but that should be a breeze.
Click to expand...

Nobody buys RAM from Apple because it's overpriced. I've bought from Crucial.com before with no problems. Beware of cheap RAM, they may cause issues with your Mac.

Here's a link to the Buying RAM guide.
 
airjuggernaut said:
As for which model, well all of the MacBooks have the same GPU (GMA X3100) with the same amount of VRAM so it would not matter which model you got, they all perform the same graphically.
Click to expand...
Graphically maybe but how much does the performance differ from the 2.1 GHz to the 2.4 GHz processor.

-------

If the videos I have seen are true and this notebook can handle Battlefield 2 then this macbook can easily out perform my eMachines PC.
 
thajay2012 said:
Graphically maybe but how much does the performance differ from the 2.1 GHz to the 2.4 GHz processor.

-------

If the videos I have seen are true and this notebook can handle Battlefield 2 then this macbook can easily out perform my eMachines PC.
Click to expand...
Well games these days tend to rely more on GPU than CPU power.

Don't quote me on it, but I think it would be safe to say that the 2.1ghz would pretty much perform identically as the 2.4ghz in games.

If you want to be on the safe side just buy the 2.4ghz model.
As you said above you wanted to do Video editing and photoshop which are more processor intensive, the 2.4ghz model would greatly decrease render times in Photoshop and in iMovie(or whatever video suite you want to use).
Plus you also get the SuperDrive(allows you to burn DVD's) and 2gb of RAM (keep in mind that the MacBooks come with 2 x 1gb ram modules. Meaning you would need to take out both modules if you wanted to upgrade to the maximum of 4gb) in the 1299 model.
 
I don't know about boot camp, all the following knowledge is Crossover Games and custom Ciders.

Running BF2 in a custom cider app, it runs about perfectly with full resolution and medium settings. But the downside is you get booted from any online game because the cider APIs aren't recognized by Punkbuster.

CS:S will run fine in Crossover with a little tweaking, its perfectly playable after downsizing the DirectX version. TF2 takes a little more work and some custom configurations, but it also ends up playable. If you do anything serious in Gmod, you won't be able to do it. But after some tweaking you can run an empty flatgrass at 25 or so fps, just be careful about the prop count as you WILL start lagging.

Audiosurf is possible to play in Crossover but the UI is a little messed up and it's hard to start a game, but once you get ingame it will run fine on low settings with high resolution.

The spore creature creator (full mac version) runs fine at a mix of low, medium, and high settings with full resolution.

For reference, my system specs;
MacBook 3,1
2.0ghz C2D
4gb RAM
Intel x3100

Judging by other people's system specs and gaming success, it seems that more ram is more important than more processing power, because the intel GMA graphics use your system RAM. Also keep in mind that the new Macbook 2.1ghz runs the same or even slightly slower than the old 2.0 because of the smaller cache (3mb vs 4mb)
 
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