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Macbook Pro 13" 320M Gaming Performance

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion: mostly around 30-60 FPS in native, even with a ton of mods. Sure, it's an oldish game, but it's pretty awesome.

Now if I could only stop freaking out about the temperature Speedfan indicates...D:
 
Yeah, just got done doing some test Oblivion stuff. Same here, I put settings on the highest, lowest fps recorded was one time for a split second it was 29, so yeah.

I'm sure Fallout 3 will run equally as well since they're on the same engine. Need to find my install discs..
 
I'm going to be picking up a MBP 13" in the next few days. It's nice to see that it has some decent gaming capabilities. Indeed, I was really surprised to see it running CoD4 without trouble.

I do think folks should keep it in perspective. The gaming system in my sig can pull just above 15,000 marks in 3dMark06 compared to the 13" MBP's 5300...and that rig is pushing three years old. It can still run all titles without a problem...with the exception of Crysis, where it geeks out a bit on ultra high settings.

5,300 marks is a decent enough score for games in the Doom 3 era. And it will most likely run a number of contemporary titles at reduced settings. But I wouldn't expect it to smoke crap-ports like Bioshock and similar.

An important note...I would NOT overclock the GPU in this thing. I'm an experienced overclocker, and in an enclosure this small, it's just not worth it. You might net yourself an extra 5-10 FPS on a good day, but the thing might cook in there. I know people can take temp readings, but they're not 100% accurate, and in this enclosure, it's near impossible to know what's an acceptable threshold. Just not worth it in my opinion.
 
Finally tried out Witcher after a hell of a long download on my ****** internet.

Maxed out settings except for no AA since jaggies don't quite bother me and only 4 times AF at native resolution (1280 x 800)

Game runs well, high enough fps that fighting is fine during that opening fight in the castle. There is a vsync issue, I don't know how to enable it, but it's mostly noticeable during "cutscenes." The cutscenes are also at a lower FPS, so if that bothers you then I think dropping the settings down a bit will fix that.

I didn't get very far in, but it's definitely playable, so yay.
 
my 13" 320m mbp can't seem to run crysis decently at medium, it's only smooth in low.

Bioshock on windows 7 on high works very smoothly.

Oblivion and Fallout 3 all work on high, as well as Test Drive Unlimited and Burnout Paradise.
 
How does the 320m compare to the ati graphics card in the highend 21.5 iMac model?

I'm stuck between buying the highend 13" MacBook pro and the highend 21.5 iMac .

Thanks
 
heliocentric said:
How does the 320m compare to the ati graphics card in the highend 21.5 iMac model?

I'm stuck between buying the highend 13" MacBook pro and the highend 21.5 iMac .

Thanks
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4670 in the iMac:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-4670.13881.0.html

320M in the 13" MBP:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-320M.28701.0.html

The 4670 in the iMac is basically equal in performance to the 330M found in the 15" and 17" MBP's. Also if you plan on buying an iMac I suggest waiting for the next refresh.
 
Will hopefully be picking up a 13" MBP (2.4 c2d/320m) in September. It's brilliant that this little card can pull all these games along.

I've 2 questions.

1) How well do you think this card will pull Guild Wars 2 along? GW2's system requirements haven't been released yet but after much thought and speculation on a GW2 dedicated forum it's come to the conclusion that the specs will most likely be :
- 2 ghz c2d (recommended)
- 2 gb RAM (recommended)
- nVidia 7600 (minimum) :eek:
- xp/vista/7 (BootCamp :p)

I'd LOVE it if it could pull the game along at at least med settings under native res

2) What would be the dedicated graphics card equivalent to the 320m? Apologies for my ignorance but I'm not too good with graphics cards. ;)
 
Furifo said:
Will hopefully be picking up a 13" MBP (2.4 c2d/320m) in September. It's brilliant that this little card can pull all these games along.

I've 2 questions.

1) How well do you think this card will pull Guild Wars 2 along? GW2's system requirements haven't been released yet but after much thought and speculation on a GW2 dedicated forum it's come to the conclusion that the specs will most likely be :
- 2 ghz c2d (recommended)
- 2 gb RAM (recommended)
- nVidia 7600 (minimum) :eek:
- xp/vista/7 (BootCamp :p)

I'd LOVE it if it could pull the game along at at least med settings under native res

2) What would be the dedicated graphics card equivalent to the 320m? Apologies for my ignorance but I'm not too good with graphics cards. ;)
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Compare its abilities to the 8600m gt out of the older generation of Macbook pros (before the 9600m gt). It's not identical, but you can expect similar performance.
 
mikeo007 said:
Compare its abilities to the 8600m gt out of the older generation of Macbook pros (before the 9600m gt). It's not identical, but you can expect similar performance.
Click to expand...

Thank you. Seems like a very good little card. Anybody got any idea of how GW2 will run? Speculated system requirements 2 replies above.
 
Mass Effect 2 works suprisingly well. I get ~30fps at native resolution, with high textures, 2x a filtering, dyanamic shadows off.
 
JAVK said:
Mass Effect 2 works suprisingly well. I get ~30fps at native resolution, with high textures, 2x a filtering, dyanamic shadows off.
Click to expand...

Here's a pretty nice video of Mass Effect 2 being played on a MBP 13" (2.4 GHz, 320M). It seems smooth to me.
Hope it helps someone!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5XHK79yZfA&feature=related

On another note, does anyone know how well Dragon Age: Origins performs on the MBP 13" through Bootcamp? There's no video or detailed evidence on the Web. If anyone could enlighten me about it, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance! :)
 
Arondel said:
Here's a pretty nice video of Mass Effect 2 being played on a MBP 13" (2.4 GHz, 320M). It seems smooth to me.
Hope it helps someone!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5XHK79yZfA&feature=related

On another note, does anyone know how well Dragon Age: Origins performs on the MBP 13" through Bootcamp? There's no video or detailed evidence on the Web. If anyone could enlighten me about it, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance! :)
Click to expand...

I couldn't find it on youtube now but I've probably seen all videos about the new macbook pros in relation to gaming. I do remember watching one that the guy tested dragon age origins and it ran pretty well.

it may be hard to find but it is on youtube at least ; )
 
Arondel said:
On another note, does anyone know how well Dragon Age: Origins performs on the MBP 13" through Bootcamp? There's no video or detailed evidence on the Web. If anyone could enlighten me about it, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance! :)
Click to expand...

I think the video was a low end mbp and he ran on native with everything maxed.
 
So I'm a brand new mac user got a 13" 2.66ghz 2010 model. and installed a couple of games

Starcraft 2 Beta
Counterstrike Source
Day of Defeat
Warcraft 3 reign of Chaos
Starcraft Broodwar

I only got to play SC2 beta for like a day cause the beta ended later that night :( pretty much played it for about 30 minutes to an hour :mad: anyways it run on medium to low.. some options where on high, and it ran really smooth.. didn't get to experience big battles since I'm a veteran on SC and I usually rush pretty quick. So I'm sure SC2 the actual game will run really smooth.. there is a 2-3 second lag everyonce in awhile but I think everyone experiences that.:cool:

Counterstrike source and day of defeat High/medium runs very smooth:p

Warcraft 3/ Starcraft broodwar High, very beautiful.:D

I don't know how to show fps so if you guys can go ahead and tell me how to show it I will be more than happy to let you guys know fps. but technically the only reason I got a mbp was for 2 things one being school, other one for SC2, and I wanted a small computer as well. Oh and a quick question what kind of mice do you use for gaming, i bought a logitech m505 wireless. but when I play Starcraft 2 the mouse jumps around to all the sides and makes the screen side scroll.. and when I play counterstrike the crosshair laggs a little. I don't know if its because its wireless or anything, but would it be better to buy a wired mouse? thanks guys!:apple:
 
All OS X testing:
Team Fortress 2 needs a FPS config to be over 30 FPS
Counter Strike: Source works fine at min settings, not sure about higher settings
Half Life 2 and Half Life 2 Episode one are playable at minimum FPS. Not sure how they are at higher settings
Toki Tori runs flawlessly

Bottom line, on this laptop you should be playing with minimum settings because in online games you cannot afford a framerate drop, and if you increase the settings, you will definitely experience them from time to time

Maybe when 10.6.5 comes we will have better graphics drivers and modern source games (Left for dead 2) will be playable.
 
dragon age runs amazingly smooth. i play with all settings maxed (at native resolution), except for AA which is set at 2x. i like visuals and i notice slight slag every once in a while when there's a lot going on but i dont mind since i'm always pausing the action anyway :)

i'm gonna try gta iv: ballad of gay tony soon, i'll update with results from that :D

btw i have the base 2.4ghz model
 
brianfast said:
All OS X testing:
Team Fortress 2 needs a FPS config to be over 30 FPS
Counter Strike: Source works fine at min settings, not sure about higher settings
Half Life 2 and Half Life 2 Episode one are playable at minimum FPS. Not sure how they are at higher settings
Toki Tori runs flawlessly

Bottom line, on this laptop you should be playing with minimum settings because in online games you cannot afford a framerate drop, and if you increase the settings, you will definitely experience them from time to time

Maybe when 10.6.5 comes we will have better graphics drivers and modern source games (Left for dead 2) will be playable.
Click to expand...

TF2 was horrible in OSX (both on 10.6.3 and 10.6.4), ran it on low/med, 800x600 with inconsistent fps (20-30 with dips in 10). Installed Windows 7, the game flies! Have it on med/high settings, no AA native resolutions fps 50-60 with dips to 30 :D. Good enough for me.
 
i have been playing gta iv episodes from liberty city on my new 13" and its runs very smoothly at 1280x720; avg fps from in game benchmark test is 18-19.at native resolution it was a bit slower, i havent tested much on native since i only want 720p visuals. i made a video showing how it runs on my mbp, here ya go:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZNGAQF9P3k
 
MacBook Pro 13" (2010) for gaming

The 13" MacBook Pro (and also the 13" MacBook) contain a Geforce 320m integrated chipset graphic card which lacks dedicated vram and uses system ram. This alone turns people away and the immediately begin to think negatively of it. To add to the confusion there is actually a 320m GT dedicated graphics card available for notebooks and notebookcheck.com even says something like 'don't confuse it with the integrated MacBook version'. I'm guessing nvidia named it 320m because it's performance is pretty similar to the dedicated 320m. Because it is. There is nothing wrong with this integrated card at all! There is some other thread here where somebody compares the MacBook to a similar form-fact Asus notebook with a 310m and says "the 310 will be better cause it's integrated". Nope. Sorry, the real-world tests and benchmarks say otherwise

I used to own a 15" MacBook Pro with an 8600m GT 128 MB DDR3 card. In my real-world gaming tests, peformance is either similar and exceeding the 2-year-old 8600m GT. I think that's good for a chipset card

In snow leopard, I tested out the Orange Box. TF2, Portal, and HL E2&3 run at 45-60fps at native res with vsync disabled and no AA. In Windows they run at the same speed with 4xAA. Just because I support Steam and gaming on OS X, I'll take the slight penalty and run them natively. Half Life 2 runs at 60fps on both platforms (no AA on SL though) but it is a 6-year-old game!

Under Windows 7 64-bit in boot camp, Fallout 3 runs an average of 45fps at native res, no AA. 60fps in many places, but 30fps and sometimes in the 20s when there are a lot of characters on-screen. Note that this is the same as on my old 9800 GTS because the physics for NPCs are CPU-bound. Settings are a combo of medium-high

Lost Planet runs at native res at about 30fps average with default settings (medium-high)

Modern Warfare 2 runs 30-60fps at native res, no AA with high quality textures. You can enable 2xAA and reduce the res to 1024x640 which is still better than the console versions and get a FPS bump, but I prefer the native res look.

GTAIV, this one stinks on most PCs because it was poorly optimized. It has a physics-heavy engine that relies on multi-core. Since it was designed for the 3-core xbox 360, it's a little unhappy on a 2-core PC. After some INI tweaks I found online, I was able to get it to look about the same as the console versions and run at 30fps. (at a 1024x640 res)

Gears of War, this one runs natively at default and even high settings at 30fps

Devil May Cry 4, I lowered the details to medium to get the console version's 60fps. They look pretty much the same as the PS3 version

Bionic Commando Rearmed - One of my fav download-only games. Runs perfect at 60fps native res

Street Fighter IV - Lower the texture detail to medium and it runs at 60fps and looks awesome. Lowering texture detail doesn't make much of a difference

Crysis (demo) - Only used this for benchmarking purposes.. Had to lower the res and use low detail to get about 30fps but it still looked nice because it's probably still the most advanced engine around

Those are all the games that I have to test out. My 3dmark scores were nearly the same as on notebookcheck for the 320m. All around, for a 13" 4lb laptop with a 10-hour rated battery life, pretty impressive gaming performance. Eliteist gamers will want to stay away, but then again they should stay away from gaming on laptops altogether. Even the best laptop graphics card in SLI is equivilent to a mid-level >$180 desktop card
 
although i have a 15" with the 512 MB gt 330 m, this is a veyr very useful thread, thanks for posting it and i will be sure to link it to any people i find with these questions.
 
good post

Hi, I'm awfully new to the world of Macs and will be duly be the proud owner of my first 13" MBP tomorrow, and it just so happens I came across a good read on the 13" MBP.

I am planning to install Windows 7 (bootcamp they call it?) to play Starcraft 2. Read about some overheating issues so I do hope that the MBP can survive on medium graphic settings.
 
moonstone13 said:
Hi, I'm awfully new to the world of Macs and will be duly be the proud owner of my first 13" MBP tomorrow, and it just so happens I came across a good read on the 13" MBP.

I am planning to install Windows 7 (bootcamp they call it?) to play Starcraft 2. Read about some overheating issues so I do hope that the MBP can survive on medium graphic settings.
Click to expand...
MacBook Pros do not have overheating issues (although they do run quite hot). The only people who say otherwise have OCD.
 
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