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Macbook Pro 13" 320M Gaming Performance
- Thread starter iTootyFrooty
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Really? I assumed it would be smoother on a windows platform.
Nevertheless, I am very much looking forward to getting acquainted to the MBP. Been reading up the short-cut commands. I guess there won't be much use for the mouse once I'm used to the trackpad (except for serious clicking on SC2).
I trust it's the best buy for me for casual gaming (not running Crysis anytime on any lappie), portability for work and aesthetics. =)
the only time people tend to use boot camp it for the 10000000 games that are not mac compatible, if its made by a good developer (infinity ward, Blizzard) its mac compatible and you can hit command (mac key) + m and minimize the game form full screen and play it in window mode, without having to change the setting to full screen window mode and use the windows key to open the start menu =D haha love playing blizzard games on a mac they were made for each other =D
I have a few question:
1. What do you mean bootcamp drivers? Firstly I know windows 7 by default has s...t loads of drivers, okay then for example if I take driver from nvidia.com it will not work? (talking about driver for GeForce 320M for Windows 7 64b)
2. You all using bootcamp? ATM I have 250gb drive and that is not enough for me 2 do a bootcamp. Im planing to upgrade to 500, how much do you allocate for Windows then? I suppose quite a lot since all those games require a good amount of space.
I still do think that if you want to enjoy games on your MAc you have to bootcamp windows on it.
P.S Anyone tried final release of Starcraft 2? both on windows and mac, what can you recommend?
1. What do you mean bootcamp drivers? Firstly I know windows 7 by default has s...t loads of drivers, okay then for example if I take driver from nvidia.com it will not work? (talking about driver for GeForce 320M for Windows 7 64b)
2. You all using bootcamp? ATM I have 250gb drive and that is not enough for me 2 do a bootcamp. Im planing to upgrade to 500, how much do you allocate for Windows then? I suppose quite a lot since all those games require a good amount of space.
I still do think that if you want to enjoy games on your MAc you have to bootcamp windows on it.
P.S Anyone tried final release of Starcraft 2? both on windows and mac, what can you recommend?
Another good semi-comprehensive review of the 13"'s gaming abilities, thanks for this. If everything pans out, I will own a 13" 2.4ghz MBP later this year and have been slightly concerned about being able to run my two favorite games--Elder Scrolls 4 and Civilization 4 (and 5 when it drops) at decent framerates. My dear Compaq with 2gigs of RAM and 1.9 ghz (the bare minimums, I know) could barely run either above 1-20 fps so I'm very curious to test for myself to see how the low-end MBP will operate under fairly continuous use as a design/animation/casual gaming machine.
Just traded in my MBA for a MBP 13" 2.4 with SSD. Didn't exactly buy it for gaming but it's nice to be able to play certain games on the go. (StarCraft, Team Fortress 2 etc..) Not overly impressed with the performance compared to the MacBook Air. Is the reason why certain games play better on Windows even on the same Mac simply because of the better drivers windows has to offer? If I wanted to play would I get better performance out of windows on BootCamp or Parallels? Does it even matter? Starting to think I should have gone with a 15" but I can't justify the extra size or 10% restocking fee at this point. I have an awesome Alienware gaming PC so it's not a huge deal..
To anyone wanting to play SC2 on medium settings on a MBP13 and want to see a big fps boost I highly recommend checking out this thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/967793/
Bootcamp performance will be much better than parallels. Windows gaming performance is better than OSX directly because of better drivers as you mentioned, and indirectly due to the way OSX and windows handle hardware calls. OSX's sandbox nature makes some hardware calls less efficient.
Can anyone answer my question from above please? If I have 500 GB HDD how much should I allocate for windows to play games? I was thinking about 150-200 gb?
Hey guys. I just picked up my 320m 13" MBP and I can't get the graphics drivers to work. It's replacing a 9400m MBP. I just installed the nVidia driver after installing bootcamp on that machine, and it worked great. When I got this, I just swapped the hard drives (i have a 500 gb 7200), and of course the mac side worked great. I then booted windows, and installed the bootcamp stuff off my included install CD. I did this several times. I still only get a generic display and video card with generic Microsoft video driver. How the heck can I get this thing working in Windows 7 again? My MBP is my work machine during they day, doing Mac repair. But at night, I boot windows 7, plug it into my HDTV, and play GTA Vice City and GTA San Andreas. I love those games. They played Excellent (VC) and Great (SA) on the 9400m. I'm dying to see how much better they are on this new machine, with slightly faster processor but much faster GPU. I just can't get it to work. And nVidia's mobile GPU driver, that covers basically all their mobile GPUs, doesn't work for this Mac. This is extremely annoying. Anyone know what's going wrong here?
I think maybe you should try to uninstall all boot camp and nvidia related drivers from your boot camp and them reinstall boot camp off your DVD or get the latest version off the apple web site.
But then again my display and all is perfectly fine my only gripe about it is that there is no sound coming from the port when an external speaker is connected to it hahaha
But then again my display and all is perfectly fine my only gripe about it is that there is no sound coming from the port when an external speaker is connected to it hahaha
I'm running WoW on my 13" MacBook Pro with a 24" LED Cinema Display and it plays quite smoothly at 1920x1200 with approximately 30 fps. Dalaran is usually 10 fps slower, but I don't mind. Turning on AA severely drains the framerate though. That's when I envy my wife's 27" iMac. 
Of course you can hear the cooler fans doing their work when you're gaming and the MacBook gets pretty warm nonetheless, yet I don't mind that either since I'm using a stand and don't have it on my lap while playing.
All in all, I didn't get the MacBook for gaming, but I'm impressed how well it performs. Even SC2 runs well for my taste.
Of course you can hear the cooler fans doing their work when you're gaming and the MacBook gets pretty warm nonetheless, yet I don't mind that either since I'm using a stand and don't have it on my lap while playing.
All in all, I didn't get the MacBook for gaming, but I'm impressed how well it performs. Even SC2 runs well for my taste.
I think the 320M is better.
My 13" is doing great for gaming. I am just considering upgrading to the 15" for better resolution and stronger processor. The 13" is great for any student. I am just a power user so that is why I want more power.
Can anyone tell me optimal settings for fallout 3? I run it but its kind a choppy at some points. I mean the game is pretty but still its from 2008
Also the drivers version that you are running
Also the drivers version that you are running
I stumbled on this post when i'm trying to research about WOW performance on MBP. I have a unibody macbook which up until a couple days ago i used to run 2 WOW clients just fine. Now i cant due to the new update. Could anyone tell me if they were able to run two WOW clients on the MBP and still get good frame rate???
thanks
thanks
Most of my friends have the 13" and they love it. They don't game though, mostly use it for youtube videos and schoolwork.
Alright so you better off doing that through Bootcamp, gaming in OSX is more of a joke it really doesnt know how to use resources for gaming. I could run starcraft 2 on low settings in OSX with my MBP 13 2010; in windows 7 I can run 50% hight settings and 50% medium, works great.
Anyone tried Civilization 5? I just got it, will report how it goes. I'm a bit scared to try Dead Rising 2, the game is a blast but with the amount of Zombies there I do not think even bootcamp will help.