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mbp 15' i5 or i7? for Starcraft 2

H

hasteveha

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 27, 2008
67
0
I'm planning on getting a 15' mbp. Should I get the base model, or the higher end with the i7? I want to use this laptop for casual internet browsing, and playing starcraft 2. Has anyone ran benchmarks on both? I know the model with the i7 has a better video card also, but is it worth the price difference?


Thanks
 
Texture wise starcraft requires 512mb to run at high textures.

So I would say go with i7 just because of the better vid card.
 
the beta runs fine on medium (30-50fps) on my older mbp with 8600gt...so running it won't be an issue. The i7 might give u 5 more fps over the i5...tops..but don't expect double framerates or anything..
 
zorahk said:
Texture wise starcraft requires 512mb to run at high textures.

So I would say go with i7 just because of the better vid card.
Click to expand...

Tbh "high" settings on SC2 on the 1440x900 screen does not require 512mb vram. If you plan to play on a 24 inch screen or so, it would make difference, but at the built in screen 256MB works just fine.

I've played SC2 beta both on win xp and mac os on mine, and both works fine. High setting would make some FPS drops on mac os, but I believe that is the GPU speed and not the amount of vram available. The Mac os client is simply not as optimized as the win version.
Playing on my external screen (1680x1050) does not really change performance.

On another hand I do believe 512MB would future-proof the gaming usage, if you plan to keep the computer for a few years.
 
cluthz said:
Tbh "high" settings on SC2 on the 1440x900 screen does not require 512mb vram. If you plan to play on a 24 inch screen or so, it would make difference, but at the built in screen 256MB works just fine.

I've played SC2 beta both on win xp and mac os on mine, and both works fine. High setting would make some FPS drops on mac os, but I believe that is the GPU speed and not the amount of vram available. The Mac os client is simply not as optimized as the win version.
Playing on my external screen (1680x1050) does not really change performance.

On another hand I do believe 512MB would future-proof the gaming usage, if you plan to keep the computer for a few years.
Click to expand...

Most people who are buying MBPs now and are looking to spend that kind of money on a top of the line computer are not getting the 1440x900 screen, just fyi.
 
cluthz said:
Tbh "high" settings on SC2 on the 1440x900 screen does not require 512mb vram. If you plan to play on a 24 inch screen or so, it would make difference, but at the built in screen 256MB works just fine.

I've played SC2 beta both on win xp and mac os on mine, and both works fine. High setting would make some FPS drops on mac os, but I believe that is the GPU speed and not the amount of vram available. The Mac os client is simply not as optimized as the win version.
Playing on my external screen (1680x1050) does not really change performance.

On another hand I do believe 512MB would future-proof the gaming usage, if you plan to keep the computer for a few years.
Click to expand...

Actually the 330M will never really make use of 512MB because of its 128bit bus width. It bottlenecks there so you can put 512MB of vram into the card but it really won't make too much a difference and the difference will probably be unnoticeable. It might help with some frame buffer effects but the information will still be pushed through the bus at the same rate. So even if you did get the 512MB you still wouldn't really be doing anything to future proof your computer's gaming capabilities.
 
if you're going to spend the money for i5, might as well add a couple of hundred for i7, won't regret it in the end
 
Whatever version you do decide to get, bootcamp it. SC2 on bootcamp runs so much smoother than on the mac.
 
Indeed, the disks even had both versions and now days you can just obtain it from battle.net without having to use your disks
 
I went with the base 15' mbp. With the higher res glossy screen. Thanks guys.
 
I am currently in the SC2 Beta and hope to offer you some help.

First of all (to be elitest), most profession starcraft players play with textures med, and everything else low. Because of animations and graphics, anything higher makes battles confusing at times. Most replays you see on youtube are casted on high or ultra.

I don't know how important graphics are to you, but i believe I used my 15" 2010 model mostly on med/high settings without any problems. (I also returned the 15")

Currently I have the 13" and run textures on medium, and everything low. It only has problems in huge 3:3 or medium 4:4 battles.

I don't know the exact numbers of i5/i7s but to keep it simple, if you want to play a lot of 3:3/4:4 with higher settings go with the i7.
If you don't mind playing on lower settings stick with the i5.
 
zorahk said:
Most people who are buying MBPs now and are looking to spend that kind of money on a top of the line computer are not getting the 1440x900 screen, just fyi.
Click to expand...

I would disagree, most apple stores doesn't even carry the high res displays, and I guess the minorty of orders are BTO, not standard configs.

I like the 1440x900 res :)
If I'm doing something that requires a bigger screen, I'd be on my desk hooking up a real screen, not a 15-inch TN panel..

If you read my post I also specified that running at 1680x1050 didn't produce much difference. Also as I and several other users pointed out, the vram is not the limiting factor of the 330M, but bandwidth is.
 
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