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MBPR gaming experience (Diablo, Starcraft)

D

Deliak

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 25, 2011
20
0
Today I have been at an apple reseller here in Italy to try first hand how the retina book would handle diablo 3 and starcraft 2.
I did this in order to choose between buying a retina or an old style maxed out pro 15". The helpful reseller allowed me to try these games on his only available retina which was the entry level one 2.3 Ghz with 8 gb ram.
As I expected by reading the first reviews and the threads about retina gaming on these forums, the retina display is indeed beautiful but not apt at gaming.
Every resolution below native is blurry and fuzzy, maybe a lot less than on traditional displays, but still it is blurry and fuzzy. Someone else could probably stand playing on the beautiful retina with a blurred resolution but I can't.
Playing at the native resolution is beautiful indeed with wonderful colors, mind blowing resolution, almost no glare, astounding contrast and so on until the images are fixed and not moving... The frame rates were in the teens for Diablo with a dozen of monsters act III at high, and in the twenties for Starcraft at high with very few units on screen. I did not have time to check starcraft with plenty of units but I imagine the fps would drop.
So to wrap it up, an hi-res antiglare traditional pro 15" 2.6 16 Gb 256 sdd is on my way.
 
Bit shortsighted to reject the Retina because right now non updated apps are blurry. In 4 weeks-8 weeks it should have been resolved.

And the performance of games is going to be identical to that of the MBPR as it's the same specifications.

Pretty cool reseller to have Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 pre-loaded onto the MBPR too..
 
niuniu said:
Sounds like BS to me. Either that or you don't know how to configure settings.
Click to expand...

I configured everything on high with no anti aliasing for native retina res. fps were better with no shadows or other lower configurations but I would not like to play with lower configurations than those that I have on my current early 2011 pro 15".
 
The answer to this might be obvious, but i haven't played the game...

How did you get to play on Act III of a game, on a store demo computer?
 
Diablo FPS in the teens at 2880x1800 resolution is actually encouraging. Most people will either play the game on a external monitor or with more reasonable resolutions, and in those cases the FPS should be consistently above 30. 2880x1800 is simply overkill.

I've seen no other reports of the blurriness in D3/rMBP reviews thus far.

It's also worth mentioning that the game, like most others, will run much better on Bootcamp Windows than it does in OSX.

----------
TopToffee said:
The answer to this might be obvious, but i haven't played the game...

How did you get to play on Act III of a game, on a store demo computer?
Click to expand...

Diablo 3 is online only, and all character info is stored on Blizzard's servers. You can pick up where you've left off from any computer after downloading the client.
 
PVisitors said:
Bit shortsighted to reject the Retina because right now non updated apps are blurry. In 4 weeks-8 weeks it should have been resolved.

And the performance of games is going to be identical to that of the MBPR as it's the same specifications.

Pretty cool reseller to have Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 pre-loaded onto the MBPR too..
Click to expand...

The games were mine: I went there with my own external hdd...
The performance on the traditional 15" hi-res (1680x1050) are a lot better. I own an early 2011 hi-re 15" with the radeon 6750 and I can tell it for sure.
While I was there I have also tried Diablo 3 on the only available traditional 2012 pro 15" (2.3Ghz 4Gb ram 650M 512 ram 1440 display) and the fps at high act 3 with dozens of monsters seemed pretty stable at around 40 fps.
 
The "Dude";15058241 said:
Diablo 3 is online only, and all character info is stored on Blizzard's servers. You can pick up where you've left off from any computer after downloading the client.
Click to expand...

Fair enough.
 
TopToffee said:
The answer to this might be obvious, but i haven't played the game...

How did you get to play on Act III of a game, on a store demo computer?
Click to expand...

Again I went there with my own Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 on my external hdd and I logged in in the games with my battle.net account.
I am not ********ting you guys. I just wanted to share my experience.
 
Deliak said:
The games were mine: I went there with my own external hdd...
The performance on the traditional 15" hi-res (1680x1050) are a lot better. I own an early 2011 hi-re 15" with the radeon 6750 and I can tell it for sure.
While I was there I have also tried Diablo 3 on the only available traditional 2012 pro 15" (2.3Ghz 4Gb ram 650M 512 ram 1440 display) and the fps at high act 3 with dozens of monsters seemed pretty stable at around 40 fps.
Click to expand...

Yeah because you're playing Diablo 3 on native resolution which is double the resolution of a normal 15" pro. You didn't experience better or worse performance. It's like comparing Apples to Oranges.

*Shrug*. Fair enough if you don't want to play on anything less than native, but retina is hardly designed for games, hell Macs themselves will always be worse for games because of OpenGL
 
Deliak said:
The games were mine: I went there with my own external hdd...
The performance on the traditional 15" hi-res (1680x1050) are a lot better. I own an early 2011 hi-re 15" with the radeon 6750 and I can tell it for sure.
While I was there I have also tried Diablo 3 on the only available traditional 2012 pro 15" (2.3Ghz 4Gb ram 650M 512 ram 1440 display) and the fps at high act 3 with dozens of monsters seemed pretty stable at around 40 fps.
Click to expand...

Did you happen to force the computer to use the Nvidia chip as opposed to the Intel 4000? One would assume that would switch over automatically, but who knows.

I can't think of any other reason that the rMBP would fare worse than the low end MBP that has half the VRAM, when running at a smaller resolution.
 
The "Dude";15058296 said:
Did you happen to force the computer to use the Nvidia chip as opposed to the Intel 4000? One would assume that would switch over automatically, but who knows.

I can't think of any other reason that the rMBP would fare worse than the low end MBP that has half the VRAM, when running at a smaller resolution.
Click to expand...

I am not sure but I think the 4000 cannot move a game like diablo at retina resolution at all. Anyway the fps that I have seen are more or less like those reported by the reviews I have read. The difference may be that I was in the middle of act 3 which is more demanding.
 
Has anyone posted FPS stats on running diablo,starcraft,etc at 1680x1050 (on the Retina mbp)? I would rather run it at a lower res for more fps.
 
children said:
Not sure about Starcraft, but diablo looks swell on any res above 1800*1200 IMO..
Click to expand...

It looks pretty well, playable and fluid, but blurry like any other display at non native resolutions (better than my 1680x1050 if I set it at 1280x800 for sure). It seems also dimmer at non native res.
 
airflight23 said:
Has anyone posted FPS stats on running diablo,starcraft,etc at 1680x1050 (on the Retina mbp)? I would rather run it at a lower res for more fps.
Click to expand...

The question (at least for me) is how do the games look being on a non-native resolution! Do they look as bad as on "conventional" displays or do they look better because of the higher pixel density?

If they do I would totally be ok with playing them on a lower resolution...

edit: well just saw the post just above mine...
 
Framerate was really only in teens at retina resolution? Why the hell did Apple bother mentioning d3 has retina res if it's unplayable, or were you on high settings?
 
Dangerous Theory said:
Framerate was really only in teens at retina resolution? Why the hell did Apple bother mentioning d3 has retina res if it's unplayable, or were you on high settings?
Click to expand...

Yes I was at high settings, without anti aliasing. I play at high settings on my early 2011 macbook pro 15" so I want to stick to high settings.
 
Blizzard is working on a "Retina" mode for Diablo 3. I'd imagine it will look like 1440x900, but with enhanced graphics. The game is obviously not meant to be played at that ridiculous resolution.
 
By saying blurry how blurry is it? Is it like taking of your 3d glasses and watching the screen in the cinema Blurry?
 
Bootcamp, win 7, 1440x900 since it looks crisp being half resolution, is going to be the way to play modern games. And this is only a 650M, can't expect miracles from it.
 
I don't believe gaming at non-natve resolutions looks any worse than video. Watching a 1080p movie on this Retina display should yield the same visual results.

I'm also the type of person content to play Xbox games on my 1080p TV, and most games are native 576p-720p, so I rarely see anything at native resolution other than Bluray movies in the living room.

For me, the Retina would be for crisper text and more screen space in Xcode, Logic, and iMovie.
 
Haarith :) said:
By saying blurry how blurry is it? Is it like taking of your 3d glasses and watching the screen in the cinema Blurry?
Click to expand...

No, of course it is not that blurry, but it is not crisp either. I do not know how to describe it better, I would suggest you to do as I did and try it yourself. Try to set your display resolution at the next available non native resolution. The retina performs a little bit better being so high but it is still very visible.
 
Deliak said:
Yes I was at high settings, without anti aliasing. I play at high settings on my early 2011 macbook pro 15" so I want to stick to high settings.
Click to expand...

See, this is why op has completely failed.

You are comparing retina settings on a mbpr -v- non retina settings on a legacy mbp.

The proper comparison is to run the mbpr and legacy mbp at the same res. Other reviewers have done this and said thst the mbpr is still superior.

Also your comments on fps is nonsense because you are making up the numbers. You didnt run a benchmark while doing your in store testing.
 
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