Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

New 15" with AMD

Warhawk15

Warhawk15

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 1, 2012
208
10
So I reluctantly and excitedly pulled the trigger on a new 15" Pro.
Ordered this morning and just picked it up!

I've been dying to see more benchmarks on games, and I'm super excited to get on it.
Some games I actually play that I'll test in OS X until I get Windows on there later...
Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, Heroes of the Storm, Borderlands 2, and several other random games I have. Mainly the Blizzard games though.
Installed the 10.10.4 beta since it was having wifi issues, hopefully that helps.

This will be quite a step up from my late 2013 model with only Iris Pro graphics.
The 2013 wasn't able to handle The Witcher 2, very excited to play that as I beat the first one.


Heroes of the Storm:
1080p with high settings.
Ran perfectly smooth, frame rates were usually 50-60.

Diablo 3:
1080p with highest settings and shadows turned off, no AA.
Did a run for the keys in each Act on Torment 6, only dropped below 30fps a few times in huge battles.
Otherwise it was a buttery smooth 50-60fps.

Borderlands 2:
1080p with high settings.
Runs perfectly smooth, looks so much better than low settings!
 

Attachments

  • cinebench.png
    cinebench.png
    1.3 MB · Views: 147
  • nova.png
    nova.png
    64.2 KB · Views: 105
  • luxmark.png
    luxmark.png
    505.7 KB · Views: 124
  • valley.png
    valley.png
    66.7 KB · Views: 112
Last edited:
Diablo plays well. Don't put it at full retina as it will run a bit slow at high settings, but run it at 1440p and it will run smooth and look amazing
 
As a teacher I got a (quite small) discount when I bought my MBP by visiting the education store but there was no need to verify anything.
 
Cuniac said:
Diablo plays well. Don't put it at full retina as it will run a bit slow at high settings, but run it at 1440p and it will run smooth and look amazing
Click to expand...

I use an external 24" 1080p monitor, so thats what I'll be mainly using.
 
Warhawk15 said:
So I reluctantly and excitedly pulled the trigger on a new 15" Pro.
Ordered this morning and just picked it up!

I've been dying to see more benchmarks on games, and I'm super excited to get on it.
Some games I actually play that I'll test in OS X until I get Windows on there later...
Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, Heroes of the Storm, Borderlands 2, and several other random games I have. Mainly the Blizzard games though.

This will be quite a step up from my late 2013 model with only Iris Pro graphics.

On a side note, I ordered the education one for $200 off. I just realized they didn't ask for any verification lol. Maybe its already connected with my Apple ID that I'm a student?
Click to expand...

How do avail the students discount online? Sorry but i am new to this. First time ordering online.
 
Just my luck, its got wifi issues...already disconnected twice.
 
Quick question for anyone...
I have parallels 10 installed with 8.1 64 bit.
However it doesn't have any graphics drivers, when I try and run gpu-z nothing comes up.
When I run the AMD Catalyst Auto Detect program, it says the graphics card is Parallels Display Adapter.

How do I get it to use the graphics card?
Already uninstalled then installed the parallels tools and still no graphics card.
 
Warhawk15 said:
Quick question for anyone...
I have parallels 10 installed with 8.1 64 bit.
However it doesn't have any graphics drivers, when I try and run gpu-z nothing comes up.
When I run the AMD Catalyst Auto Detect program, it says the graphics card is Parallels Display Adapter.

How do I get it to use the graphics card?
Already uninstalled then installed the parallels tools and still no graphics card.
Click to expand...

I do not believe you can get full GPU acceleration on any type of virtualization IIRC, that's why I've got a bootcamp partition as opposed to what you're doing.
 
sentential said:
I do not believe you can get full GPU acceleration on any type of virtualization IIRC, that's why I've got a bootcamp partition as opposed to what you're doing.
Click to expand...

Sad day. =(
My usb drive for some reason isn't recognized anymore on both macbook pros, and that has everything I need on it to install bootcamp.
 
Warhawk15 said:
Sad day. =(
My usb drive for some reason isn't recognized anymore on both macbook pros, and that has everything I need on it to install bootcamp.
Click to expand...

Sucks man, also when you do decide to do bootcamp on the '15-15 be sure to give yourself enough time and patience to do it cuz it is a BITCH to get working. Lots of us had quite a few teething pains getting the GPU to work including myself
 
Warhawk15 said:
Just my luck, its got wifi issues...already disconnected twice.
Click to expand...
If you haven't already, I suggest trying the 10.10.4 beta, as it replaced the much maligned 'discoveryd' networking stack with the older but proven 'mDNSResponder,' which seems to have directly addressed the myriad of wifi connectivity issues that Macs have been experiencing since the advent of Yosemite. In my case, 10.10.4 beta has been performing flawlessly since I installed it about a week ago.

http://9to5mac.com/2015/05/26/apple-drops-discoveryd-in-latest-os-x-beta-following-months-of-complaints-about-network-issues-with-yosemite/
 
bmclaurin said:
If you haven't already, I suggest trying the 10.10.4 beta, as it replaced the much maligned 'discoveryd' networking stack with the older but proven 'mDNSResponder,' which seems to have directly addressed the myriad of wifi connectivity issues that Macs have been experiencing since the advent of Yosemite. In my case, 10.10.4 beta has been performing flawlessly since I installed it about a week ago.

http://9to5mac.com/2015/05/26/apple...omplaints-about-network-issues-with-yosemite/
Click to expand...

Ya I actually ended up installing it, we'll see how it goes.
 
sentential said:
Sucks man, also when you do decide to do bootcamp on the '15-15 be sure to give yourself enough time and patience to do it cuz it is a BITCH to get working. Lots of us had quite a few teething pains getting the GPU to work including myself
Click to expand...

Well that's "helpful" then! I don't use Windows myself, but I just opened Boot Camp Assistant on my 2015 and it seems to assume that I want Windows 8 and doesn't say what to do for 7! Off to a great start there...
 
Nermal said:
Well that's "helpful" then! I don't use Windows myself, but I just opened Boot Camp Assistant on my 2015 and it seems to assume that I want Windows 8 and doesn't say what to do for 7! Off to a great start there...
Click to expand...

They dropped support principally because even the integrated graphics card on your CPU supports DirectX10 which is a requirement for Windows 8.0. Because of this there is no official support or drivers for anything other than Windows 8.1. Notice how I said Windows 8.1? Because I spent hours trying and several nasty calls to Apple (my bad) on why their driver package wouldn't install or recognize my devices.

Turns out I am both rude and an idiot
 
sentential said:
Because of this there is no official support or drivers for anything other than Windows 8.1.
Click to expand...

Apple's site says that Windows 7 is supported (footnote 5). Boot Camp's help page also lists support for 7. I haven't seen anything official saying that only 8.1 is supported on the 15" 2015.
 
Last edited:
Nermal said:
Apple's site says that Windows 7 is supported (footnote 5). Boot Camp's help page also lists support for 7. I haven't seen anything official saying that only 8.1 is supported on the 15" 2015.
Click to expand...

You'd think that but the BCA specifically says "Windows 8.1 or later". If you can get it working on 8.0 you're a better man than I lol
 
Hmm, curiouser and curiouser! My BCA just says "8 or later", not "8.1" so that's interesting. I didn't go any further than the second page though.
 
Nermal said:
Hmm, curiouser and curiouser! My BCA just says "8 or later", not "8.1" so that's interesting. I didn't go any further than the second page though.
Click to expand...

I used BCA on my 2011 MBP and I don't think its going to matter if you just hit next. I guess I'll know for sure in a few hours but it really just formats the drive and downloads drivers, the install is still from the ISO. Now the drivers may be an issue.
 
Cuniac said:
OMG your right.... I'm going to try and install this when I get home see if it works.

This article shows the 2014 15in can use 7, but they changed the dGPU this time and there is no listing for the 2015.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204048
Click to expand...

It won't work.

The Broadwell Airs, 13" rMBPs and the mid-2015 Haswell 15" rMBPs will only support Windows 8.1 and above, because these Macs no longer have support for BIOS-CSM anymore. It now only supports UEFI booting.

Windows 7 does not support UEFI booting. So it's a hardware limitation - the EFI chip in the logic board only supports UEFI 2.0 and no longer has support for BIOS-CSM.
 
yjchua95 said:
It won't work.

The Broadwell Airs, 13" rMBPs and the mid-2015 Haswell 15" rMBPs will only support Windows 8.1 and above, because these Macs no longer have support for BIOS-CSM anymore. It now only supports UEFI booting.

Windows 7 does not support UEFI booting. So it's a hardware limitation - the EFI chip in the logic board only supports UEFI 2.0 and no longer has support for BIOS-CSM.
Click to expand...

You have saddened me... I guess I could try windows 10 preview lol
 
MacDevMike said:
Latest version of windows 10 runs very well actually. That will be a great update for Windows users.
Click to expand...

Is the preview free and if so why can you acquire a copy. Also, does it need to install on an existing version of windows or is it a stand alone?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back