New MacBook Pro and Gaming?

[thomas1984]

Im no tech geek, so can some one explain to me what the new specs for the MacBook pro mean for gaming? I would Love to be able to run Fallout 4 at good settings (yes I know Id need to use boot camp) but was wondering if the new mack book pro can do this or should I go ahead with my plan of selling my late 2014 mack book pro and moving to a PC laptop?

Thomas

 

[tongefactor40]

From the little research I have done, the base amd 450 is trash for gaming. 460 upgrade is a little better but not great. I would go with a gaming rig absolutely.

 

[henrikbjorn]

From the little research I have done, the base amd 450 is trash for gaming. 460 upgrade is a little better but not great. I would go with a gaming rig absolutely.

I am not sure that AMD 450 is the same as Radeon Pro 450. Or if it is, it seems odd to label it differently.

 

[leman]

Its not really clear what these new GPUs are. My guesses is that the Pro 450 will be similar or faster than the Nvidia 950M while the Pro 460 should be faster than the 965M. In any case, they are about twice or so as fast as the M370X.
[doublepost=1477595877][/doublepost]

From the little research I have done, the base amd 450 is trash for gaming. 460 upgrade is a little better but not great. I would go with a gaming rig absolutely.

Where do you have that information from? There is no info at all about these models. AMD hasn't announced anything really.

 

[MacAlien]

Like the other person stated, it'll be crap. Buy a razer blade or something else if you're interested in gaming imo. Also, it's another AMD. Not exactly a good omen to begin with.

 

[ultra7k]

Really wonder why they went AMD this time around, did Nvidia not have the 16mm chips ready, or were they really just trying to maximize the battery?

But in all honesty, what gaming? It's not like it's a gaming machine to begin with, if you were going to plunk down that kind of cash, you could build a super solid gaming rig for half the cost - I can't imagine the strain on the GPU if you were trying to drive two of those 5k monitors while gaming at the same time lol. I guess they just included the gaming performance because they needed some other kind of measuring stick?

I'll just stick with my 2012 cMBP for now.

 

[MacAlien]

Nvidia and Apple haven't played nice in a few years over Apple burning the eggs and saying they're simply crispy when Nvidia tried to eat them. Nvidia broke a few teeths eating and now the two are no longer bosom buddies.

 

[h9826790]

I am not sure that AMD 450 is the same as Radeon Pro 450. Or if it is, it seems odd to label it differently.

Pretty sure it's just the normal AMD GPU with an Apple name. On the Mac Pro side, we try almost all graphic cards that avail to the desktop. So far, in the new RX series, only the RX460 works without any kext hack. So, it looks like the GPU in the new MBP is just the RX460 with difference core number / clock speed/ VRAM size.

Apple has a good track record to call a normal consumer product as a pro item on their product. The D700 on the new Mac Pro is actually a downclocked HD 7970 (with the exact Device ID).

Really wonder why they went AMD this time around, did Nvidia not have the 16mm chips ready, or were they really just trying to maximize the battery?

Apple didn't write any driver for Nvidia GPU since Maxwell. It seems they have zero plan to go with Nvidia in short future. Anyway, on the technical side, AMD GPU provide much better cost to performance ratio in FCPX (or any software that rely on OpenCL). Most likely this is the main reason why Apple stick to AMD. In fact, if they care about power consumption, they should go with Nvidia.

 

[thomas1984]

Really wonder why they went AMD this time around, did Nvidia not have the 16mm chips ready, or were they really just trying to maximize the battery?

But in all honesty, what gaming? It's not like it's a gaming machine to begin with, if you were going to plunk down that kind of cash, you could build a super solid gaming rig for half the cost - I can't imagine the strain on the GPU if you were trying to drive two of those 5k monitors while gaming at the same time lol. I guess they just included the gaming performance because they needed some other kind of measuring stick?

I'll just stick with my 2012 cMBP for now.

Im limited to a lap top is why I was hoping apple would include gaming performance in this new release.. Any recommendations on a laptop "half the price of a MacBook" that can run a graphics intense game like fallout 4?

 

[AvengerNX08]

Im limited to a lap top is why I was hoping apple would include gaming performance in this new release.. Any recommendations on a laptop "half the price of a MacBook" that can run a graphics intense game like fallout 4?

I played Fallout 4 on a 2012 rMBP and while it has its hiccups and slowdowns, with the right tweaks it runs fairly smooth and looks decent at the same time. I can only imagine what 4 GB of VRAM and some additional horsepower will do for performance I for one can't wait to test Skyrim Remastered with the Radeon Pro 460!

If anything, I would be more concerned about power throttling...as thats the only issue I really had...

 

[voyagerd]

I'm looking forward to trying Star Citizen on my 4K TV.

 

[Meever]

Expect to run most modern games in 1080p at low-mid settings.

The problem is the wattage. All the nvidia alternatives that spank the AMD chips in the MBP all draw twice as much watts. It's like comparing A extreme edition of a CPU with the mobile variant. Just not a fair comparison.

Really bums me out apple didn't keep the MBP similarly sized, slap on a SD card slot, MagSafe, better cooling and and larger battery. Would have let them put in a much more powerful GPU.... alas.

 

[thornslack]

Knowing apple these GPUs will just be downclocked downvolted variants of the existing AMD line as others have stated. Gaming performance is going to be pretty anemic, especially when you compare to dollars spent.

 

[asoksevil]

Very interested in know how the new MBP will handle gaming, especially the Irish Graphics.

 

[fatalogic]

I wouldn't do it 2gb video ram won't get you very far. 4gb is a little better but it seems like every year developers make games that require more and more vram. I have a 980ti on my desktop with 6gb vram and on certain games I can come close to maxing out the vram.

 

[henrikbjorn]

http://creators.radeon.com/radeon-pro/ Seems they have shared some more information about the GPU. Actually i am wondering if i need the dGPU of the 15". Just for casual gaming in the (hopefully) upcoming Diablo4 or cs:go

 

[shigatashway]

Very interested in know how the new MBP will handle gaming, especially the Irish Graphics.

I think I've heard of those, where all the polygons are shaped like clovers in varying shades of green?

 

[apolausta]

Potential eGPUs...?

 

[MacAlien]

http://creators.radeon.com/radeon-pro/ Seems they have shared some more information about the GPU. Actually i am wondering if i need the dGPU of the 15". Just for casual gaming in the (hopefully) upcoming Diablo4 or cs:go

Knowing Blizzard, if they announce D4 it'll be twice the min spec as D3 like they did with Legion.

 

[leman]

The desktop Radeon 460 RX scores 60+ fps at 1920x1080 on a mixture of normal/high settings. Given that the mobile Pro 460 is probably around 10-15% slower, modern games will be very much playable on 1920x1080 or 1680x1050. Put differently: this is the first mac laptop that can actually play contemporary games at 60 fps

 

[dashwin]

Im no tech geek, so can some one explain to me what the new specs for the MacBook pro mean for gaming? I would Love to be able to run Fallout 4 at good settings (yes I know Id need to use boot camp) but was wondering if the new mack book pro can do this or should I go ahead with my plan of selling my late 2014 mack book pro and moving to a PC laptop?

If you want a gaming rig, its obviously a PC. For me, I just need a well rounded laptop and if you ignore the price, Apple is THE company that makes the best ones that usually stand the test of time.

A good comparison of notebook PCs vs the new MacBook is available here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3136...the-macbook-pro-stacks-up-against-the-pc.html.

The MSI GS63VR completely blows the MacBook PRO out of the water. And it's also interesting from a weight perspective: "The problem for the MacBook Pro 15 is its weight class. At 4 pounds, it’s fair to compare it to the 4.1-pound MSI GS63VR Stealth laptop. Our review of the MSI is imminent, but it packs a quad-core Skylake CPU, 4K screen, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, 512GB SSD, 1TB hard drive, and a GeForce GTX 1060 card."

But then you will need to question, does the MSI measure up when it comes to build/durability, SSD performance, battery life, quietness (fans) and a lot of other specs to pull off this feat? Having a faster SSD will most certainly speed up every task on the laptop, I wonder if MSI can match up to the integrated SSD performance.

If there was one issue I have with the latest Mabook PRO it's that they didn't offer a 32GB version. Yes, I would have wished for a better CPU, better GPU etc. but I know that all these come at a cost and IMO would compromise the well-roundedness that Apple products usually excel at.

 

[akuma13]

Potential eGPUs...?

This is what i'm curious about. If the new macbook pro supports eGPU, you'll have all the graphical power you need.

 

[Trahearne]

This is what i'm curious about. If the new macbook pro supports eGPU, you'll have all the graphical power you need.

It has TB3. But then the firmware has to be upgraded to support hot swapping, according to Razer. In the case of 15", it also has to properly handle three-way multi-vendor switchable graphics, since you can have Nvidia's cards as eGPUs.

 

[Hyloba]

What about the 13" iris graphics? At the moment, I am used to my ultrabook with intel i5 3317U 1.7gh, intel hd 4000 and 4gb of ram. Yes I played Dark Souls 2, Diablo 3 and Overwatch on this. Yes it was lower than lowest possible performance.

 

[MacAlien]

The desktop Radeon 460 RX scores 60+ fps at 1920x1080 on a mixture of normal/high settings. Given that the mobile Pro 460 is probably around 10-15% slower, modern games will be very much playable on 1920x1080 or 1680x1050. Put differently: this is the first mac laptop that can actually play contemporary games at 60 fps

For the price tag on the 2016 MBP, it won't be worth it and I doubt it can run anything higher than medium settings in most games out there. Plus, with Metal being all buggy as hell since there isn't much traction for Apple to optimize it to run as smooth as it's PC counterpart, then that'll factor into how well things run, too. Pricing it, with BTO to max, it's freaking $4300. Surface with the 965 is like, $3300. MSI w/ 1080, 4k, 64GB is $3900, Razer Blade w/1060 is like $2700 (and can get the Razer Core to boost it), Dell XPS 15" w/960 is $1700'ish? Which is the price tag Apple should've gone with cause that's the max it's worth. There are better options out there if you want to do actual gaming. Plus, AMD has crappy support in general. Somebody put Apple and Nvidia into a dangerous scenario so they can get over their beef with each other already and put good chips back into their computers.