Until very recently I've been gaming quite happy on a Core 2 Duo.
I've happily gamed in the past on (carefully chosen) lower-cache Core2 LV chips (I used to play with MoDt a lot). Turns out even a Core (1) Duo with a solid graphics frontend will do a more than acceptable job if decked out properly.
If you think anything that doesn't have any CPU "EXTREME H4X0R!!!17COREZ!" sticker
placed by intel on the chassis/CPU, you need to stop reading marketing hyperbole and become more technical.
In that sense, the MBA has a totally decent i7. Learn to read specs. It'll game just fine.
*yawn*.
Thunderbolt carries PCI. PCI carrries external GPU's. This is tangentially what this thread is about.
Here is a reference setup:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/e-g...d-adapter-paired-vidock-2011-macbook-pro.html
The 2012 Air's CPU has more grunt, and the built-in GPU is irrelevant.
The bottleneck in that setup is that the data between the machine and GPU passes through an expresscard that bottlenecks at one PCIe lane. It's the single thing that's slowing the rig down. Unless you fix it, throw a CPU 100 times faster at it, throw a GPU 100 times faster at it, the performance will stay the same.
What I've proposed widens that bottleneck from x1 PCIe 2.0 lane (500Mbytes/sec) to.... the lower of
1. The interface constraint (2012 MBA has 40Gbits configured as two channels, each with a 10Gbit up lane and a 10Gbit down lane). So in theory it can move 20Gbits/sec (that's ~2500Mbytes/sec theoretical) from the laptop to the GPU.
2. The dock design constraint (Sonnet's tech support replied to my email saying (quoting verbatim):
"The two slots in the Echo Express Pro Chassis share a single 10Gb TB connection bi-directionally."
That's 1250Mbytes/sec between laptop and GPU.
So using it would take a rig that's been shown to be quite playable at 1080 res, and more than doubling its major bottleneck.
Tell me I can't game on that again.
Because that makes a whole bunch of other lifestyle compromises I don't want to make.
I like my machine to pass the 2-finger test. Try lifting a (new, retina) MBP with 2 fingers (when open) off your bedside table at 7am in the morning. With 2 fingers.
I like my machine everywhere with me.
I like to have ONE machine, not many.
MBA allows that. With the (temporary) exception of thunderbolt, so do the Asus and Lenovo Carbon analogs. Your rig epically fails. Do that yourself if you like.
Maybe my purpose was not clear. What I want the box to do is to actually play games, not engulf myself in obsessive Frames-per-second optimization.
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From Sonnet tech's support website: (Their support directed me to this and pointed out this applies to any GPU):
Is the NVIDIA Quadro 4000 for Macintosh compatible with Echo Thunderbolt Expansion Chassis?
No, the NVIDIA Quadro 4000 is not Thunderbolt compatible. Apple and Intel have prescribed specific connectivity standards for products with Thunderbolt technology interfaces. These include drivers that are recognized by Thunderbolt and allow the product to connect and disconnect while the computer is running (hot plug - unplug). Products with Thunderbolt interfaces are tested by Intel/ Apple and certified as compatible with these standards.
For PCIe expansion chassis to function correctly in this Thunderbolt connectivity paradigm, the drivers for PCIe card used in the chassis must also be updated to support these requirements. In most cases, each card manufacturer is responsible for updating the drivers of their cards. For the Quadro, it is Apple that controls the driver in Mac OS.
Intel has required all PCIe chassis manufacturers to agree to list only compatible cards that have been tested to support these standards. Apple has determined that for now, there are several technical reasons why it is not a good idea for a GPU card-including the Quadro-to connect over Thunderbolt, therefore GPU cards do not have a Thunderbolt compatible driver. UntilThunderbolt compatible drivers are released for GPU cards, they will not work over Thunderbolt.
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So that last one is a lie. It is not /certified/ to work by nVidia/ATI, but in some cases it will work, with likely caveats being running into the exact kind of trouble that people already doing the express card hack are running into - bad support for hotplugging resulting in bluescreens if you plug it in in the wrong sequence etc.
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