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

How Do You Think The New MacBook Pro Games?


  • Total voters
    181
Steam engine games are knows for being able to be played on awful machines though. HL2 can run on some just terrible stuff.

Idk

Oh I know, but some of Left 4 Dead 2's effects are pretty needy. Also, Spore is a year or two old so it should be fine. I remember it not needing a great pc when it came out.
 
Just got my 15" i7 high-res. Setting some stuff up but i'll let you guys known how it runs COD4 by comparison to the 2.8/9600m. Then I'll firmware overclock it and let everyone know how that goes.
 
I'm sorta curious, the reference design for the 330M runs at 575MHz, rumors say the Apple one only runs at 500MHz; would that mean that (apart from heat) it'd be pretty safe to run it at 575?
 
In terms of the spore answer, I ran spore on my 2.2 ghz SR with 8600 GT 128mb which is half the speed of the 330m. I ran it at 1440x900 with almost everything on max and it was just fine. Ran really well actually. Since the 330m is double the speed I think your fine.
 
Yeah. I'm just a little worried in the laptop. Did they underclock it just to get a battery life number, or was there a heat problem?

I dont think its so much the battery life or the heat but more likely the amount of wattage that the computer can generate. Also is it possible that the underclock might be happening automatically when your checking? Try checking the clock speeds when a game is open. I know that many nvidia laptop graphic cards dynamicly underclock themselves when not in full use to get more battery life
 
so did we already discuss vram and stuff? I am thinking yea the 620m would be great, with it's extra vram, but...... benchmark wise the 540 is almost the same, but where is the vram going to help?? I will probably stay with the 1440 so do I need the extra.
 
I dont think its so much the battery life or the heat but more likely the amount of wattage that the computer can generate. Also is it possible that the underclock might be happening automatically when your checking? Try checking the clock speeds when a game is open. I know that many nvidia laptop graphic cards dynamicly underclock themselves when not in full use to get more battery life

It's possible, worth checking on that. It wouldn't be the first time the internet had totally lied to me about the specs of an Apple product.
 
Did some gaming playing Heroes of Newerth beta (awesome game) on the mac side and i ran it at 1440 with everything high and all the effects. I was averaging around 60 FPS and it dipped to high 40s/low 50s on huge 5v5 battles. Ran A LOT better than my 9400M on the macside.
 
Did some gaming playing Heroes of Newerth beta (awesome game) on the mac side and i ran it at 1440 with everything high and all the effects. I was averaging around 60 FPS and it dipped to high 40s/low 50s on huge 5v5 battles. Ran A LOT better than my 9400M on the macside.

512 or 256?
 
I hear a lot of talk about overclocking the GPU. How do you go about this in OS X?

You'll want to use a software overclocker like RivaTuner or nTune in windows to make sure the gpu can run stably at the desired settings, then you use NiBiTor to backup the original gpu's firmware, modify a copy and save it to a bootable DOS disk, then use nvFlash to flash the modified firmware to the gpu. This is a good writeup:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/overclock-graphics-card,1916-6.html
 
It's possible, worth checking on that. It wouldn't be the first time the internet had totally lied to me about the specs of an Apple product.
Apple is well known for underclocking its GPU parts and relabeling mobile ones as their lower end desktop ones.

I don't have much experience with nVidia GPUs lowering voltages and clocks on 2D idle. We'd have to use GPU-Z to log what happens at 2D idle and full load 3D.

It looks like my 9500 GT DDR2 can manage Battlefield: Bad Company 2 at 1280 x 800 at Medium/Low settings. The 9500 GT compares very well with what you'd get from the 9600M GT. Cores really matter as on this test machine both cores of the Celeron E3200 were almost at full load from the game alone.
 
Not a lot to report so far with my comparison of the new 15" high-res i7 against the old 15" 2.8. I did start up COD4, and it seems to run just about the same with the 330 at 1680x1050 as it did previously with the 9600m at 1440x900. Nothing solid, I only played for a minute or two.

I note about overclocking -- it seems that neither RivaTuner nor NiBiTor support the 330 yet :( We'll just have to wait!
 
Not a lot to report so far with my comparison of the new 15" high-res i7 against the old 15" 2.8. I did start up COD4, and it seems to run just about the same with the 330 at 1680x1050 as it did previously with the 9600m at 1440x900. Nothing solid, I only played for a minute or two.

I note about overclocking -- it seems that neither RivaTuner nor NiBiTor support the 330 yet :( We'll just have to wait!

That doesn't seem right because people have been overclocking the 330m's in vaios for a while know. Perhaps you need to get the latest drivers?


Also about the HoN question, I have the 256 version.
 
Apple is well known for underclocking its GPU parts and relabeling mobile ones as their lower end desktop ones.

I don't have much experience with nVidia GPUs lowering voltages and clocks on 2D idle. We'd have to use GPU-Z to log what happens at 2D idle and full load 3D.

It looks like my 9500 GT DDR2 can manage Battlefield: Bad Company 2 at 1280 x 800 at Medium/Low settings. The 9500 GT compares very well with what you'd get from the 9600M GT. Cores really matter as on this test machine both cores of the Celeron E3200 were almost at full load from the game alone.

I don't understand, the 9500 GT is a desktop card that achieves a 3Dmark06 score of 7000, putting it higher than the 330? I'm confused.
 
That doesn't seem right because people have been overclocking the 330m's in vaios for a while know. Perhaps you need to get the latest drivers?


Also about the HoN question, I have the 256 version.

Thanks, after I finish my frantic setup of this machine I will definitely check that out.

I've never overclocked a GPU by flashing it before...
I have, however, overclocked quite a new PowerPCs re-soldering the PLL registers. :)

I don't understand, the 9500 GT is a desktop card that achieves a 3Dmark06 score of 7000, putting it higher than the 330? I'm confused.

I was referring to the 9600m GT found in the prev-gen MBPs.
 
Mdavis -

Any comments on the anti-glare screen, viewing it at home (not all the lights in the apple store)? I was not very happy with how it looked in the apple store, washed out, etc and am now struggling with whether I want to go with glossy.
 
Mdavis -

Any comments on the anti-glare screen, viewing it at home (not all the lights in the apple store)? I was not very happy with how it looked in the apple store, washed out, etc and am now struggling with whether I want to go with glossy.

Hm. Personally I've never found them to look very washed out. Not sure what to say I think it's really just personal opinion. Personally I like them much, much more than the glossy. Very much more comfortable to look at.
 
Anyone tested the 15" MacBook Pro (i7, 512MB GPU) with GTA IV/Episodes from Liberty City, over BootCamp (WinXP or Win7), yet? I've ordered mine and I intend to play a lot of GTA IV, I want to know just how well-performing it is.
 
Anyone tested the 15" MacBook Pro (i7, 512MB GPU) with GTA IV/Episodes from Liberty City, over BootCamp (WinXP or Win7), yet? I've ordered mine and I intend to play a lot of GTA IV, I want to know just how well-performing it is.
I'd be interested to hear people results with this as well. Although GTA IV is also known to be very CPU heavy, preferring quad cores, so hopefully the Core i7 with Hyperthreading does a lot better here than previous Core 2 Duo.

I get the feeling that the GT330M is sufficient to run most modern games at native resolution for the 1440x900 models at around medium settings, but won't be sufficient for native resolution on the high res 1680x1050 models without turning down quite a few settings. It's too bad Apple didn't offer a graphics BTO for something better to support the higher res screens.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.