Nah I meant the MMO from bioware coming out next spring. I'm seriously contemplating a return for standard res i7. Could I return an online order at an apple store?
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Nah I meant the MMO from bioware coming out next spring. I'm seriously contemplating a return for standard res i7. Could I return an online order at an apple store?
It would be great if someone could post a few comparison pics of the Hi-res 15" i7 in both native and lower resolution settings of some newer games ( Dragon Age, Fallout 3, Starcraft II beta...etc.) and if possible to throw out some FPS. Bought the hi-res model and want to be sure before I go and open it.
I am back for your viewing pleasure:
Starcraft 2:
Game ran AMAZING. One thing to note: I set texture quality to 'high' even though it says that 512mb of vram is recommended for that and it still worked fine. Lighting is locked for low for the beta so far, no way to change that. Everything else was set to high. I say I was avg. mid 40s to low 50s and in the huge battles it dropped to high 30s
BC2
Now, I am not too sure what is going on but it could be that I am using older forcewares that came out before BC2 and its optimizations by nvidia. The reason i say that is because regardless of my res I ALWAYS float in the 28-32fps range. Now, it doesn't seem like its locked in that fps but it doesn't seem to change when I jump in resolutions which is a bit odd. I need to investigate that further. Anyways, these screenies were taken at 1280x800 and 2xAA 4xAF and ALL settings medium.
Multiplayer shot: (MP ran smoother than SP[also, this shot may have been at 1440 with no AA])
Starcraft 2:
Game ran AMAZING. One thing to note: I set texture quality to 'high' even though it says that 512mb of vram is recommended for that and it still worked fine. Lighting is locked for low for the beta so far, no way to change that. Everything else was set to high. I say I was avg. mid 40s to low 50s and in the huge battles it dropped to high 30s
BC2
Now, I am not too sure what is going on but it could be that I am using older forcewares that came out before BC2 and its optimizations by nvidia. The reason i say that is because regardless of my res I ALWAYS float in the 28-32fps range. Now, it doesn't seem like its locked in that fps but it doesn't seem to change when I jump in resolutions which is a bit odd. I need to investigate that further. Anyways, these screenies were taken at 1280x800 and 2xAA 4xAF and ALL settings medium.
Multiplayer shot: (MP ran smoother than SP[also, this shot may have been at 1440 with no AA])
What temps were you getting with this overclock? I was thinking of overclocking mine when I get it. Also how is the stability? and how many more FPS are you seeing compared to stock speeds?
I am not sure if its windows or what, but something is amiss with the temps. For example, I am sitting at 29C on the gpu reading on OSX. Now, before my OC my card sits at around 62-65C on win7. My theory is that aero is far more taxing on the gpu and thus causes it to sit at a high temp.
Anyways, I ran some test with the normal clocks (mind you I live in socal so the ambient temp is pretty warm) and I was hitting 75 MAX until the fans kicked in and would bring it back down to about 70C. The current OC hits 80 max until the fans kick in high and then it sits at 75-76C on a stress test. During BC2 I would hove around 73C. The unibodies are great at dissipating heat and I was impressed with the cooling. These temps may seem a little "warm" but the gpu is more than up to the task to handle it. IMO a card is fine in 70s range under constant load and shouldn't hit higher than 85 MAX for a short duration till the fans kick into overdrive. When you start running into the 90+ range is when you get a hardware underclock and start cooking the sucker.
Thanks for this info! I also live in SoCal it was pretty darn hot today lol. those temps are great, a lot better then I thought they would be. ( I have never OC'ed a laptop before but I have done many desktops ) I would have expected laptops to get much hotter. Now I just have to wait till freakin thursday to get my new macbook pro
Specific question
Hey guys,
I have a very specific question that I hope some of you can answer. I just purchased and received my new MBP base i5 with the high res screen.
I'm barely a gamer. In fact, I only want to play one game on it, Napoleon: Total War. I've read that RTS games are less GPU hungry than FPS games.
So, with that in mind, do you think i'll be able to play it at high, med-high, med?
Thanks so much!
Hey guys,
I have a very specific question that I hope some of you can answer. I just purchased and received my new MBP base i5 with the high res screen.
I'm barely a gamer. In fact, I only want to play one game on it, Napoleon: Total War. I've read that RTS games are less GPU hungry than FPS games.
So, with that in mind, do you think i'll be able to play it at high, med-high, med?
Thanks so much!
Take all the benches you see here, and subtract 5 - 10 frames off every one.
(The MBP 330m is underlocked as well as only 256 - 512, the one from the benchmark is 1 GB)
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-330M.22437.0.html
thanks for posting, thinking of upgrading myself. Hope we see more games from steam down the line.
Well, if you open a software overclock tool in Windows, you will see certain clocks, clocks that are down from what Nvidia has set on the site, and down from what all other laptops with 330m's have.
I don't want to have to look it up.
So is there a consensus yet on whether the GT330M improves between 256MB and 512MB RAM?
I know I'm definitely going to be getting the high-res antiglare, but I'm not sure whether to get the i5 2.4 or the i7. I'm pretty sure it probably doesn't make a huge difference at 1440x900, but at 1680x1050 more RAM might help?
I know I'm definitely going to be getting the high-res antiglare, but I'm not sure whether to get the i5 2.4 or the i7. I'm pretty sure it probably doesn't make a huge difference at 1440x900, but at 1680x1050 more RAM might help?
The 512 I think should be standard, to play new games now a days, 512 is essential, especially when you crank up the resolution. i7 - i5 won't be much different when you're gaming, but you need the i7 to get the 512.
I would rather i7 be an upgrade option, ($150) and use that towards the screen. I don't need i7
Regardless, there will exist some workloads where the extra memory pays off. The chip may not be fast enough to be silky-smooth (or even good) on those workloads even with enough memory, but it'll be worse with less memory.
There was a comment about one benchmark not being affected by resolution. That's normal; it means that the limiting factor is probably on the CPU. I have a WoW machine which is CPU-bound, so it produces the exact same frame rate at 800x600, no AA, and at 1920x1200, 8xAA.
So, how would you go about booting a Mac with a DOS disk?
I used a DOS 6.x CD with NTFS support so I could read/save ROMs to my bootcamp install (I used NTFS instead of FAT32 because it's way faster). Booting DOS was find, but nvflash doesn't see my gpu...
Anyone care to weight-in?
New 13" MBP WoW Framerate
Hi Guys,
thanks for all your responses. I finally installed WoW on my new MBP and got framerates around 95-105, so I'm very happy. This was just on the default settings that the game booted up with.
It's very impressive to see such a good result from an integrated card. It's certainly more than capable of casual gaming.
Hi Guys,
thanks for all your responses. I finally installed WoW on my new MBP and got framerates around 95-105, so I'm very happy. This was just on the default settings that the game booted up with.
It's very impressive to see such a good result from an integrated card. It's certainly more than capable of casual gaming.
Explosions look like your worst enemy in Bad Company 2. The additional 8 ROPs should help over this old thing. I'd still like to see the specifications on the GeForce 320M.
On another note Unreal Tournament 3 is very playable on Medium/High at 1280 x 800 and 1680 x 1050 on the 9500GT. That's on DirectX 9 mode though. Company of Heroes is playable on the 9500GT as well even at 1680 x 1050.
On another note Unreal Tournament 3 is very playable on Medium/High at 1280 x 800 and 1680 x 1050 on the 9500GT. That's on DirectX 9 mode though. Company of Heroes is playable on the 9500GT as well even at 1680 x 1050.
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glad I didn't go for the high res screen...1680x1050 would make this poor card choke even more. Is it confirmed that there's no way to have OC'ed clocks in OS X?
Why would Apple underclock the graphics card? I assume it would lower heat emission and energy consumption, so battery life and an aluminum body that's cooler to the touch would be the reason?