Old 2.53GHz MBP vs. new 2.66GHz MBP (in terms of gaming power)

[Earthling84]

Hey everyone, I'm planning on buying a MacBook Pro soon, and am thinking about installing Windows on it as well for some gaming on the side, and was just wondering which of these two models would run games better.

Mid 2009) Core 2 Duo P8800 2.66GHz with 3MB L2 cache and Nvidia 9600M GT with 256MB
Late 2008) Core 2 Duo T9400 2.53GHz with 6MB L2 cache and Nvidia 9600M GT with 512MB

The biggest differences between them seem to be the L2 cache and the graphics memory, but I'm not sure how important those are for gaming. Of course the .13GHz difference in CPU power is there too, but I'm wondering if the L2 cache and graphics memory make up for that. Anyone know which model would be better? If anyone can find any benchmarks for them that'd be even better. Thanks a lot.

 

[Dwalls90]

Cache will help, not clock rate ... neither will VRAM

 

[panzer06]

Hey everyone, I'm planning on buying a MacBook Pro soon, and am thinking about installing Windows on it as well for some gaming on the side, and was just wondering which of these two models would run games better.

Mid 2009) Core 2 Duo P8800 2.66GHz with 3MB L2 cache and Nvidia 9600M GT with 256MB
Late 2008) Core 2 Duo T9400 2.53GHz with 6MB L2 cache and Nvidia 9600M GT with 512MB

The biggest differences between them seem to be the L2 cache and the graphics memory, but I'm not sure how important those are for gaming. Of course the .13GHz difference in CPU power is there too, but I'm wondering if the L2 cache and graphics memory make up for that. Anyone know which model would be better? If anyone can find any benchmarks for them that'd be even better. Thanks a lot.

According to this, additional VRAM only helps if playing at high resolutions (and then only if your GPU can handle it).

http://www.insidemacgames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=30457

Cheers,

 

[cliffrouse11bas]

I was contemplating the same question. I went with the late 2008 2.53 refurb. It was not only $300, but had the same graphics card with a higher cache. I hope I made the right decision. I currently have a 2.4 Unibody Macbook. I am just hoping the screen is better than my current MacBook. I hate the viewing angle it has, especially when watching movies.

 

[Bill Gates]

The previous model will be faster in many (but not all) cases due to the additional VRAM. Even a game as old as Doom 3 can take advantage of 512MB of VRAM, so I have no doubt that there are many more modern games that can, regardless of the fact that it's not a particularly high-end GPU. Having more VRAM allows for the storage of more textures in memory and uncompressed/higher resolution textures due to being able to cache them in VRAM as opposed to loading as-needed from the disk.