Hi, I have a Mid 2012 MacBook Pro with Windows 7 installed using Bootcamp. Because I'm a student my parents aren't exactly thrilled with the idea of getting me a Gaming PC, but since I'm not a hardcore gamer I think I can make do with what I have. How would I be able to optimize my gaming experience with my Mac? In other words, whether it is with software, or upgrading some hardware, how can I make my Mac usable for gaming. And trust me, I'm not hoping for 60FPS having games on the highest setting kind of thing, something that is decent quality is all I want. I feel that my Mac's current specs and hardware is almost at where I want it, but some optimization to increase efficiency and performance would be really nice. Thanks in advance!
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Optimize Mac using Bootcamp for gaming?
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13/15"? Retina/Non-Retina?
The 650M should be able to play most modern games at high or near max settings at normal resolutions (1440x900/1680x1050) at 30-60 fps.
For bootcamp, the best gain I saw when I had my 2012 15" non-retina was installing the latest nVidia drivers. Installing the latest drivers is a must. Geforce experience is also useful on supported games, I found it worked pretty well.
I have the 13inch non-Retina version, and thanks I will try installing the latest NVIDIA graphics drivers
Are you sure you have the 13"? The 13" doesn't have the dGPU, only the HD 4000 Intel integrated GPU, therefore you would be out of luck. Nvidia drivers would only work on dedicated GPU GT 650M equipped 15" MacBooks.
you can get an external video card perhaps...beyond that your really out of luck the 13 inch will never be good for gaming without a dGPU. If your playing games like league of legends etc you can still play those on pretty much any machine you just have to tone down the settings. 13 inch doesn't have an nVidia card so drivers don't apply here. Ram past the 4gig mark has very little if any impact on games since most can't utilize more than 4 gigs anyways, except the ones that are just coming out. Depending on the game a SSD can make a difference over a traditional spinning HD
Neither would help games. At all.
The single most important thing for gaming is a decent GPU, which you cannot upgrade(in about 99% of laptops on the market). Either you'll need to get a console, buy an (expensive) external graphics card or go without gaming at all.
install the drivers from the GPU's vendor web site and optionally get a $20 cooling pad to reduce temperatures while gaming. That's really all you can do. SSD will improve load times only. The game performance will not be affected. RAM helps to a small extent, but if you have at least 4 gb, it won't make much of a difference at the settings you'll be playing at anyway. Games rarely use more than 3.3 gb of ram, as they're often 32 bit.