Question for hardcore gamers involving APM

[Moonflow]

Ok I have a serious question about playing games on any laptop, not just a macbook pro but since that's what i have, it'll be in this forum.

If you play SC2, WC3 and other RTS games, you would know that APM (action per minute) is very important. Most pros have over 300+apm which means that's 300 keys is hit on the keyboard every minute! I personally have APM of 150-200 average and when playing on the desktop, i switch keyboards every 6 months.

So my question is i guess any games that involve hitting the keys a lot is not recommended on a laptop? I have been reading the forum a lot and i see a lot of topics concerning the 2.0 pro vs the 2.2 which has a 1gb GPU and mostly everyone pick the 2.2 version to play games. Now do they really play SC2 and other hardcore games on the macbook pro??? Or are they using it to play angry birds??

 

[miles01110]

If you are serious about games in which APM matters, you won't be playing it on a laptop in the first place. There's no reason you shouldn't use the keyboard to enter key commands as much as you want, because that's what keyboards are designed for.

 

[theLimit]

Tournament level professional gaming is not done on notebooks, especially not those in the thin-and-light class of the MacBook Pro. If a portable machine is a must, the current top-of-the-line desktop replacements from Clevo/Sager offer quad-core i7, 16GB RAM, and a Radeon HD 6990 or GeForce GTX 580M with 2GB VRAM. The built-in keyboard and trackpad will be useless for high APM, though. A reliable mouse and a fully anti-ghosted keyboard, preferably with mechanical key switches, is the only option for unhindered APM. SteelSeries are great, guaranteed for 50 million keystrokes, that's 300+ APM for 8 hours a day for a year. I hear Razer products are good as well. If you're switching keyboards every six months you're buying junk.

Gaming on a MBP is entirely possible and completely enjoyable. No matter what games you play. It may not be suitable for MLG training, but for the other 99.999% of the gaming population it will function perfectly well. The high-end MBP should play every game currently available, just with lowered settings on some newer games. I use an external keyboard and mouse for gaming, and I'm far from pro/hardcore, only 150 APM in SC2 and I play maybe 6-8 hours per week.

Claiming hardcore status and dissing Angry Birds comes across rather snobbish, btw.

 

[Moonflow]

You probably misunderstood me... My question was just simple as why do people buy high end macbook pros and claim they need the 1gb for gaming when they're most likely play something that's 128mb requirement.

Because i consider RTS gaming to be hardcore gaming because the laptop keyboard just doesn't do it, and i'm sure someone with 150+apm will not choose to play it on his/her laptop, even with 50apm.

 

[miles01110]

My question was just simple as why do people buy high end macbook pros and claim they need the 1gb for gaming when they're most likely play something that's 128gb requirement.

Because they are either misinformed, overly optimistic, or (more likely) are willing to make the compromise between portability and performance implicit in buying a laptop "for gaming."

 

[Tanax]

Or they could simply want a laptop as their main computer, having a portable computer but still wants to be able to play games on it.

They won't be playing hardcore games while on the train or w.e so they'll most likely only game while they're home and then they can hook up an external keyboard and mouse to be able to game easier.