Scared to game..

[skysailing]

When I receive my RMBP this week, I am going to venture into gaming via Bootcamp.

But after reading through most of the topics on this forum, I couldn't be less clueless/scared. Drivers, SMC, Controller Drivers, exc.

So...what should I download first? What should I avoid? How the hell do you even locate drivers/how do you know when they fail?

 

[MacKid]

Go through the Boot Camp installation process as you normally would. Play your games, and unless you see your FPS start periodically dropping by half, just keep playing.

You don't need to worry until you start seeing spikes in performance that feel like thermal throttling.

 

[skysailing]

Go through the Boot Camp installation process as you normally would. Play your games, and unless you see your FPS start periodically dropping by half, just keep playing.

You don't need to worry until you start seeing spikes in performance that feel like thermal throttling.

Understandable. Thank You.

 

[MacKid]

I have to apologize for such a simplistic answer, but with computers/devices in general, it can be easy to talk oneself into finding problems that one expects to see. I was very worried about gaming and UI graphics in general before my rMBP arrived, and I've had no problems at all.

I think Windows's heat management is less granular than OS X's, at least with Boot Camp drivers (there seems to be no medium between idle and max fan speed), but I haven't seen the kind of drops in performance that would indicate the plummets in clock speed that people with earlier models have experienced.

 

[bkends35]

Don't worry, I play portal 2 and crysis 2 on Windows 7 no problem on my rMBP. It does get VERY warm (CPU temps over 200*F) but it shouldn't hurt the computer. I've actually never experienced any problems with the boot camp drivers. Definitely download the ones through the boot camp assistant and put them on a separate flash drive, they're about 1.1GB if i remember correctly.

 

[swerve147]

When I receive my RMBP this week, I am going to venture into gaming via Bootcamp.

But after reading through most of the topics on this forum, I couldn't be less clueless/scared. Drivers, SMC, Controller Drivers, exc.

So...what should I download first? What should I avoid? How the hell do you even locate drivers/how do you know when they fail?

All the drivers you need can be downloaded directly through the Boot Camp Assistant utility that comes with every MacBook. The same utility also has a printable step by step guide to guide you through the whole process.

You can rely on the default drivers in the Boot Camp package, they are pretty much all you need to run Windows 7, and all you need to do is run the Boot Camp program once you're in Windows and let the drivers install themselves. All the drivers that are needed are included in the Assistant, and they happen to be very stable. The only drivers you may want to consider updating are the Nvidia video card drivers as the latest official drivers are stable and provide better performance than the drivers in Apple's package.

As for temperatures and heat concerns, they are identical between Windows 7 and OS X. The tools are different in Windows (SpeedFan, HMMonitor, RealTemp), but you can still monitor your machine the same way you monitor it in OS X. You'll eventually discover that , at least for games in Windows 7, that they run no hotter/cooler than games in OS X (they all use the GT 650M).

Apple made it very easy to create a Windows partition and run it without much issue. You have nothing to worry about.