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So I guess the Air is terrible for even light gaming?

Sensamic

Sensamic

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Mar 26, 2010
3,149
785
Just installed a couple of games in my 2015 13 inch Air to try them.

They are light games, or so I think.

During two games the fans kicked in and they became loud: Broken Sword 5 and Mickeys Castle of Illusion. And the fans kicked in in less than two minutes, just with the intro on some games. I could still play, nevertheless.

On another game the fans didn't turn on: Mystery of the Black Water.

I'm not playing Call of Duty, Civilization VI or some of the heavy games.

Does this happen also on the MacBook Pro? Or is that laptop quieter for games?

On iMacs is it better or the same behaviour?

Thanks.
 
What should you expect from garbage intel integrated graphic card? Other than running system, anything more than that will surely put a dent on that card.
Oh, if you play Dune 2000 (2D game released in 1998, I still have a full version on my hard drive ), or Red Alert 95, then machine would be fine.
 
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I'm not a gamer. Din't buy this machine for that. Mainly for web, Word, daily tasks, etc.

Sometimes I play games, very very few times, and they are mostly light games. I thought any laptop nowadays could handle easy and light games without turning on the fans.
 
Sensamic said:
I'm not a gamer. Din't buy this machine for that. Mainly for web, Word, daily tasks, etc.

Sometimes I play games, very very few times, and they are mostly light games. I thought any laptop nowadays could handle easy and light games without turning on the fans.
Click to expand...
Does it matter if the fans turn on? As long as you're not dropping frames and having laggy gameplay, what does it matter?
 
ftaok said:
Does it matter if the fans turn on? As long as you're not dropping frames and having laggy gameplay, what does it matter?
Click to expand...
It becomes very loud and it's not a great experience. You pretty much have the laptop right in front of you all the time so it's annoying.
 
Any time the gpu gets taxed even a little I think these laptops will be fan city. A gpu can't be run like these modern chip designs, of boost to get the job done then back to idle. They have to be constantly pushing out the frames. Gaming means the fan turns on, can't really avoid it.

Mine got warm playing Terraria at it's relatively low native resolution.

I doubt the MacBook Pro 13inch would fare much better.

My MBA runs OpenEmu like a champ though...
 
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You don't mention the frame rates for the games, just the fans kicking in. Were the games unplayable, frame-rate-wise? Or are you just annoyed the fans kicked in?
 
Gaming runs the GPU. GPU makes heat. No way around that. Fans cool GPU. No fans, GPU overheats, or, GPU throttles to produce less heat, and your games lag. Its a matter of physics.
 
Just because the fans kick in, it doesn't mean it's terrrible for light gaming.
It should be able to handle those without the fan but it's related to the optimisation of the game. Different games will run without fans kicking in depending on the optimisation or operating system.
 
Sensamic said:
I'm not a gamer. Din't buy this machine for that. Mainly for web, Word, daily tasks, etc.

Sometimes I play games, very very few times, and they are mostly light games. I thought any laptop nowadays could handle easy and light games without turning on the fans.
Click to expand...
New fancy fanless MacBook is designed for you. No fan, no noise whatsoever.
 
Sensamic said:
Just installed a couple of games in my 2015 13 inch Air to try them.

They are light games, or so I think.

During two games the fans kicked in and they became loud: Broken Sword 5 and Mickeys Castle of Illusion. And the fans kicked in in less than two minutes, just with the intro on some games. I could still play, nevertheless.

On another game the fans didn't turn on: Mystery of the Black Water.

I'm not playing Call of Duty, Civilization VI or some of the heavy games.

Does this happen also on the MacBook Pro? Or is that laptop quieter for games?

On iMacs is it better or the same behaviour?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Civ 4,5,6 all work fine on my MBA 2013. Civ 6 will just run in strategic view if you have a MBA.
Civ 6 will run in full graphics on anything from the top end 2011 27" iMac (which I have) or better.
 
Sensamic said:
It becomes very loud and it's not a great experience. You pretty much have the laptop right in front of you all the time so it's annoying.
Click to expand...
Got it. I kinda thought that might be the issue. I usually use headphones myself. But I can see it being annoying cause I like to watch TV shows without headphones and the fans are a nuisance
 
Sensamic said:
I'm not a gamer. Din't buy this machine for that. Mainly for web, Word, daily tasks, etc.

Sometimes I play games, very very few times, and they are mostly light games. I thought any laptop nowadays could handle easy and light games without turning on the fans.
Click to expand...
Try the skylake powered retina Macbook (core m). They have the intel HD515. I don't have a retina Macbook, but I have a core m7 Windows laptop. I can play games on it (albeit older games). Even Final Fantasy 13 runs on it.
Having said that, the intel drivers on Windows is not the most stable, but that could be Windows itself.
 
Sensamic said:
Just installed a couple of games in my 2015 13 inch Air to try them.

They are light games, or so I think.

During two games the fans kicked in and they became loud: Broken Sword 5 and Mickeys Castle of Illusion. And the fans kicked in in less than two minutes, just with the intro on some games. I could still play, nevertheless.

On another game the fans didn't turn on: Mystery of the Black Water.

I'm not playing Call of Duty, Civilization VI or some of the heavy games.

Does this happen also on the MacBook Pro? Or is that laptop quieter for games?

On iMacs is it better or the same behaviour?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

From personal experience, if you go with 8GB Ram and the I7 the performance should be much better than the base model. Theres a flying game that is loaded on all the systems in the store and when I was doing a comparison a year ago it was much better and the water motion / waves were more acceptable in the better system than the lower system.
Keep in mind the people selling these for the most part only know what the online training tells them and what management says have to sell that week or month
 
I have a couple of games on my 11 inches (Bioshock, F1 2013 and some more.. yes I know hardly new and hardly hight ends games for today's standards) but so far never had issue with frames, sure the fans kicks in and it sounds like a 747 on take off, but the games are pretty much playable at medium / high settings (no ultra :p).

All in all it is a decent achievements considering the integrated chip and the low power cpu.
 
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I play CS:GO on my 2015 MBA 11". No issues with performance at all. Note: CPU fans were running.
 
pika2000 said:
Try the skylake powered retina Macbook (core m). They have the intel HD515. I don't have a retina Macbook, but I have a core m7 Windows laptop. I can play games on it (albeit older games). Even Final Fantasy 13 runs on it.
Having said that, the intel drivers on Windows is not the most stable, but that could be Windows itself.
Click to expand...

Most games won't run on HD515, as it lacks even the grunt of HD5000. You'd be better to play with noise cancelling headphones on.
 
kiwipeso1 said:
Most games won't run on HD515, as it lacks even the grunt of HD5000. You'd be better to play with noise cancelling headphones on.
Click to expand...
Depends on what you define and expect for your games.
I'm currently playing Final Fantasy X and even XIII on my Core M Windows convertible, and it runs them fine. Plug-in a controller, and I have a 12" "portable" gaming console.
 
Sensamic said:
Just installed a couple of games in my 2015 13 inch Air to try them.

They are light games, or so I think.

During two games the fans kicked in and they became loud: Broken Sword 5 and Mickeys Castle of Illusion. And the fans kicked in in less than two minutes, just with the intro on some games. I could still play, nevertheless.

On another game the fans didn't turn on: Mystery of the Black Water.

I'm not playing Call of Duty, Civilization VI or some of the heavy games.

Does this happen also on the MacBook Pro? Or is that laptop quieter for games?

On iMacs is it better or the same behaviour?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Why are you equating the spinning of fans to terrible gaming? Terrible gaming is horrible framerates and load times. Fans spinning is simply a necessity. My dedicated gaming tower's fans are louder during idling than the macbook airs fans are maxed.
 
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