I have decided to switch to a mac. I have real concerns over what I am getting for the money though. Id be Interested in either the base 15 or high end 13. It can handle the normal stuff I do but the real question is gameplay for games like starcraft 2, battlefield 3 and diablo 3. I've looked at the samsung series 7, xps 15z and the vaio se. now I'm leaning towards the macbook but I just want to make sure it can handle light gameplay. My friend said he had to install bootcamp and they ran a lot smoother. I'm new to Mac and the idea of bootcamp and running windows. I guess I'm just asking how does bootcamp work and does anyone have experience running these games on the new 15 base or high 13
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switching to a mac
- Thread starter braveulysses
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You'd be better off getting a dedicated gaming rig, especially for battlefield 3. Gaming on a laptop is dumb, doing it on a mac laptop is worse.
Not saying it can't be done, starcraft 2 will likely run just fine on a 13", diablo 3 might(though from the pre-release system requirements, it probably won't) and I doubt battlefield will be playable at anything but minimal details.
If you truly are decided on a mac and want to game with it, I wouldn't settle for anything less than the high end 15".
With that said, the high end 13" isn't worth it for the money, unless you truly need a lot of portability and more raw processing power. It is not any more suited to gaming than the low end one. So you'd probably be able to save some money going with the low end 13. The graphics card on the low end 15's are only slightly better than the 3000HD in my opinion, but you do get a quad-core processor(again this isn't really useful gaming wise).
Especially BF 3 is not really something one would want to play on a Notebook. At the very least you'd have to get the 6750M 15".
Getting a gaming rig or a decent Windows gaming notebook will get you much better results.
I don't know but you somehow don't seem like you have too many reasons to swicht to a mac. I would seriously reconsider the Samsung Series 7. On trusted review they even said that black levels on the 900p screen are good. Brightness is good its seems to be a really good notebook for half the price of a comparable 15" MBP.
Bootcamp basically works by emulating the BIOS subsystem of standard Windows notebooks. That is need to start it up. Once started it works just like running Windows on any other notebook. Unlike VM like parallels there is no extra layer which often limits 3D speed quite a lot. It just runs the native Windows drivers.
Problem to game you have to restart the Notebook and that takes a while. Just from pressing the power button to get to the screen where you can click on the Windows partition to start it up takes quite a while and with an SSD almost as long as the Windows startup itself.
Once in Windows the keyboard makes some trouble, the touchpad is as though you are sitting there with some 4 year old Windows notebook. On a Series 7 you can use the touchpad with all functionality in Windows too on a MBP only the most essential functions still work.
Gaming under OSX works too but few games exist natively and the 1st person shooter blockbusters are almost eniterly missing. What is ported is only old stuff like CSS and some newer games but not the once with heave DirectX investments. Starcraft is one exception. Also the OpenGL drivers on OSX are don't get as much optimizations as their Windows variants also the engines are just ported and not really on the level the DirectX version are. It is comparable with the console ports that one sees more and more frequently on Windows now. They usually offer rather poor performance for the same or inferior quality.
To sum it up. A 15 with 6750M is okay for gaming but if you that more often than once every week it is just annoying if you aren't already locked in and heavily invested in Apple's Mac world, by all means stay away from it and get a Samsung Series 7. The Samsung offers some SSD cache for free. A big screen in a smaller chassis, a good matte panel as it seems, a keyboard with numpad (very much missing in some games) and all that for half the price. If that was available when I bought my 15" I probably would never have bought it even though I very rarely game (like once every 2 months) and aren't really bother with the bootcamp situation.
Getting a gaming rig or a decent Windows gaming notebook will get you much better results.
I don't know but you somehow don't seem like you have too many reasons to swicht to a mac. I would seriously reconsider the Samsung Series 7. On trusted review they even said that black levels on the 900p screen are good. Brightness is good its seems to be a really good notebook for half the price of a comparable 15" MBP.
Bootcamp basically works by emulating the BIOS subsystem of standard Windows notebooks. That is need to start it up. Once started it works just like running Windows on any other notebook. Unlike VM like parallels there is no extra layer which often limits 3D speed quite a lot. It just runs the native Windows drivers.
Problem to game you have to restart the Notebook and that takes a while. Just from pressing the power button to get to the screen where you can click on the Windows partition to start it up takes quite a while and with an SSD almost as long as the Windows startup itself.
Once in Windows the keyboard makes some trouble, the touchpad is as though you are sitting there with some 4 year old Windows notebook. On a Series 7 you can use the touchpad with all functionality in Windows too on a MBP only the most essential functions still work.
Gaming under OSX works too but few games exist natively and the 1st person shooter blockbusters are almost eniterly missing. What is ported is only old stuff like CSS and some newer games but not the once with heave DirectX investments. Starcraft is one exception. Also the OpenGL drivers on OSX are don't get as much optimizations as their Windows variants also the engines are just ported and not really on the level the DirectX version are. It is comparable with the console ports that one sees more and more frequently on Windows now. They usually offer rather poor performance for the same or inferior quality.
To sum it up. A 15 with 6750M is okay for gaming but if you that more often than once every week it is just annoying if you aren't already locked in and heavily invested in Apple's Mac world, by all means stay away from it and get a Samsung Series 7. The Samsung offers some SSD cache for free. A big screen in a smaller chassis, a good matte panel as it seems, a keyboard with numpad (very much missing in some games) and all that for half the price. If that was available when I bought my 15" I probably would never have bought it even though I very rarely game (like once every 2 months) and aren't really bother with the bootcamp situation.
Let me get this straight. You want to game on a 13/15 inch laptop that doesn't at least have a 1gb dedicated video card?
Get the 17" or build a killer desktop.
Get the 17" or build a killer desktop.