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Thinking about getting the high-end non-retina 15'' MBP.....

B

bo-waleed

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 15, 2009
611
21
I was going to get the imac but for some reason i can't, no HDD replacement and Hard to ship to my country. If you have suggestion tell me.


1. Can i remove the battery form the MBP before opening it the first time ? Is it safe to power my MBP without the battery for a long time ? I will put the battery back when i go abroad.


2. Same as 1 but for HDD, Can i replace it with SSD before opening it the first time ?



3. How is gaming in it ?:rolleyes: , And if you are choosing between rMBP (playing in 1440 X 900) and non-MBP (playing in 1440 X 900), Which one will you get ?



Thanks for answering.
 
It will run without the batt. However, keep in mind when doing so, the magsafe better not come out and that in the past, the cpu would run at 50% with no batt

I would leave it in

Yes, you can swap out to a ssd instead of a hdd

I dont game but would imagine the non retina to be better as it wouldnt have to scale the resolution
 
Honestly

Honestly if you want to game don't buy a mac. For the same price of a mac you can get a kicking gaming PC. I would buy the 15' and trick it out to the fullest and play like that. Don't take the battery out. Your battery is not going to wear out like you think it it, plus if the Magsafe connector comes out you will lose your current gamesave.
 
bo-waleed said:
Really ? That's bad.

The reason i want to do this is to make my battery healthier and increase it's life.

Because i won't move the MBP for it's place.
Click to expand...

A healthy battery needs to be cycled

They are rated to 1000 cycles before 80% capacity

Then you can keep using it and if it gets worse, pay 130 or so and get a new one

In short, I wouldn't worry about the battery
 
Dviper27 said:
Honestly if you want to game don't buy a mac. For the same price of a mac you can get a kicking gaming PC. I would buy the 15' and trick it out to the fullest and play like that. Don't take the battery out. Your battery is not going to wear out like you think it it, plus if the Magsafe connector comes out you will lose your current gamesave.
Click to expand...

Do you mean the rMBP or the non-rMBP ?

I am not buying it for gaming.

I already have 2008 MBP and OSX is better then windows in everything except games.
 
I have ran into no issues running any game with all settings maxed out under OS X or Windows. It runs awesome. Swapped the HDD out for an SSD a few days after purchasing since I had to waiting for shipping. I cloned my drive over to the SSD.
 
ugp said:
I have ran into no issues running any game with all settings maxed out under OS X or Windows. It runs awesome. Swapped the HDD out for an SSD a few days after purchasing since I had to waiting for shipping. I cloned my drive over to the SSD.
Click to expand...

Looks good, How about the fans ? Does it get noisy ?

What games did you try on windows (win7?) ? What fps ?

I would like games run in 60fps.
 
Any particular reason why you don't want to go for the MacBook Pro with retina display, considering they are priced similar at $2,199 ?

You will be staring at that screen the entire time you use it, so why not get the one with the best screen?
 
bo-waleed said:
Looks good, How about the fans ? Does it get noisy ?

What games did you try on windows (win7?) ? What fps ?

I would like games run in 60fps.
Click to expand...

If your in a dead silent room you will notice the fans but if you have background noise going on or playing with headphones you won't notice them that much when they are spinning at their full RPM.

I ran all games with V-Sync on so they were all capped at 60fps and never went below. I tried MW2, All Valve games, Assassins Creed 2, Trine 2, Diablo 3. All games that I could I ran both under Windows and OS X and received the same 60fps. I didn't try out for Max FPS with the exception of Valve because I didn't have V-Sync enabled at first and TF2 ran well over 100FPS on both sides. I wanted to try BF3 but I don't own a copy and didn't feel like downloading it somewhere else. I have since already removed Boot Camp because I only installed it for testing purposes.
 
Pressure said:
Any particular reason why you don't want to go for the MacBook Pro with retina display, considering they are priced similar at $2,199 ?

You will be staring at that screen the entire time you use it, so why not get the one with the best screen?
Click to expand...

I wish i can but i heard that the games looks bad in 1440X900 on rMBP, I would like to game on highest setting with 60fps. (especially dark souls)
 
Pressure said:
Any particular reason why you don't want to go for the MacBook Pro with retina display, considering they are priced similar at $2,199 ?

You will be staring at that screen the entire time you use it, so why not get the one with the best screen?
Click to expand...

With the Retina you have very limited options when it comes to upgrades. It's not for everyone. Like myself I will wait a few generations before I make that kind of expensive purchase. With the iPad and iPhone they were nowhere near the same cost. The screen on the Classic still looks good especially if you have never seen a Retina you wouldn't know the difference between the two.
 
bo-waleed said:
I wish i can but i heard that the games looks bad in 1440X900 on rMBP, I would like to game on highest setting with 60fps. (especially dark souls)
Click to expand...

Then game at 1680 x 1050 or 1920 x 1200 heh.

Even native is possible for some games (2880 x 1800).
 
I started with the base retina but couldn't get a unit I was satisfied with after several attempts so I opted for the base cMBP and I'm very happy with it. Maybe you should consider buying the base model and upgrading it with the money you save. That's what I ended up doing and this thing is rocking now.

And the screen still looks pretty darn good to me.
 
Had a look at the Retina MBP today in a store. It was next to a normal 15" MBP. I felt a bit of a chump pressing my nose against each screen trying to see the difference.

At normal distance, I couldn't notice a difference (except for colour and contrast that was everso slightly better on the higher res display). Waste of money. Save £500 or whatever and just buy a screen cleaning kit.
 
If he wants to game on it he cannot get the base MBP model because it comes with just 512MB ram for the GPU (ugh!) He will want the 1GB 650M for gaming, for sure.

Good decision on the MBP rather than the MBPR for gaming, OP. While the MBPR is a great machine, it has that 2880x1800 display that is going to work the GPU far harder than the same GPU in the non-retina, which has to drive only a 1440x900 display. Although the MBPR's GPU is over clocked, it still has the same 1GB VRAM. The MBP is almost certainly better for gaming.
 
********. When gaming at the same resolution, performance is exactly the same or slightly better than classic due to overclocked gpu and better thermals. No down scaling or any of the os interference. What's the point of all of that power anyway when you limited to playing at sub 1080 res? I mean, let's all play at 800x600 because we need to play at 200fps amirite?
 
Also it's not just for games.

The cMBP is good for 720p videos (i see a lot of 720p anime and movies).

Isn't 720p videos will look better on cMBP than rMBP ?
 
bo-waleed said:
Really ? That's bad.

The reason i want to do this is to make my battery healthier and increase it's life.

Because i won't move the MBP for it's place.
Click to expand...

Just note that at a very basic level the battery is "alive" and, as such, needs activity to stay healthy. Beyond the base performance hit (I don't think it's 50%, but it's not insignificant, it's just not a great idea to use your portable computer in this fashion.
 
When the mag safe stays in..the battery does not cycle once it is charged. My early 2011 MBP only had 2 cycles on it after a year. I just sold it and replaced it with a 2012 cMBP and it only has 1 cycle on it. If the light is green, its not charging. If it is orange then it is charging.
 
prfrma said:
********. When gaming at the same resolution, performance is exactly the same or slightly better than classic due to overclocked gpu and better thermals. No down scaling or any of the os interference. What's the point of all of that power anyway when you limited to playing at sub 1080 res? I mean, let's all play at 800x600 because we need to play at 200fps amirite?
Click to expand...

Totally missed the point... OP said that he wants to game at native resolution of 1440 x 900. No scaling or blurriness from non-native res.
 
Buying mobile device and removing battery so that you can no longer be mobile = full retard mode.
 
pepatrick said:
When the mag safe stays in..the battery does not cycle once it is charged.
Click to expand...

So which is safer and healthier for the battery ? make the mag safe stay in for a long time or let the battery die to 5% then charge again and repeat ?
 
if you are predominantly gaming.. dont go to mac.


720p animes + movies will run absolutley fine on a windows PC.
your games library and options for gaming will open massivley on a windows PC.


for a laptop, i'm happy with a mac but if i wanted a gaming PC with the lots of different jobs and functions going on... i'd never go for mac.
 
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