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unibody gaming

O

otis123

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
so im getting a new mbp within the week, and ive heard about some driver issues and you need to install some new nvidia drivers, ive also heard this thing gets really hot under xp so ive heard about a fan controller. so if anyone could enlighten me on what i need to do that would be awesome.
 
I've heard that the MBP is fairly decent for some gaming, I have a 2.4 Uni MB and it's not bad for gaming, a definite improvement over the last gen.

As far as the Fan Controlling goes, SMC fan control seams to do the trick, but I've never had problems with overheating under any conditions.

Here's a link;
http://homepage.mac.com/holtmann/eidac/software/page5/page5.html

Oh, and use the search feature, this is a hugely popular topic that has hundreds of threads already.
 
I was able to max out Left 4 Dead while booted into Windows on the unibody MBP and it played great. I would imagine any Steam game will run awesome, which is covers probably 70% of the PC games out there worth playing these days.
 
On a 2.53 Unibody MBP, I'm running Fallout 3 at high (no AA, 4xAF) at 1920x1200 and it's more than playable. This thing can definitely handle gaming (except for Crysis, but that game is just ridiculous).
 
So jealous 🙁

On a first gen 128mb x1600 MBP LOL. I just installed Windows 7 last week and have been thinking about putting some games on the partition and I just tried L4dead and I couldn't even run it on medium.

I gotta get a unibody so bad!!!
 
what exact drivers are you all using? I tried many different display drivers and Vista REGULARLY crashed - so i gave up. I've had to completely uninstall the display driver and therefore cannot game :/

maybe its just a vista 64 issue?
 
integrat.ethis said:
On a 2.53 Unibody MBP, I'm running Fallout 3 at high (no AA, 4xAF) at 1920x1200 and it's more than playable. This thing can definitely handle gaming (except for Crysis, but that game is just ridiculous).
Click to expand...

It play's Crysis just fine for me? Or are you on about with the settings maxed out?
The drivers I use are the ones of the Nvidia website. Work fine for my 32bit XP, no crashes or anything, oh and it is currently eating my Half Life 2 Episode 2 for breakfast 😀 so yes Steam games do run on it fine.
To be honest, I couldn't actually currently be happier with the laptop, it's bloody fantastic.
And you don't need SMC, when in Windows playing a game the fans kick in anyway and then because I default to the 9400m in OS, when I reboot after playing my game the laptop cools itself in under a minute and the fans go to normal and I can touch the back of the laptop.
 
Gamin is decent in OSX and Windowz XP BUT you mbp will run hot VERY HOT.
Just make sure it is well ventilated to stop it from shutting down and you will be fine.
 
About the drivers - there's only one notebook driver available on nvidia.com right now, so I'm using that one (179.28). Note that my MBP (and many others, it seems) hard freezes CONSTANTLY in Vista - but, thank God, not during gaming. I'm not sure video drivers have anything to do with this... but if anyone's found a solution let me know. Luckily, I only use Vista for gaming so it's a non-issue for me.

And about Crysis - it runs at medium settings at 1440x900 passably. But that's just the demo - the full game might be more optimized.
 
My 2.4 mbp runs games beautifully in XP .............. for about 2 minutes and then it gets the black screen of death and freezes. I've tried loads of different drivers but no joy. It doesn't get that hot either, never above 65c, and the fans work fine.
It seems to crash at that temp all the time? Is there a way to up the tolerance so it doesn't shutdown as early?
 
Nik73 said:
My 2.4 mbp runs games beautifully in XP .............. for about 2 minutes and then it gets the black screen of death and freezes. I've tried loads of different drivers but no joy. It doesn't get that hot either, never above 65c, and the fans work fine.
It seems to crash at that temp all the time? Is there a way to up the tolerance so it doesn't shutdown as early?
Click to expand...

Have you checked for an update in Mac OS? Didn't Apple release a new EFI for the new laptops?
Also I can play Crysis at 1440 by 900 with all settings on high but the shaders and shadows on low, I average 30FPS with that and sometimes it hits an average of 40. Set the screen to 1024 by 768 and I get average of about 50FPS.
 
apolloa said:
Have you checked for an update in Mac OS? Didn't Apple release a new EFI for the new laptops?
Also I can play Crysis at 1440 by 900 with all settings on high but the shaders and shadows on low, I average 30FPS with that and sometimes it hits an average of 40. Set the screen to 1024 by 768 and I get average of about 50FPS.
Click to expand...
Ah yeah, that explains it. Personally, I love the look that the shaders give the game, but it comes at an extreme performance hit.
 
integrat.ethis said:
Ah yeah, that explains it. Personally, I love the look that the shaders give the game, but it comes at an extreme performance hit.
Click to expand...

Yep 😀 If you set everything to max it looks pretty, but it's a tad stuttery! lol. Still I am pretty impressed for it's performance considering the GFX chip it has and it's less then an inch thick.
 
apolloa said:
Have you checked for an update in Mac OS? Didn't Apple release a new EFI for the new laptops?
Also I can play Crysis at 1440 by 900 with all settings on high but the shaders and shadows on low, I average 30FPS with that and sometimes it hits an average of 40. Set the screen to 1024 by 768 and I get average of about 50FPS.
Click to expand...

I have bud yes, I've tried everything but no luck. I've actually just reinstalled XP to see if that does anything. Not happy if it turns out to be faulty.

Apolloa, out of interest do you play LOTRO on your MBP?
 
Nik73 said:
I have bud yes, I've tried everything but no luck. I've actually just reinstalled XP to see if that does anything. Not happy if it turns out to be faulty.

Apolloa, out of interest do you play LOTRO on your MBP?
Click to expand...

No. What is Lotro? Never heard of it? Lord Of The Rings? I have only so far played Crysis and Half Life 2 Episode 2.

As for the crashes, hmmm, from what I've read on here I'm still not sure if it's a hardware or software fault but either way I would give Apple a call, then again does it ever crash in Mac OS? Perhaps you should find a game demo for Mac and play that on the 9600MGT.
 
It is indeed Lord of the Rings.... online. Very similar to World of Warcraft.

I'm struggling to find a demo for the Mac that pushes the 9600M GT, any suggestions.
To be honest, I haven't seen many people on here with a similar problem but on the Apple discussion boards there's a huge thread about it. From what I've read, nothing will solve it but a replacement! 🙁 People are saying that since getting a new MBP, or at least a logic board replacement, they've not had one crash. 😎 A little worrying to say the least.

I posted the links in this thread. MBP Freezing
 
i have windows 7 and i've installed steam (counter-strike/half-life)

it works beautifully on my unibody mbp. all i have to say is the increase your partition cause i didn't thought i would install this much games 😛

graphics wise, it's amazing. can't describe every specs but i've never seen any laptop that shows this much details.
 
Real men game on powerpc 😎

But asside from that fact the Unibody MBP's are very good for games, but when you buy a laptop, even now, it will always have a performance hit compared to a desktop that if you are willing to build yourself can be better for games for half the price. Crysis runs using a Intel X3100 so I gather it must be a driver issue or corrupted data if it isnt running well. And as a reply to an earlier post, shaders and the shadows give Crysis its personality, but its hard to see when it hogs up the whole system keeping you from putting all the fine textures and model detail because of them >.<. I still feel that the tweaked Doom 3 engine in Quake 4 is just as good looking as Crysis, if only because its got enough atmospheric effects to melt your freaking face off 😉
 
rj-300zx said:
Real men game on powerpc 😎
Click to expand...

That's because the real games were on PowerPC.

Does anyone remember Invention Studio? Or Titanic: Adventure Out of Time?

Sim City 3000 rocked, too, as did a bunch of others.

I just wish that I could figure out how to get SheepShaver running so that I could still play them... 🙁
 
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