Will the next Macbook Air double gaming performance?

Intel HD5000 will have +50% increased performance, so we're definitely looking at ~30FPS. There might just be an HD5100 option; the high-end power hungry Iris HD5200 should hit ~40FPS, maybe that one will be featured in the (r)MBP. It actually makes sense to make the HD5200 exclusive to the rMBP to further drive people to that machine.

Anyway, OpenGL drivers will be heavily tweaked as far as I know, which might just drive performance to 34-35FPS in our ultrabooks and further boost 5200 performance for that benchmark.

Just speculating, of course.

 

I will be getting the '13 MBA when it is released to replace my '11 i5 - I've missed out on pc gaming because the MBA can't handle it, however I have a related question...

Do you dual boot to windows or do you run games under osx somehow?

 

The bar on the left is GPU performance on the current gen Macbook-Air class processors (Ivy Bridge).
The bar in the middle is the Haswell CPU/GPU that will most likely end up in a new Macbook Air.
Some increase in performance but nothing drastic.




http://www.anandtech.com/show/6927/some-haswell-tdps-revealed-15w-28w-ultrabooks

 

There's games that support OSX, but the performance is pretty much guaranteed to be better under Boot Camp, so that would be recommended.

 

MBA Sandy Bridge vs Haswell

Not much of a gain between Ivy & Haswell I think. How would the Haswell MBA graphics compare to a 2011 Sandy Bridge MBA?

 

Thanks

 

Yea bootcamp is the way to go for gaming.

 

In answer to the OP, no.

And I wish people would stop using the FPS metric. That's like comparing who's car is best judging by the top speed only and not factoring anything else in.

 

??? for one thing you can say that using synthetic benchmarks rather than real-world performance isn't the way to go, but I don't think that's what you meant.

Between an upgrade of a previous product, you'll obviously look at the improved performance, which just happens to be expressed in fps. I can't follow your car reasoning at all, we are talking about graphic cards(chips) after all..

There is no way that the 20fps card will be better than the 30fps card, unless that last one is prone to overheating or something but let's not go there.

 

I can't wait to see real world user impressions of the MBA HD 5000 in gaming. But if you're planning to get the 13" might as well wait for the 13" rMBP since it will be the one with the better graphics jump to utilize HD 5100 'Iris'.

 

But with the much higher resolution of the Retina screen, you may not have any FPS improvement over the Air.

The question for any modern game, is how much does the performance rely on each of the GPU, CPU, and to some extent internet speed. For example, a games performance may be restricted by the GPU, improve the GPU and then it could become CPU bound. So for the OP, I would say it's all dependent on the game and the GPU/CPU combination in the machine.

 

Yet the Airs will still continue to be the lesser in FPS performance as it has been in this generation even when both the Air and the 13" Pro are using the same HD 4000. Keep in mind, that because of its ULV profile, the processor in the MacBook Air will throttle itself down during heavy graphics tasks like your games in order to maintain an optimal operating temperature. That's why with the coming Haswell generation, the 13 retina will slightly distance itself further from the ULV siblings.

 

You can just run the game at a resolution lower than the native retina resolution, and if retina uses a better version of the Intel graphics combined with the bigger current (as was said, MBA=Ultra Low Voltage exclusively) that should yield a definite advantage. Unlike right now, where all chips perform roughly the same. I have to laugh when people recommend the macbook pro over the macbook air only because of performance, since the difference isn't all that big (except for the 15'' of course).

Anyway, what you said about CPU+GPU, since we are talking laptops the GPU will pretty much always be the deciding factor. Modern intel chips are more than capable for games, it's the graphics chip that needs to be up to par. Internet speed won't decide performance.

 

Some games are more CPU intensive than others, and with the ULV design of the Air, you could run in to CPU limitations for some games. And as for internet speeds, if you're playing a multiplayer game, yeah internet speeds can affect performance, especiialy if it's an mmo.

 

yeah, and?

 

Good choice, OP. An 11" max spec'd Haswell is gonna rock. And what's more, Intel promises approx 50% more battery life for ULV machines but even if that's an over estimated claim, an 11" Air with 7 hours battery life in real world usage is defininitely welcome.

 

i honestly can't think of a more perfect computer for my needs!