Base MBP + 360 or High End MBP?

[bluetorch18]

Hello, I'm planning on buying a MacBook Pro as soon as the Merom chips find their way into it. I am planning to buy either a base model MBP w/ 128MB VRAM and 1GB of RAM(~$1,860 student discount) and an Xbox 360(~$400) for gaming or the high end model w/ 256MB VRAM($2,299 student discount)...I know the current MacBook Pro lines are decent for gaming, and can be good if you reclock the GPU(Which is probably harmless now because of the Rev. E MBPs running much cooler)...the games I will be playing are probably Half-Life 2, Halo, Warcraft 3, Doom 3, Age of Empires 3 and of course, Oblivion. The game I will be playing the most is probably Oblivion...if it were to run very smoothly on the MBP, I would much rather get that, because of the portability. When Apple finally updates the MBP, do you think it will recieve a decent GPU boost? I'm mainly asking this question, because I could go out and buy a 360 right now, instead of waiting just to be disapointed. Can anyone offer any insight?

Also, if anyone has sucessfully reclocked their GPU in their MBP(and played Oblivion on it preferably), have you recieved a boost in graphics quality/speed?

Thanks

 

[nickelbackmac]

Go ahead and get the 360. You'll be glad you did. I hooked my iPod up to it and it "ripped"/copied my songs! The graphics are unbelievable. As for the MBP, I can't tell you how much fun they are. But, if you want one for basics and not a big time professional software user, go for the low-end and 360 deal. My wife's got a 17" and it's too much for her (though she wants to keep it) . Hope it helps!

 

[Felldownthewell]

Also, if anyone has sucessfully reclocked their GPU in their MBP(and played Oblivion on it preferably), have you recieved a boost in graphics quality/speed?

Thanks

Since it sounds like you will most likely be playing PC games, I would suggest the high-end MBP.

About the gfx reclocking, I, once upon a time (before my copy of windows expired...long story) put my card back at its regular 400/400 instead of the stock 300/300, which is still about 90/90 less that its top stable speed (According to to ATItool) and got wayyyy increased HL2 speeds. I was actually suprised at how much better the game ran at high settings.

 

[bluetorch18]

Can anyone else please offer their opinion?

 

[eidrunner247]

Well... I read that there was only a 3-5% difference going from the 128 video card to the 256 video card (try searching for that, or check barefeats). If that's true, get the lower end mbp and xbox

 

[Felldownthewell]

Well... I read that there was only a 3-5% difference going from the 128 video card to the 256 video card (try searching for that, or check barefeats). If that's true, get the lower end mbp and xbox

Although the 256 would help in the re-clocking, I would assume. (I only have the 256 so I wouldn't know)

 

[M. Malone]

Can anyone else please offer their opinion?

this is the simplest dilemma, I shouldn't even call it that, but what you should do is buy the highest spec MBP you want/can afford, ignore the Xbox, cause you can add an Xbox later on after you saved up for it at a later day (and when some really good games do come out) if you buy the 360 now, and buy a base MBP, it wouldn't be so easy deciding to upgrade it to a 256, I'm not technical, but I doubt it can be done, so get the top of the line MBP, wait a little for the 360, till some games that are worth playing are released.

 

[YoYoMa]

Thats a tough call. I always want the best of the best, however, the price premium that you have to pay for a slight processor boost and few more megs of video memory is really hard to swallow from a value perspective. I would suggest going with the cheaper MBP and 360.

 

[gadgetgirl85]

What exactly is this "merem" going to make macs so much better? Should I wait? LOL

 

[bluetorch18]

What exactly is this "merem" going to make macs so much better? Should I wait? LOL

Um...I'm kind of getting sick of seeing MEROM misspelled...its not that hard to remember. If you want to know what it is, why don't you look it up on this thing called the internet? Anyhow, thanks to all the people who gave their opinion...people who have played Oblivion on an MBP's opinion would be great too...thanks.

 

[gadgetgirl85]

Um...I'm kind of getting sick of seeing MEROM misspelled...its not that hard to remember. If you want to know what it is, why don't you look it up on this thing called the internet? Anyhow, thanks to all the people who gave their opinion...people who have played Oblivion on an MBP's opinion would be great too...thanks.

Geez sorry no need to get nasty over a little spelling error

 

[ICEBrk]

Relax....

Ok, the only excuse for freaking out like that is coming from Israel... otherwise, relax... seriously!
I'll even offer my opinion as you seem to be way too stressed out over all of this...

Buy a nicely equiped MBP and wait a lil while. Chances are the games you'll want to play on your Xbox will be available for the MBP (even if it means buying software from the evil empire.

Personally, I'd wait and see what the Wii has to offer, at least the gameplay offered there will be truly novel

 

[ironic23]

I've had oblivion run on my MBP via bootcamp and i have to say that the performance is no where near to the xbox's. Afterall, the xbox is a dedicated gaming machine but running oblivion on my mbp with settings so that the game play is smooth just sacrifices too much on picture quality. My housemate ran oblivion on his dual core PC with an ati x1800 graphics card and the game play wasn't too great when he put the settings to the max.

 

[Felldownthewell]

Ok, the only excuse for freaking out like that is coming from Israel... otherwise, relax... seriously!

Um...I'm kind of getting sick of seeing MEROM misspelled...its not that hard to remember. If you want to know what it is, why don't you look it up on this thing called the internet? Anyhow, thanks to all the people who gave their opinion...people who have played Oblivion on an MBP's opinion would be great too...thanks.

Ok, get your panties unbunched please. Apparently SHE is not as big a nerd as we are and does not know all the ins and outs of intel's new chips. Instead of flipping out, try answering the question, as this is buying advice thread.

To answer the question, Merom is the Core Duo 2 mobile version, which will offer 20% more power than the current Core Duo at the same level of energy consumption. It is expected that apple will switch to this chip sometime soon, and then you will see a 20% boost in CPU performance, although you will not see an overall performance boost of 20%.

 

[Shadow]

I am with Jericho2550, get the high-end MBP. You can always buy the XBox 360 later if you want to. But whatever you do, upgrade the RAM!

 

[Barham]

Alright. Here's what you need to do. I've done this same thing before, and have lived to regret it. The highest end mbp will NOT run Oblivion at native res 30+ fps. Therefore, buy the xbox now and enjoy the games that are out (there are quite a few worth playing through now). Your main problem is that you're trying to spec out a laptop as a gaming machine. Unless you're tailoring it for one specific game (say WoW for instance), you're not going to get great performance for very long. The Xbox, on the other hand, will be "High End" for quite some time. I have a 360 and will be buying a Merom MBP to replace my 12" pbook ASAP.


By the way, anyone want to buy a 1.33ghz 12" pbook with 768MB RAM?

 

[YoYoMa]

Well the thing is that you can always upgrade the Laptop later (via selling it and buying another) as well, and you'll lose at least a couple hundred less if you buy the less equipped version. This is because those minor upgrades won't be worth nearly as much as Apple charges for them in the future.

 

[gadgetgirl85]

Ok, get your panties unbunched please. Apparently he is not as big a nerd as we are and does not know all the ins and outs of intel's new chips. Instead of flipping out, try answering the question, as this is buying advice thread.

To answer the question, Merom is the Core Duo 2 mobile version, which will offer 20% more power than the current Core Duo at the same level of energy consumption. It is expected that apple will switch to this chip sometime soon, and then you will see a 20% boost in CPU performance, although you will not see an overall performance boost of 20%.

Just on that I'm a girl and I am not so proficent in the world of chips

 

[ICEBrk]

Re: Relax....

Ok, get your panties unbunched please. Apparently he is not as big a nerd as we are and does not know all the ins and outs of intel's new chips. Instead of flipping out, try answering the question, as this is buying advice thread.
.

The name Merom comes from a region of Israel. Flipping out over the spelling of a processor is overdoing it... I can imagine getting pissed off about people mispelling the name of my home town but over something coming out of intel? no... what makes it even sillier is it's his own post, he's the one trying to get help and he flips out about other people's lack of knowledge?

 

[RedTomato]

You state you'll be buying the laptop with a student discount, so I assume you're a student.

Here's some buying advice: get the worse gaming machine you can.

You'll save so much money, and also you'll be able to actually study and go out and party instead of playing games.

Oblivion and its ilk can suck away and waste a whole 3 years of studying and socialising.

I've seen many people dropping out of college due to becoming addicted to ever quest and various telnet MMORGS and MUDS.

College is also for going out and socalising (partying) as well as studying. You'll learn and hone the interpersonal social skills that will serve you in better stead than a degree or a high score in Oblivion will.

If you feel you don't fit into the jock or valley girl groups, there's plenty other groups of geeks and geekettes that feel the same way, whether its the poetry people, the film makers or the experimental drama people or some other hobby that lights your fire.

 

[findnemo]

I got the 2.0 Macbook Pro and I LOVE it. I'm actually glad I didn't get the more expensive 15" model. My Pro costed me 1800 something w/100gig drive and 217 for 2gb ram from datamem. I am telling you this machine is crazy, it runs OSX and freeking XP I play everything from WoW, WC3, COD2, to Cs-source and its freeking amazing.

If you are a student and are trying to save money, just buy the 1800 one, 128 more mem on a GPU isn't going to make THAT much of a difference if you upgrade your RAM to 2gb or even 1. I admit it will make more of a difference on the newer games....but if you have RAM to back it up then it won't.

This laptop is crazier once you get modified drivers and clock it up to 450/450 (max I'm going untill my notebook cooler thing arrives). BTW if you run on battery the Pro WILL put you down to like 150 hertz/mem and gaming on that really sucks, so if you wanted to game during lectures like I do, your going to have to overclock it.

Also I own a 360, xbox, ps2, psp, ds, xbox live, and I havn't touched them in months. I don't know, as I got older sitting on the couch w/a controller in your hands in the middle of the day isn't very....productive. Also you said you wanted to buy a 360 for oblivion, so have you not played it? Trust me it gets pretty boring after a while.

 

[findnemo]

Just read what you said Tomato and I totally agree, thats why I gave up two lvl 60's in WoW and changed my life.....still a little addicted to it, I just play on the test servers now .

 

[Felldownthewell]

Just on that I'm a girl and I am not so proficent in the world of chips

Well I'm sure there are a few chip-proficient girls on this site, but sorry about that. I'll edit the post in a sec.

The name Merom comes from a region of Israel. Flipping out over the spelling of a processor is overdoing it... I can imagine getting pissed off about people mispelling the name of my home town but over something coming out of intel? no...

Ahhh I understand. Now I remember Yonah, Merom, because of the factories (or design facilities, I don't remember)

 

[bluetorch18]

Okay, I'm sorry for being a little obnoxious, but I was a little drunk...say the only game I was planning on playing on my MBP(that is graphics intensive) is Oblivion? Would you still recommend I get the low end, because the 360 is going to be at 400+mid range MBP(1800+ something)....so all in all its going to be roughly around the same price...2300 or so...but if you say it doesn't run very well at all on a MBP compared to the 360(even if the Merom MBP got a X1800 upgrade), I guess I'd be leaning more towards a low end and a 360...any more opinions?

 

[bluetorch18]

Next MBP

So say the Merom MBP is 2.33GHz with a X1800 GPU w/ 256MB VRAM...I don't know, but I believe this would run Oblivion well at high settings...can anyone please offer their opinion?