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Disappointed with Integrated Graphics

em500 said:
Well, there was some hype around the Santa Rosa X3100 integrated graphics, which was supposed to be much better than the GMA 950. Problem is, even if it's twice as fast, if you're going from 5fps to 10fps you still don't have anything playable. :)

To be fair though, I think there are some games that went from an unplayable 20fps to a barely playable 30fps.
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I think Your right but these are all new games and if you want to play older games like age of empires 3,sims 2 stuff like that the macbook will play them great.

I use my macbook for:
Adobe
iTunes
Homework
Internet
iLife

It runs all that extremly well no problems I also think the macbook can do more then it gets credit for.
 
I was going to get a Macbook until I checked the numbers.

For 20% less than a white Superdrive Macbook I got an Acer with:

ATI HD 2400
17"
250GB hard disk
3 trackpad buttons
DVD-RAM
ExpressCard
card reader

And the 3-year warranty extension costs 1/3 of AppleCare
 
cube said:
I was going to get a Macbook until I checked the numbers.

For 20% less than a white Superdrive Macbook I got an Acer with:

ATI HD 2400
17"
250GB hard disk
3 trackpad buttons
DVD-RAM
ExpressCard
card reader

And the 3-year warranty extension costs 1/3 of AppleCare
Click to expand...




Congrats on your Acer and your checking of #'s

A person could save a huge % if they chose to attend their local community college instead of MIT, Harvard, Stanford ect.


I could have saved a huge % if I had chose a bike for year round transportation but it snows where I live and the temperature has been known to dip below zero from time to time:eek: so I had to pass on that savings.

If you think the warranty extension that your Acer has is the same as Apple Care, you are like the OP (didn't read the fine print) :rolleyes:
 
The Acer extended warranty I got also covers accidental damage (minus 100 EUR fee for broken screen).
 
cube said:
The Acer extended warranty I got also covers accidental damage (minus 100 EUR fee for broken screen).
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That's good value for money...However...personally, I would rather have a smaller hard drive, GMA X3100 and OSX. Which isn't to say I'm thrilled with the integrated graphics, but specs aren't everything.
 
psychofreak said:
Have you ever had experience with non-Apple warranty services? Its often a nightmare battle between transfers telling you to phone someone else. At least with Apple its either your fault or theirs.
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I should have quoted his earlier post with the specs of the Acer laptop he bought - that's what I was talking about mostly...

...and yes, I've dealt with warranty issues on PCs, mostly from Dell, and it was a nightmare.

Put it this way people - where are your priorities? Having integrated graphics on the MacBook is not an ideal situation, but given the choice between a Radeon HD2400 + Windows and a GMA X3100 + OS X, I'll take the latter any day.
 
I know OSX is very important but I don't like Apple's pricing policy for these plain PCs. If I'm going to buy a sucky x86 machine, let it be sucky at x86 price.
 
The specs on the MacBook, other than the GPU, are very nice. And the GMA is not a deal-breaker in my opinion...sure, you can't play Crysis on it, but neither can your new Acer. And it will play WoW just fine.
 
The MacBook's GMA X3100 isn't that bad. I mean, it isn't for games, but it can play the occasional game.

I use my MacBook for web-browsing, typing, iTunes, EverQuest:Mac Edition (A 3D MMORPG highest settings), and before when I had a core duo MacBook with worse specs it could play Age of Empires: Mac Edition with great FPS, the thing is, the new MacBook doesn't support 16-bit color so it won't run, but Apple is going to release an update for this sometime soon.

MacBook isn't a gaming computer, but it sure as hell can play the occasional game, even though I play EQ Mac more than 3 hours a day without any problems.
 
I just really hope that the new macbook coming out in January would at least have a decent dedicated graphics card. It doesn't seem that hard to do, but maybe if they truely are not including one just to set the pro and the consumer line apart, maybe they could include more features in the revised pro line, for example a multitouch display mousepad (probably not), or SSD/ Bluray options. Once they have more features to set apart the product line, then maybe we can at least see something as standard as a good graphics card. This is 2007, and our new non-bargain computers can't play many old games.
If the new macbook can play Counter-Strike Source easily, I would be in heaven. :D
 
You will not see a MacBook with that good of a graphics card for some time now, if ever. The thing is, Apple computers are not made for games, if you want to play games, get a 600$ custom computer with atleast a Core 2 Duo, 8800 video card, and 2 GBs of RAM, there ya go, PC gaming computer, and you know what else you can do? Get a MacBook for portability, 1400 dollars, there ya go, 2000 dollars if ya add them up, lets see... what does that price add up to? Ah yes, a MacBook Pro!

Thing is, Apple would lose money adding a graphics card, and besides, look through the threads, some complain about heat, some complain about battery life, if you were to put a 8400 in a MacBook, you would probably have a lot more heat, and a lot less battery life.

Be happy. If you want to game, get a 360 or PS3.
 
Anyone seen the teardowns the the MacBook? Doesn't quite seem like there's even SPACE for a discrete graphics chip. http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/86/images_large/15.jpg

That said, I bought my MacBook knowing that it had GMA. The only game I play is StarCraft. I hardly think I'd need a discrete chip to play that. The GMA serves its purpose and does it well in terms of offering a basic graphics solution. It's still a drastic improvement over the Integrated Extreme Graphics 2 chip of the Pentium-era.
 
I have an MBP, an MB, and a Mini, and I feel that the graphics performance is perfect on all three of them. I do not play any games, but I have never felt limited by the integrated graphics.

I bought the mini for use as a home/remote/file server only, because after reading about all of the posts on here about how it was not powerful enough to do anything, I figured it would barely function as its own computer. How wrong I was about that...

I regularly run 23" ACDs off of the mini and MB, which are the maximum resolution allowed, and I have never felt limited.

In my opinion, the MB is an awesome computer, with beastly specs for the price. If you NEED a dedicated graphics card, odds are you would want all of the other things the MPB has to offer anyway.
 
yeah, its a bit pathetic that apple puts this crap in their machines. just dont buy if you have an intention of gaming.
 
cube said:
I know OSX is very important but I don't like Apple's pricing policy for these plain PCs. If I'm going to buy a sucky x86 machine, let it be sucky at x86 price.
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and what do you mean by x86?

all of apples systems are x86
 
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