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Gaming on Macbook(2010)

H

Hodes

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 19, 2010
7
0
I am planning to buy a current generation Macbook soon and I was wondering how well the following games run on it:

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
GTA IV
Race Driver: Grid
Street Fighter IV

for those who do not know the new MacBooks come with these settings:

Intel Core 2 Duo 2,26 GHz L2 3MB
2GB SDRAM DDR3 1066 MHz
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB de SDRAM DDR3(shared)
Hard Drive Serial ATA 250 GB 5400 rpm

Thanks.
 
low - some medium settings you should be grand, except GTA4. That's positively a hog even on much more powerful hardware and performance is still meh! Bad pc port imho.
 
SebZen said:
Wow... I mean, it looks real.. but I really don't believe it's possible on 9400m, not even close!
Click to expand...

I can't imagine playing it under Windows would boost the performance that much. Maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't think the 9400m would even get close to that smooth at full resolution. Maybe maxing out the DDR3 Ram really helps it along???
 
Anyone out there ever tried to play these games on the macbook?
 
I have GRID on Steam but I haven't tried it on my Macbook. TF2, L4D etc run like a dream.
 
I've played MWF2 Native OS X (It worked) it wasn't as fast as MWF.
I could play it in a low resolution with low details and it's smooth.

I've also played BioShock, Medium Settings at 1024x600? It's smooth.
If you don't care about the looks Go with 1280x800 with low settings.

Played Sims 3 It's fine with medium settings

All these games were tested Native Mac OS X Snow Leopard
 
In fact I'm not a hardcore gamer, I will use it for work and college, But I want to play on weekends. =)
 
Hodes said:
Anyone out there ever tried to play these games on the macbook?
Click to expand...

Of the 4 games you mentioned (MW2, GTAIV, RD:G, SFIV), I've played all but Race Driver on my Macbook Pro. MW2 and SFIV run great in BootCamp (Vista) at fairly high settings, so turning them down for the 9400 should be fine. (Obviously I'm not limited by the 9400, but I've tried out the Mac Version of COD4, and it runs decently in OSX with just the 9400 with settings turned down, and there should be an extra performance boost when running the Windows version on a MB - with the 9600 there's about a 10fps jump between OSX and Windows, and that's with the settings turned up in Windows).

GTAIV is an awful, awful port with zero optimization for the PC. Don't even bother.

The same, incidentally, goes for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. My hatred for Aspyr know no bounds.
 
Can you confirm if these games have MAC version? I've been searching the internet and found nothing.
 
Hodes said:
Can you confirm if these games have MAC version? I've been searching the internet and found nothing.
Click to expand...

There isn't a Mac version of any of them. You're going to need to get your hands on a Windows installation disk and run everything in Boot Camp. Mac versions of games tend to be pretty poorly optimized for the operating system anyway (since usually they're ported from Windows). Like I mentioned in the first post, CoD4 for OSX performs much worse on the same hardware than CoD4 for Windows, due to the fact that it uses Cider (basically a Windows emulator). Games are rarely ported to OSX, and if they are, they tend to be years late (just check out the lengthy Rome: Total War thread).

My condolences, if you thought that Mac gaming was going to be a Windows-free experience. However, it's better to have to play games in Windows on a Macbook than not be able to play them at all, and things run pretty swimmingly on a uMBP, if my experience (MW2, Bioshock 2, Fallout 3 and SFIV, most recently, and Devil May Cry 4 has a permanent place on my Windows partition) is any indication.
 
Yea it's always best to go with Bootcamp for performance. What I used to do when my macs storage space wasn't enough, was to install Windows onto a tiny partition and run games off an external drive. The footprint is minuscule that way and it forces you to only play games when you're at your desk, rather than during lectures (we've all been there ;)).
 
Thanks for your advices. :)

I'm only sad because I can't buy a Macbook Pro, here in Brazil a Macbook(basic) costs R$2700,00 and the Pro(4GB, HD 250GB) R$ 4.599,00. :(
 
Hodes said:
I saw these videos and thought I would get a better performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-PQ82SOzC4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtLDkHLh8uE

What do you guys think? Fake video?
Please, give me your opinion.

And I would link to play my Steam games too. (TF2, L4D, DoDS)
Click to expand...

the macbooks don't have a high resolution to gaming with a 9400M shouldn't be a big deal. i play medieval total war 2 on a HP laptop with an ATI HD 2600 graphics chip which is pretty old. i play at the max resolution of 1680 by something and it plays OK as long as i don't have anti-aliasing turned on. everything else is maxed or close to maxed.
 
to answer your ?

ive got cod modern warfare 2

plays superb


my specs are
macbook aluminum 2ghz 4gb ram

9400m


no major slowdown..so go ahead and get it as its a great game
 
anyone run something like counter strike on steam on their macbook pro's?

i got it a little while back when it was on the $5 promotion but it wouldn't run well on my old macbook on bootcamp

now i have a new mbp 2.53GHz with 4gb ram - will it run properly now?
 
funkyc said:
anyone run something like counter strike on steam on their macbook pro's?

i got it a little while back when it was on the $5 promotion but it wouldn't run well on my old macbook on bootcamp

now i have a new mbp 2.53GHz with 4gb ram - will it run properly now?
Click to expand...

I can max out any Source game with no problems (besides the LFD games). Whether your playing CS:S or CS 1.6 you shouldn't have any problems whatsoever.
 
it works, but windows

IDK why, but then the problem is that whenever I run the same game on both Mac and Windows, the problem is that Windows runs a LOT smoother.
That's because the games are made for Windows, and you know Apple WANTS the company to follow them, and not Apple getting cheap AND good graphic cards and keeping at same price for users to play good games.
So, that's why the guy in the first link of the youtube video said he did some DX10 'hack', and that could bump up a little graphic.
Just to let you know, or even you know, the Cider ports are not always great.
 
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