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Nixon Face

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 18, 2011
19
0
Im ready to by, but I was reading how Macbook Air is weak. True? Alls I needs is to email, web, movie, and play the games. Will it do?
 

foiden

macrumors 6502a
Dec 13, 2008
809
13
All Airs can play WoW, but it just matters how high the settings you want, and how much of a demand do you want for higher frames in super crowded places (like how Ironforge was/is).

Of course, there's settings to make it run nicely on any of the Airs, but it really depends on how many bells and whistles you plan to apply.

The big time graphic games will generally run, but with the big stuff you have to set some lower settings and such. Crysis has been demoed on a 11" Air, with lower settings. On the other hand, COD4 has been shown running on better settings with surprisingly good results.

WoW is a fairly low-demanding game. It has a decent look on low/medium settings, and usually those are easily handled by the 320M in there.

Take note, quite a few of the more graphically demanding games run better in Windows 7 (Which is the Windows OS that you must use if putting one on an Air, given that the previous ones were not written with SSD support. Apple knew that so they don't support Vista/XP on the new MBA bootcamp).

If you check Youtube, there are various vids showing the 11" performance on games, along with settings used to make them happen. Some games are good at defaulting to what you want. (eg. Starcraft 2). Others underestimate the system.
 
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Nixon Face

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 18, 2011
19
0
What is 320M? Is that the cmputer I should by to play the World of Warcraft? Also the RPG games fallout and mass effect?
 

C64

macrumors 65816
Sep 3, 2008
1,236
222

foiden

macrumors 6502a
Dec 13, 2008
809
13
The 320M is the graphics processor used in the new Macbook Airs.

Also, this thread would be one good example to see how that little 11" can run things.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1080921/

Now, that maybe just one video (borderlands), but he is releasing a slew of new 11" gaming videos.

Take note, some things dont run as well in MacOS. Blizzard games like their WoW and Starcraft 2 are exceptions, as they pretty much do rather well in OpenGL (The Mac OSX library you can kind of equate to Direct X on the PC).

But yep. The thread starter asked the question in a way that it seems they know it's not a *gaming machine*, but still wants to know what the limitations are given so that if they just find they want to run something, that they can still run it, even if they have to turn stuff down.

Mass Effect and Fallout are things meant to play on a good number of machines, as long as you're willing to keep settings down far enough to make it playable. You're fortunate you asked for those. They are heavier than WoW or Torchlight (games meant to play on just about anything released today), but those 2 specifically have been known to run better than expected on lesser machines (with the right settings).
 
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Nixon Face

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 18, 2011
19
0
i think m15 is too fat. I want Apple caomputer i think. to look cool and play the world of warcraft even if i can't play fallout and mass effect.
 

2IS

macrumors 68030
Jan 9, 2011
2,938
433
Burn!

You're both right though. It's comedy, and probably should be deleted.
 

leftywamumonkey

macrumors 6502a
Jun 23, 2010
909
3
California
If you want to check out gaming performance on Macbook Airs, I suggest you check someone out on youtube called, theunits3. I believe he showed: Black Ops, COD4, Starcraft 2. A few other games, I can't list them off the top of my head. It will give you a general idea of what it can play.
 

tom vilsack

macrumors 68000
Nov 20, 2010
1,880
63
ladner cdn
new coo seems to think you might be ok

macbookfuture_bq.jpg
 

Nixon Face

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 18, 2011
19
0
Jeez guys no need to be mean, i get it macbook air cant play games but its still the littlist right? like i said evn if i cant play the fallout or mass effect i want macbook air.
 
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