Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Mac Gaming???????????????

nlr

nlr

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 27, 2010
457
1
London
I'm here and macs so I don't know much about hardware but everyone tells me that Macbook pro/iMac products have outdated graphics cards which makes them not very capable running high end games on native resolution.

Is this true?
Do you think apple will take a different approach since steam has come to mac?


Post your thoughts

regards,
nlr
 
My 1,1 2ghz mac pro runs all the modern games very well, even on max settings.

Specs are:

Quad 2ghz
4gb ram
radeon 4870
 
nlr said:
Do you think apple will take a different approach since steam has come to mac?
Click to expand...

It's been said that Valve is working pretty closely with Apple engineers. I'm hoping that as Steam for Mac gains steam (haha) Apple will begin tapping the market by offering more options for higher end GPUs. I'm expecting to see some nice graphics cards in the next generation of Mac Pros, whenever that is.

Craigmoyer: You're having no trouble running games at high settings... with the best graphics card available in an Apple machine =P

-Nick
 
According to notebookcheck.net, the 4850 in the iMac will do all modern games at high or ultra settings. The problem with this benchmark, however, is that they test at laptop screen resolutions and not that of the mighty 27". This is where many of Apple's perceived performance problems (ppp? :D) come from: they are using laptop cards with desktop resolutions. The Mac Pro needs both a new video card AND new processors. Its getting far too long in the tooth for a flagship product.

The laptops themselves have fairly decent, modern cards (320M, 330M) but they won't win any rewards for speed. Apple is trying to be general purpose here so you won't get the specialized treatment of a gaming laptop , for example.
 
Macs may not be the number one gaming platform, but they are completely capable of playing all games out there and provide the opportunity to frolic with MacOSX and avoiding Windows as much as possible. Especially important if you travel with a laptop. That is my choice. :)
 
My cousin bought an iMac last week and on boot-camp he ran battlefield 2 at the highest settings and it wasn't smooth.

So I'm just wondering because macs wernt made for gaming I was thinking if the graphics card are not suitable for games.


(I have purchased a macbook pro i7 and wanted to know how will it perform on games)
 
I'm gaming on a 4 year old 2.17Ghz C2D with an Ati X1600 - new games on medium to medium/low settings.

A big chunk the gaming hardware nonsense you hear is hype. I've seen guys here saying that you can't raid WoW on a new base Mac (which has piss poor graphics compared to games like AION I was sieging in).

It's a lot of rubbish, Macs are great gaming machines in terms of hardware. Anyone that tells you otherwise is lost is hype. If you have an i7 and a new gfx card from a 2009/2010 Mac - you have a gaming beast. Go enjoy it.
 
Yeah I purchased the macbook pro i7 15" which should be coming in 1 week due to it being made with customization.

I am also interested in buying a new desktop and I was thinking of getting iMac 27" i7 but I wanted to mainly play games on it so I'm not sure if I should wait till they update there graphics cards.

(I assume because steam is now on mac apple will consider gaming while developing their latest builds.)
 
niuniu said:
I'm gaming on a 4 year old 2.17Ghz C2D with an Ati X1600 - new games on medium to medium/low settings.

A big chunk the gaming hardware nonsense you hear is hype. I've seen guys here saying that you can't raid WoW on a new base Mac (which has piss poor graphics compared to games like AION I was sieging in).

It's a lot of rubbish, Macs are great gaming machines in terms of hardware. Anyone that tells you otherwise is lost is hype. If you have an i7 and a new gfx card from a 2009/2010 Mac - you have a gaming beast. Go enjoy it.
Click to expand...

agreed. i didn't just buy a core i7 512mb 330m gt gfx card to play tetris on ;)
 
niuniu said:
I'm gaming on a 4 year old 2.17Ghz C2D with an Ati X1600 - new games on medium to medium/low settings.

A big chunk the gaming hardware nonsense you hear is hype. I've seen guys here saying that you can't raid WoW on a new base Mac (which has piss poor graphics compared to games like AION I was sieging in).

It's a lot of rubbish, Macs are great gaming machines in terms of hardware. Anyone that tells you otherwise is lost is hype. If you have an i7 and a new gfx card from a 2009/2010 Mac - you have a gaming beast. Go enjoy it.
Click to expand...

Bingo. My x1600 is my main gaming PC, I even developed games on it for a while. It's odd when say Macs aren't for gaming (or any low-end hardware), it just means you have to turn the settings down.

I've pumped around 1000 hours into the L4D games and TF2 on that paltry x1600, and it was the most fun gaming time I've had.
 
nlr said:
My cousin bought an iMac last week and on boot-camp he ran battlefield 2 at the highest settings and it wasn't smooth.

So I'm just wondering because macs wernt made for gaming I was thinking if the graphics card are not suitable for games.


(I have purchased a macbook pro i7 and wanted to know how will it perform on games)
Click to expand...

Easy, fire up a game on your macbook pro, and judge yourself!
 
nlr said:
So I'm just wondering because macs wernt made for gaming I was thinking if the graphics card are not suitable for games.
[/B]
Click to expand...

That is not a good characterization. PCs as Macs are made with technical specs to be fast. Macs share the same brand of video cards as PCs do. PCs are not any more made to game, than a Mac is. It's just that in the PC world, game producers have been working with Windows for years and put all their effort into optimization to run on Windows. If you run windows games in Windows on a Mac, performance may not be number one, but it is good to acceptable.
 
You wont run Crysis at high settings thats for sure. Other stuff, sure. Just make sure you have 4GB of RAM+
 
My late 2008 Macbook runs Killing Floor and the source games at the native resolution 1280x800 at high/medium settings with no problems.

I'm not an expert, but I'm guessing if I installed Windows it would be pretty much the same.
 
I believe that pro gamers in competitions actually used to turn the resolution DOWN to increase FPS as it's more important then 'pretty graphics'
I wouldn't be surprised if they still do that.

And yes, when someone tells you a Mac can't game, tell them where to go or challenge them with 'so I cannot play ANY game at ANY settings then?' then tell em where to go.
And just look at games that are used to bench hardware, Crysis 1 and Doom 3 are STILL used. Some even use Quake 4. All old games now and they can all be played on Macs via Mac OS or Windows.
 
Either get the new MacBook Pro's, or higher-end iMac's, and you can run games at max settings in native resolution. All the games released by Steam for Mac thus far (I own all of the top-sellers) run at 1920x1080 max settings (and they were set that way by default.) sometimes you need to check the texture setting though, it might set it to medium by default, but you can bump it up to high/highest.

If you get an iMac, just make sure to examine the screen closely, and watch for any defects over the course of 3-4 months. I believe Apple has since fixed the screen defects issues, but I'm one of those who were unfortunate to have picked one up with major screen defects. I haven't taken it to an Apple store yet because I would have to backup a LOT of data first. I believe the only fix for my problem is a complete replacement.

My brother and I have been gamers for as long as we can remember, and both of us do our gaming these days on Mac's. We both had picked up new high-end gaming laptops (Asus core i5 and Sony Vaio core i7), but found that they run very hot and are annoyingly loud, to the point of being distracting. Our Mac's run cool, and silent. I am actually quite surprised how well we can game on the new MBP's and iMac's.

Now all Apple has to do is get a handle on quality control, and bump up the video ram.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back