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Macbook Air 11'' gaming performance?

Hisdem said:
Hey, get your facts right. I'm not wrong, as I am talking about GPU's in the 13 inch and BELOW laptops, which ALL Apple ones use C2D's. Apple isn't violating ANYTHING, you are stating wrong stuff here. The 15 and 17 inchers, well, that's a completely different matter on their 330M GT. 320M are integrated, not dedicated. And I see you are typing from an iPad. Or at least that's what your signature states. I know what's inside my computer, whereas you clearly have no clue.
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You were talking about the 15" MBP, so I am not wrong. I know the 13" MBP uses integrated GPUs, that is why they are forced to use Core2Duo.

Back on the topic, you can play games on the MacBook Air. Just because you wouldn't buy one, does not make the idea wrong. That is exactly what you came into this thread saying, and you are wrong for doing so.

To the OP, yes the MacBook Air will be able to play games. When it comes to processor-intensive games, it will be slightly slower. Just bump the resolution a bit lower and you will be fine.

Way to bring up that I am typing on an iPad, which has absolutely no basis about anything. Nice job! Kudos for reading, you're really taking what apolloa said literally. I am proud of you.
 
EthanNixon said:
You were talking about the 15" MBP, so I am not wrong. I know the 13" MBP uses integrated GPUs, that is why they are forced to use Core2Duo.

Back on the topic, you can play games on the MacBook Air. Just because you wouldn't buy one, does not make the idea wrong. That is exactly what you came into this thread saying, and you are wrong for doing so.

To the OP, yes the MacBook Air will be able to play games. When it comes to processor-intensive games, it will be slightly slower. Just bump the resolution a bit lower and you will be fine.

Way to bring up that I am typing on an iPad, which has absolutely no basis about anything. Nice job! Kudos for reading, you're really taking what apolloa said literally. I am proud of you.
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Well, you should do some reading better than I did. I only mentioned the 15 inch MBP as being less powerful than the M11X. That's it. I never started involving it in the discussion. So please, if you are not right either, don't go all high and mighty.

And to the OP, yes, the MBA will play games, as I said before, just don't expect anything impressive.
 
Hisdem said:
Well, you should do some reading better than I did. I only mentioned the 15 inch MBP as being less powerful than the M11X. That's it. I never started involving it in the discussion. So please, if you are not right either, don't go all high and mighty.

And to the OP, yes, the MBA will play games, as I said before, just don't expect anything impressive.
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Right, I misread where you stated the 13".
 
EthanNixon said:
Right, I misread where you stated the 13".
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To end this, please tell me what is ambiguous here so I can fix it:

The M11X is small alright, but it's nowhere near the MBA. It's almost twice as heavy as the MBA, not to mention not even close to as thin. And specs. That thing is more powerful than 15 inch base MBP's for god's sake.

I clearly mention the 15 inch MBP as a comparison, nothing more. Never made it the main point.

And if you were not being sarcastic in that last post, please forgive me. It just looked like you were.
 
Hisdem said:
To end this, please tell me what is ambiguous here so I can fix it:

The M11X is small alright, but it's nowhere near the MBA. It's almost twice as heavy as the MBA, not to mention not even close to as thin. And specs. That thing is more powerful than 15 inch base MBP's for god's sake.

I clearly mention the 15 inch MBP as a comparison, nothing more. Never made it the main point.

And if you were not being sarcastic in that last post, please forgive me. It just looked like you were.
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I was being serious. I have no problem admitting that I was wrong.

The M11x and MBA are in the same subclass of laptops though, which is the Ultra Portable class. While there are quite a lot of differences, both are on the extreme opposites of the spectrum. The M11x is an anomaly because it has potential to replace a desktop. The MBA is an anomaly because it is the thinnest notebook I have seen, while still pushing the envelope of performance.

They can be compared, and I am sure we will see more comparison of the two. I think the MBA is the better choice to be quite honest though.
 
YOU said:

Hisdem said:
it really doesn't make sense to buy an ultraportable for gaming, whether you like it or not. Unless you mean the very simple pinball type things that come with Windows, for example.
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Alienware sell the M11X exactly as an ultraportable netbook, in fact the worlds most powerful netbook. But you said you cannot game on an ultra portable. See the hypocrisy?

Hisdem said:
Woah, hold on there. The M11X is small alright, but it's nowhere near the MBA. It's almost twice as heavy as the MBA, not to mention not even close to as thin. And specs. That thing is more powerful than 15 inch base MBP's for god's sake. It has a 1GB GPU. The MBA has an INTEGRATED 256MB one. They're clearly different machines for different purposes. Don't bring Alienware into the discussion because they make computers FOR gaming, and Apple doesn't. The M11X is not in the same category of ultralight notebooks as the MBA. It just has the same screen size. I guess now I'm reading too much right apolloa?
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Well, the fact your stating a full blown corei5/ i7 laptop is LESS powerful then the M11X is just laughable, just because the M11 has a 335 GPU, it may have 1GB of ram but so what? It means jack crap for the graphics when it runs at 1366 by 768, it's hardly pushing massive textures.... 1gb doesn't make much difference.
I already posted video proof you can play Left4Dead on the new Air. All your doing is reading the spec and immediately labelling the device as crap, can't do anything, you will just totally ignore all the evidence in front of you stating the opposite because your never wrong, right?

At the end of the day, you can play games on the new Air, your claiming you can't unless it's 'pinball' and your just plain wrong.
 
apolloa said:
Well, the fact your stating a full blown corei5/ i7 laptop is LESS powerful then the M11X is just laughable, just because the M11 has a 335 GPU, it may have 1GB of ram but so what? It means jack crap for the graphics when it runs at 1366 by 768, it's hardly pushing massive textures.... 1gb doesn't make much difference.
I already posted video proof you can play Left4Dead on the new Air. All your doing is reading the spec and immediately labelling the device as crap, can't do anything, you will just totally ignore all the evidence in front of you stating the opposite because your never wrong, right?

At the end of the day, you can play games on the new Air, your claiming you can't unless it's 'pinball' and your just plain wrong.
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Is this a question of can or should? I had an M11x and loved it for gaming, it's a lot better than my current setup but I'm still surprised how well the 320m games. Anyway reason I ask is the M11xR1 cooling was awesome, GPU temps for me was always no more than 63C.. my 320m gets up to 85C. I fear for the MBA's cooling ability in how thin it is, I don't see much airflow and circulation. I don't doubt the MBA can game though, has anyone done benchmarks? Wasn't the original Air with 9400m downclocked? Hope that's not the case with the 320m.

Not to take anything away from that youtube video, but uh he didn't really play the game lol. There's a difference from starting area FPS to when actual AI processing + horde. I'd like to see actual FPS display net_graph 1. M11x with 1.3 OC'd ran L4D2 fine but it did drop in FPS whenever a ton of models and zombies were on screen + goo and smoke etc. I think the MBA CPU will bottleneck it. And yeah the 1GB vRam doesn't help a whole lot at that res, don't forget it's DEDICATED video ram. It has it's own memory pipeline and not sharing the bandwidth of the computer's ram either. That does make a difference, well the big difference in discrete vs integrated.

Also we forget that one aspect of gaming (not cloud gaming) involves installing these games. Games usually now are 6-10GB and WoW is a massive 30GB after this recent 4.01 update! That's a ton of space used on an MBA that must use external drives for additional storage (e-Sata would've been great here imo). I have an SSD but also took out my superdrive for another storage HDD. Anyway not arguing, just discussing. Good topic!
 
apolloa said:
YOU said:



Alienware sell the M11X exactly as an ultraportable netbook, in fact the worlds most powerful netbook. But you said you cannot game on an ultra portable. See the hypocrisy?



Well, the fact your stating a full blown corei5/ i7 laptop is LESS powerful then the M11X is just laughable, just because the M11 has a 335 GPU, it may have 1GB of ram but so what? It means jack crap for the graphics when it runs at 1366 by 768, it's hardly pushing massive textures.... 1gb doesn't make much difference.
I already posted video proof you can play Left4Dead on the new Air. All your doing is reading the spec and immediately labelling the device as crap, can't do anything, you will just totally ignore all the evidence in front of you stating the opposite because your never wrong, right?

At the end of the day, you can play games on the new Air, your claiming you can't unless it's 'pinball' and your just plain wrong.
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Well, I admit I may have been excessive saying you can't play games on an ultraportable, but the M11X has a quad core i7 CPU, and double the VRAM as the highest end MBP. Spec wise, it is more powerful, that is not arguable. I don't know about real life performance as I don't own one.

To clarify, you CAN play games on the MBA, just it won't be anything great. Or were you running L4D2 on high settings? I bet you weren't.

And the M11X just isn't comparable to the MBA because it has nothing to do with it in terms of public. People who buy an MBA wan't a very light, mobile computer for their uses. People who buy Alienware wan't a desktop like performance in a small package, and that the MBA can't provide.
 
ProstheticHead said:
Can't we all just get along?
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I'm pretty sure everyone here has enough maturity to know that we are just argumenting over an issue :eek:

At least I am not mad at anyone. I just think it would be stupid to not say anything when people say I am totally wrong without considering the basis and point of view I presented.
 
Hisdem said:
Well, I admit I may have been excessive saying you can't play games on an ultraportable, but the M11X has a quad core i7 CPU, and double the VRAM as the highest end MBP. Spec wise, it is more powerful, that is not arguable. I don't know about real life performance as I don't own one.

To clarify, you CAN play games on the MBA, just it won't be anything great. Or were you running L4D2 on high settings? I bet you weren't.

And the M11X just isn't comparable to the MBA because it has nothing to do with it in terms of public. People who buy an MBA wan't a very light, mobile computer for their uses. People who buy Alienware wan't a desktop like performance in a small package, and that the MBA can't provide.
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The M11 has a ultra low voltage dual core i7. It's way too small to feature a quad core. My comment also reffered to the Core2DUO version they sell because the MB Air has the same processor but it's clocked faster. I also didn't play any games, I just posted a video of someone doing so:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zhWIe3t4nw

Yes people will buy the air as a ultra portable computer but the comparison is valid because the M11 is marketed as an ultra portable games machines. You can use both machines as your only computer, they will edit video, photos, play games, email, internet, people don't do much else these day's with a computer? It's a shame the 11" isn't offered with 256gb storage.
 
I don't get it. why do people want to know this low power macbook for gaming? if you want to play games, get macbook pro, or PC laptop if you want to play everywhere. this argument is pointless. I don't think that you just want to play simple puzzle game, or acade right? here people mentioned serious RPG, strategy, shooting game. then macbook air is not for doing well. I don't want to set my game video setting as lower to play. I want to set everything max. I don't want to see ****** graphic during playing game. do you? it's just not OK to run games. there are much more issues.
 
archurban said:
I don't get it. why do people want to know this low power macbook for gaming? if you want to play games, get macbook pro, or PC laptop if you want to play everywhere. this argument is pointless. I don't think that you just want to play simple puzzle game, or acade right? here people mentioned serious RPG, strategy, shooting game. then macbook air is not for doing well. I don't want to set my game video setting as lower to play. I want to set everything max. I don't want to see ****** graphic during playing game. do you? it's just not OK to run games. there are much more issues.
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Great, that's you. I travel all around to play my game, and I sure as heck would rather have this laptop than my desktop. I know this laptop will run CS:S at 640x480 with all settings on low with 80-120FPS. I'm not going to buy two laptops, so I want an ultraportable that is what I want.

Technology advances, and the GPU in the MacBook Air is more than enough for running games.
 
Way too many ignorant arrogant people in this thread.

You guys are comparing GPU power by the amount of graphics memory they have. That is nonsense.

Check some real world performance:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Laptop-Graphics-Cards.130.0.html

The M11X is a gaming laptop. However the MBA graphics does manage to hold its own in low/med in most games. For the casual gamer, this is enough.

Combined with the extreme portability, it does make it a pretty good all rounder.

tl;dr: Yes it will run games. But don't expect it to be amazing.
 
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The fact is, if you want to play newer released titles, you will be playing them on low settings for smooth gameplay. Oldish titles you can run without much of a problem. That's all there is to it.
 
EthanNixon said:
Great, that's you. I travel all around to play my game, and I sure as heck would rather have this laptop than my desktop. I know this laptop will run CS:S at 640x480 with all settings on low with 80-120FPS. I'm not going to buy two laptops, so I want an ultraportable that is what I want.

Technology advances, and the GPU in the MacBook Air is more than enough for running games.
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Indeed, but then that guy is an ******* anyway, always getting vitriolic when anyone dares mention gaming but not to his standards.

If you don't want to play at 1080p, 100 fps constantly on max settings your doing it wrong it seems ;)
 
macculam said:
Personality Games, Meeting, personality, create connections.
Many people find it hard to connect online for friendship or more, because of impersonal emails, unawareness on how to relate and a too serious environment. While people increasingly want use the Internet to meet people, where can they really get to know a person beyond the usual questions and understand a part of their personality?
http://goodwizz.com/
Click to expand...

I think this is the best post in this whole thread.
 
Venkman90 said:
Indeed, but then that guy is an ******* anyway, always getting vitriolic when anyone dares mention gaming but not to his standards.

If you don't want to play at 1080p, 100 fps constantly on max settings your doing it wrong it seems ;)
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I agree with you 100%. I just want something I can take to my friends house and play my matches, but when I am at home I would use my gaming PC. I play games competitively, so having with lower FPS doesn't bother me. My PC at home gets about 400-600FPS at the settings I use for competitive reasons. I obviously only need about 85-120 depending on the monitor I am using, but I can play just fine with 60.

I think the MacBook Air will be able to do at least 60FPS constant at the settings I play at. It won't be fun, but it will do. :)
 
well, there are always apple fanboys who defend whoever says against. that's why I don't like them. but I like mac (and have two). but I am not a fanboy. mac is just device to help my works. that's all about it. each mac has purpose. macbook air isn't designed for gaming as I say again. if you feel satisfied to play game very smoothly, then get macbook pro. MBA is just for light works like photo, little movie editing, watch HD contents. mostly for web surfing. have you even noticed that 11.6 inch MBA is started to suffer from playing multiple flash clips at the same time? anyway, whoever tells me **** or ignore, I don't care. MBA is just for replacement for ipad.
 
archurban said:
well, there are always apple fanboys who defend whoever says against. that's why I don't like them. but I like mac (and have two). but I am not a fanboy. mac is just device to help my works. that's all about it. each mac has purpose. macbook air isn't designed for gaming as I say again. if you feel satisfied to play game very smoothly, then get macbook pro. MBA is just for light works like photo, little movie editing, watch HD contents. mostly for web surfing. have you even noticed that 11.6 inch MBA is started to suffer from playing multiple flash clips at the same time? anyway, whoever tells me **** or ignore, I don't care. MBA is just for replacement for ipad.
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Just curious, why would you ever run multiple flash clips at the same time other then for benchmarking purposes of course?

What I plan to do with my MacBook Air (not sure which size yet):
-edit my video reviews
-write my product reviews
-export/import product review pictures
-light gaming to test products to review
-very minimal movie watching (iPad)
-vast movie downloading to external HDD
-vast iTunes library via external HDD

Does that sound like something this laptop can do? I am looking more at the 11.6" version to be honest. I think it just looks worlds better. However, I would get the top version of that, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD, 1.6Ghz, etc.

Good intentions?

Also, I have a gaming PC at home for competitive purposes. I do all of those things on that and actually use less than 15GBs on my system disk... Most of my documents are stored in the cloud or on my external HDD.
 
archurban said:
macbook air isn't designed for gaming as I say again. if you feel satisfied to play game very smoothly, then get macbook pro. MBA is just for light works like photo, little movie editing, watch HD contents. mostly for web surfing..
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Thank you for telling us what to do with our hardware.

Oh and leave the "fanboi" argument at the door, it's tired and shows a lack of imagination.

Post 1: "Hey guys, I am thinking of getting an Air, I wonder what I can play on it"

Post 2: "well some things run at lower details, some at medium, here are some examples"

Makes for a good and helpfull thread. Then enter you with your:

"omg u noobs u cant plai on this get MBP or PC u cant argu wif me as i hav 2 macs but don plai gamez on this unles its peggle k?"

It helps nobody.
 
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