Macbook Air play Spore at high quality?

[2ms]

The original Macbook Air isn't able to play Spore well even with low graphics settings.

Can anyone tell me if the new one with its Nvidia integrated graphics and dual cores (though still low clock speed) would be drastically better? Could it even run Spore very well with the highest graphics settings?

How are the Nvidia integrated graphics in general compared to dedicated graphics systems? Are they closer in performance to Intel graphics or to dedicated graphics like the 9600M, for example?

 

[MatLane]

The original Macbook Air isn't able to play Spore well even with low graphics settings.

Can anyone tell me if the new one with its Nvidia integrated graphics and dual cores (though still low clock speed) would be drastically better? Could it even run Spore very well with the highest graphics settings?

How are the Nvidia integrated graphics in general compared to dedicated graphics systems? Are they closer in performance to Intel graphics or to dedicated graphics like the 9600M, for example?

The only problem with the Air is, it was not really built for gaming and cant really handle it.

I think it might work but i do not think it will very well.

There was some people saying there was a Heat issue when using high end apps and flash


I still dont really recommend it for gaming


Cheers

ML

 

[7254278]

The only problem with the Air is, it was not really built for gaming and cant really handle it.

I think it might work but i do not think it will very well.

There was some people saying there was a Heat issue when using high end apps and flash


I still dont really recommend it for gaming


Cheers

ML

Take into consideration I had the older rev.

I HATE the MBA, I owned one for 3 months. Its no that it lacks power, its that its built like a cow turd. I now have a macbook 2.16 with an intel gma 950 and the air had the x3100. The air over heats very very easily and one core also ends up turning off while something called kernel_task takes up the other resources left on the one core running. Even while doing not very intensive tasks like voice chatting over skype(not video) or watching a youtube video. I mean my 1.2 Ghz G4 ran better and so does my current ibook. Whats the point in having a 1.8 ghz C2D and a decent video card if it over heats and doesnt work. Might as well have put in a 1.2 Ghz pentium M and an older video card, sure as hell would have run better. The MBA is by far my most disappointing computer purchase be it pc or mac. If they fixed it, then I think its "powerful" enough.

Sorry for the rant, but I have never had such a bad experience with a computer, and if you look online it was just my machine, there is a huge thread open on the apple support forums that apple is just ignoring.

 

[2ms]

The only problem with the Air is, it was not really built for gaming and cant really handle it.

I think it might work but i do not think it will very well.

There was some people saying there was a Heat issue when using high end apps and flash


I still dont really recommend it for gaming


Cheers

ML

Are you referring to the new one with the Nvidia graphics or are you referring to the one with the Intel graphics? I know the new MBA wouldn't be any good for like Crysis or any other of those kinds of games that you generally getting "gaming machines" for, but do you think it could do Spore at the highest graphics settings? Basically, how much of an improvement would the new graphics hardware provide? For example, are integrated Nvidia graphics closer in performance to Intel integrated than they are to dedicated Nvidia graphics?

 

[7254278]

Are you referring to the new one with the Nvidia graphics or are you referring to the one with the Intel graphics? I know the new MBA wouldn't be any good for like Crysis or any other of those kinds of games that you generally getting "gaming machines" for, but do you think it could do Spore at the highest graphics settings? Basically, how much of an improvement would the new graphics hardware provide? For example, are integrated Nvidia graphics closer in performance to Intel integrated than they are to dedicated Nvidia graphics?

Yes the nvidia graphics card is far superior and should in theory be able to run spore decently. However I think you should try the demo first because you might run into the problem I mentioned in my prior post and if you do you would have just thrown your money out the window buying a game that wouldnt run properly

 

[Airforcekid]

It and the macbook are the same spec wise now just the cpu 2.0 to 1.8 so it should on low-med settings.

 

[rittchard]

While there isn't any info specifically on Spore, there is a lot of good information (particularly from Maven1975) on the last 2 pages of this thread regarding the new MBA's game playing capabilities.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/439682/

While it's clearly not a dedicated "gaming machine" - it can certainly game well enough all things considered.

 

[nick9191]

It runs fine on my X3100 Macbook so I'm sure It will be fine on the Air. Also note that although mine is a 2.2, the processors are comparable due to the 6mb cache on the MBA CPU.

Beware of overheating though.