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ThunderShark

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 18, 2011
1
0
Im heading off to school and I'm looking to buy a macbook pro since I will be working with final cut for my major. Beyond being able to do all the music and video editing on the computer, what are the basic requirements I'd need to have on my macbook to be able to play most games available through steam? (i.e.- HL, Portal, CS, Gary's Mod etc.)

As of right now I'm looking at the standard 15 inch, I was going to put in the 8g of ram myself after I bought it (it's cheaper). I was probably going to go with the 2 GHz processor.
Beyond this is there any hardware that I should be looking at?

Programs?

Right now my main source of games would be coming from Steam, to run some of the older games some people told me id need bootcamp since they were designed for windows. Is bootcamp as easy as it sounds or will I need additional software for this to work?

I don't expect to be able to play any of the old Battlefield games, or new games like Deus Ex. This is more for recreational use.


As you can tell I'm pretty new to all thee mac gaming. Please offer helpful information.
 
I have the same MacBook Pro you're interested in buying and I can tell you that you won't have any trouble with source games. It can run Portal 2 with all settings on their highest value at native resolution at a constant 30fps and that's soon to get higher once Valve moves over to the OpenGL forward context that's in Lion. According to a past comment made by Valve, once GLSL 1.3 is supported in OS X, performance will increase. The forward context OpenGL supports up to GLSL 1.5 so performance should increase a pretty noticeable amount once Valve makes the switch.
 
If you plan on using Windows via Bootcamp you will need a copy of windows.

If It was me personally, I would get the 2.2Ghz model with the 1Gb GDDR5 Discrete 6750m graphics option because It will be more future proof.

If your going to spend this much on a MBP might as well get the better one. Its the one I have and I love the graphics performance.
 
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