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MBP for gaming

W

will waters

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 19, 2011
155
0
Great Britain
Hi

I am looking at buying a MBP 13", when the next generation comes out. How well do you think it will be able to do gaming, Battlefield 3, COD MW 3, and star Craft and Star Wars Old republic?

Will the new one have a discrete graphics card or an intel bit of *****?

Thanks Will
 
no one knows until Apple announces the specs...

Most likely it'll still have very low end graphics though.
 
miles01110 said:
If you want a gaming machine build your own desktop. Apple notebooks are never going to be good for gaming.
Click to expand...

+1 Or if you really want a gaming laptop, look into ASUS, MSI, or Sager laptops.

The 13" doesn't do dedicated GPUs and will just have Intel integrated graphics. So that's no to BF3, probably horrible FPS on low for SC2, no idea about SWTOR, and maybe COD playable at medium or something. Very unofficial guesses.
 
You can buy a dedicated gaming machine that includes cool wireless peripherals such as wireless controllers that display on large monitors you probably already own. They also have large built in gaming communities and live in game chat. The seats are hard to beat and many times the sound system is much better than most computer sound systems. Games can be downloaded directly to the machine or purchased at discounts at many local retailers or shipped to your door. You don't need an upgraded graphics card, extra memory, minimize system tasks, and some games are even rendered in 3D. They even have portable versions of these machine that are a fraction of the size of a laptop. If you want to know what these marvelous machines are just pm me for details ;)
 
malman89 said:
The 13" doesn't do dedicated GPUs and will just have Intel integrated graphics. So that's no to BF3, probably horrible FPS on low for SC2, no idea about SWTOR, and maybe COD playable at medium or something. Very unofficial guesses.
Click to expand...

I can play SC2 on medium on my 320m, which is roughly on par with the HD 3000. The new HD 4000 is supposed to be 50%-60% faster than the 3000, so it would probably be able to handle all those games med/high, at least at the low 13" resolution. But historically intel is terrible at graphics, so I wouldn't count on anything until it ships and we see benchmarks.
 
How about the heat? Too much wll reduce the performance after a period of time.
 
will waters said:
Hi

I am looking at buying a MBP 13", when the next generation comes out. How well do you think it will be able to do gaming, Battlefield 3, COD MW 3, and star Craft and Star Wars Old republic?

Will the new one have a discrete graphics card or an intel bit of *****?

Thanks Will
Click to expand...
Intel's new platform is called Sandy Bridge and it's due for release in just the next few weeks. Apple has typically used the latest platform as soon as it's available so there's a lot of us expecting to be in the new 2012 MacBooks whenever they are released.

The new platform features some heavy upgrades to the built in Intel GPU so it is quite likely that Apple will use that. Anandtech is reporting up to 60% more performance in the new GPU's.

So, will the new 13" still have Intel graphics? Probably so, but those graphics will have 60% less suck than before. :)
 
Wether or not the 13" uses Intel HD or not, it won't have a dedicated chip. The 13" MacBook Pro is just the aluminum MacBook. That's ALL it is. That's all it was in the beginning. You had the Aluminum 13" Macbook, then the 15" and 17" aluminum MacBook Pro. If they put a dedicated GPU in the 13" they might as well just put 8 cores on the iMac.

In my eyes, the 13" MacBook Pro is really just a MacBook Plus.

HOWEVER, I do find that my MBP can handle Portal 2, L4D2, and TF2 at considerably high FPS and about medium-high settings, so the Intel HD 3000 isn't TOO terrible.
 
The IVY bridge igp is going to be 2x faster than hd 3000. so light gaming is possible but dont expect to play BF3 very well
 
will waters said:
Hi

I am looking at buying a MBP 13", when the next generation comes out. How well do you think it will be able to do gaming, Battlefield 3, COD MW 3, and star Craft and Star Wars Old republic?

Will the new one have a discrete graphics card or an intel bit of *****?

Thanks Will
Click to expand...

If it has the HD4000 which is most likely BF3 and SW:TOR will still be unplayable.
(SW:TOR maybe IF bioware can optimize the game alot since it requires more than it should).
SC2 should run fine, probably not maxed though.
I'm not sure about MW3, but Black Ops runs decently on the 320m so probably.
 
DustinT said:
The new platform features some heavy upgrades to the built in Intel GPU so it is quite likely that Apple will use that. Anandtech is reporting up to 60% more performance in the new GPU's.
Click to expand...

Is that based off Intels demos that turned out to be a faked VLC video? :D

These are not the demos you are looking for....

IMPORTANT: I have to add they ran the demo again on the GPU later on and it ran just fine but it did make me chuckle!

Edwin
 
edddeduck said:
Is that based off Intels demos that turned out to be a faked VLC video? :D

These are not the demos you are looking for....

IMPORTANT: I have to add they ran the demo again on the GPU later on and it ran just fine but it did make me chuckle!

Edwin
Click to expand...
Yup, I'm not sure what was going on there, what a horrible it idea was! Lol, at least it was easily demonstrated that the system did actually work as advertised.
 
will waters said:
What would the mac mini with the AMD GPU be like with the games mentioned at the top?
Click to expand...

A lot better but don't expect max settings at high resolutions. I would guess around medium settings but that is just an educated guess.

Edwin
 
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