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Should I make the jump to Windows 7 for directX 11?

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whitedragon101

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 11, 2008
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I am going to buy a new Macbook Pro in the refresh which will certainly have a DirectX 11 GPU. I run Windows XP SP3 in bootcamp (which means DirectX 9 )

Should I make the jump to Windows 7 for DirectX 11?

I am not sure given that its a notebook GPU, whether the shiny DirectX 11 graphics would be too much for the MBP and kill frame rates.
 
whitedragon101 said:
I am going to buy a new Macbook Pro in the refresh which will certainly have a DirectX 11 GPU. I run Windows XP SP3 in bootcamp (which means DirectX 9 )

Should I make the jump to Windows 7 for DirectX 11?

I am not sure given that its a notebook GPU, whether the shiny DirectX 11 graphics would be too much for the MBP and kill frame rates.
Click to expand...

NO, NO, NO.

I have both a new Win7 Pro core i7, laptop and a new 15" MacBook Pro core i7, both have 8GB ram and SSD's. Having the same processor, they are as close to identical as possible. So again, the answer to your question is NO do NOT buy the Mac, it runs really hot, the thin Unibody construction, lack of proper vents and temperature controls competely takes the fun out of using it for games. Also forget boot camp, or virtualization, like VMware, or Parallels. Tried those, they are an epic fail when it comes to what you want to do.

Plus you're going to pay about $1,000 more for it as compared to a good ThinkPad or one of the new Professional HP's. Either of those are outstanding. I just got the HP.

I have a Mac because I've been using them for years, but you cant' even run YouTube without it getting hot after a period of time. It's well documented that overheating, is a Mac Issue. They put styling and a thin profile as a much higher priority than having a fast, cool running laptop. The difference is staggering. Save yourself the headaches. Get the PC, run your games and enjoy. Windows 7 is outstanding.
 
ozred said:
NO, NO, NO.

I have both a new Win7 Pro core i7, laptop and a new 15" MacBook Pro core i7, both have 8GB ram and SSD's. Having the same processor, they are as close to identical as possible. So again, the answer to your question is NO do NOT buy the Mac, it runs really hot, the thin Unibody construction, lack of proper vents and temperature controls competely takes the fun out of using it for games. Also forget boot camp, or virtualization, like VMware, or Parallels. Tried those, they are an epic fail when it comes to what you want to do.

Plus you're going to pay about $1,000 more for it as compared to a good ThinkPad or one of the new Professional HP's. Either of those are outstanding. I just got the HP.

I have a Mac because I've been using them for years, but you cant' even run YouTube without it getting hot after a period of time. It's well documented that overheating, is a Mac Issue. They put styling and a thin profile as a much higher priority than having a fast, cool running laptop. The difference is staggering. Save yourself the headaches. Get the PC, run your games and enjoy. Windows 7 is outstanding.
Click to expand...

Rubbish.

Bump up the fan speeds if you're gaming under windows.
If your computer is getting cooked with youtube, then there is something wrong with it.
Bootcamp=windows... It's not emulating a thing.

The only reason you shouldn't get the macbook pro, is if you're on a budget, and want to spend a little less.
Also, what directx11 games will you be playing?
 
I am running DirectX 9 so any games running 10 or 11 will be different but I'm not sure which of my newer games are 10 or 11.

COD : Modern Warfare
COD : Modern Warfare 2
COD : Black Ops
Crysis
Arma 2
Half Life - Orange Box
Portal

I will be getting some new games this year which definitely will be DirectX 11 e.g Crysis 2, Portal 2
 
I started running bootcamp'd Windows 7 for games about a year ago. I gradually migrated over. Now I don't even miss OSX anymore. It is an excellent OS.

You should definitely upgrade.
 
I think you should make the jump to Win7, because WinXP will be losing support, completely. No one is going to be making sure games run on WinXP if MS wont even help developers get it working on XP. Thats for a newness issue. Newer tech will always replace the old.

However, I have to say that I think Windows 7 is very well done. I am actually impressed with Win7. Compared to Vista and XP it's like the speed of XP with the features of Vista, but without the crap in Vista that didn't need to be added. Not to say it IS XP or it IS Vista, because it isn't. It's just better.

I'm still a fan of Mac OSX, even though I'm still relatively new to it. However, I have to give MS props for Win7. There's nothing about it that should make you decide against using it for Bootcamp.
 
Yep, do go to Windows 7. I did... went straight from XP to 7 because Vista was crap.

I run it on my MBP when I need to use Windows programs, and I don't have any problems.

And don't worry about the person who is ragging on MBPs (I saw your other thread where you were asking about it). It's just an opinion... he probably had a bad day or just likes posting stuff for controversy. I love my MBP, and love OSX. This way, I get to use both, and my computer is extremely reliable... more than 3 years old and it's still working like new. My last PC acted extremely elderly at the same age.
 
ozred said:
no, no, no.

I have both a new win7 pro core i7, laptop and a new 15" macbook pro core i7, both have 8gb ram and ssd's. Having the same processor, they are as close to identical as possible. So again, the answer to your question is no do not buy the mac, it runs really hot, the thin unibody construction, lack of proper vents and temperature controls competely takes the fun out of using it for games. Also forget boot camp, or virtualization, like vmware, or parallels. Tried those, they are an epic fail when it comes to what you want to do.

Plus you're going to pay about $1,000 more for it as compared to a good thinkpad or one of the new professional hp's. Either of those are outstanding. I just got the hp.

I have a mac because i've been using them for years, but you cant' even run youtube without it getting hot after a period of time. It's well documented that overheating, is a mac issue. They put styling and a thin profile as a much higher priority than having a fast, cool running laptop. The difference is staggering. Save yourself the headaches. Get the pc, run your games and enjoy. Windows 7 is outstanding.
Click to expand...
troll troll troll troll
 
I agree with the guy above, Macbook Pros get ridiculously hot under Windows, even on minor things like browsing the web. I think there are some problems there that Apple needs to fix with Bootcamp updates or something. However, there's no reason not to buy one just because of that, especially when decent cooling pads are less than $100.

Anyway, I would go ahead and upgrade, even if the next GPU is not DirectX 11 compatible many people report performance increases with Windows 7.
 
ozred said:
NO, NO, NO.

I have both a new Win7 Pro core i7, laptop and a new 15" MacBook Pro core i7, both have 8GB ram and SSD's. Having the same processor, they are as close to identical as possible. So again, the answer to your question is NO do NOT buy the Mac, it runs really hot, the thin Unibody construction, lack of proper vents and temperature controls competely takes the fun out of using it for games. Also forget boot camp, or virtualization, like VMware, or Parallels. Tried those, they are an epic fail when it comes to what you want to do.

Plus you're going to pay about $1,000 more for it as compared to a good ThinkPad or one of the new Professional HP's. Either of those are outstanding. I just got the HP.
Click to expand...

Huh? Last time I made a comparison, the MacBookPro was very favorably priced against an equivalently equipped PC laptop. Not only that but if you only want to lug around 1 laptop and have an affinity for OSX for every day computer tasks, (most Mac users do), the MBP is perfect, 2 computers in one. I've played all of the top AAA games and have been very satisfied with it. I'll be upgrading it soon and yes, it will be another Mac.

I have a Mac because I've been using them for years, but you cant' even run YouTube without it getting hot after a period of time. It's well documented that overheating, is a Mac Issue. They put styling and a thin profile as a much higher priority than having a fast, cool running laptop. The difference is staggering. Save yourself the headaches. Get the PC, run your games and enjoy. Windows 7 is outstanding.
Click to expand...

You are exaggerating the heat problem and PC laptops get hot too. For the OP, I don't know about DX11, but DX10 was a bit of a disappointment unless you are using a computer that can run graphics at high settings. My 3 year old MBP runs Vista with DX10 and if I have the choice I run DX9 for better performance. It is time though to move from XP to 7.
 
Hastings101 said:
I agree with the guy above, Macbook Pros get ridiculously hot under Windows, even on minor things like browsing the web. I think there are some problems there that Apple needs to fix with Bootcamp updates or something. However, there's no reason not to buy one just because of that, especially when decent cooling pads are less than $100.

Anyway, I would go ahead and upgrade, even if the next GPU is not DirectX 11 compatible many people report performance increases with Windows 7.
Click to expand...

My MBP i5 stays really cool under Windows 7. I never hear the fans at all. Windows laptops will spin up their fans where the MBP stays quiet. When I run a full blown game like Assassins Creed maxed out with AA on at 1680 x 1050, the fans go spinning. But temperatures only are around 70 degrees.

Just because the fans are spinning doesn't mean it's too hot. The fans are doing their work good keeping the temperatures under control.
 
ozred said:
NO, NO, NO.

I have both a new Win7 Pro core i7, laptop and a new 15" MacBook Pro core i7, both have 8GB ram and SSD's. Having the same processor, they are as close to identical as possible. So again, the answer to your question is NO do NOT buy the Mac, it runs really hot, the thin Unibody construction, lack of proper vents and temperature controls competely takes the fun out of using it for games. Also forget boot camp, or virtualization, like VMware, or Parallels. Tried those, they are an epic fail when it comes to what you want to do.

Plus you're going to pay about $1,000 more for it as compared to a good ThinkPad or one of the new Professional HP's. Either of those are outstanding. I just got the HP.

I have a Mac because I've been using them for years, but you cant' even run YouTube without it getting hot after a period of time. It's well documented that overheating, is a Mac Issue. They put styling and a thin profile as a much higher priority than having a fast, cool running laptop. The difference is staggering. Save yourself the headaches. Get the PC, run your games and enjoy. Windows 7 is outstanding.
Click to expand...

Obvious Troll is Obvious :rolleyes:
 
I would strongly advice against a Macbook for gaming. I've owned Mac laptops for years and they've never been a good choice for gaming. They're very tightly packed together and get very hot. I usually edit HD videos (trailers and the like), use Photoshop, iPhoto on some very large files. Even then it doesn't get hot, the power usage is not sustained like it is in gaming.

Though when I did use a Macbook for gaming I turned the settings down to the minimum to help keep the temperature lower.

You will notice a difference though. I opted out of DX10 so I saw the leap from 9 to 11 quite clearly, it's definitely worth going to DX11 whatever machine you get.
 
1. Firstly, I want to tell the guys who say Vista is bad, that they are subjective.

I have Vista installed on a PC from 2007 and I had no problem with it whatsoever. Maybe you didn't do the updates for it or you're running pirated versions... or you have crappy hardware (in a sense that makes you're computer restart or do BSODs)

In addition, a couple of years ago I've done testing quite a while for some software on all Windows systems (except Windows 7) and Vista 32bit was the most stable and efficient from XP 32bit, XP 64bit, Vista 32bit, Vista 64bit, Win 2003 32bit, Win 2003 64bit.

Maybe you're comparing Vista 64bit with XP 32bit... That's unfair. XP 64bit was and still is crap and full of incompatibilities. Vista 64bit is better, but still has compatibilities issues. Vista 32bit runs very smooth even on this PC I'm talking about, and it has a Pentium D 950 on it, 4GiB RAM (only 3 visible) and an 8800GTS640.

Two of Vista's innovations are the better NTFS system and the UAC (which many "limited" users turn it off, for no good reasons). Vista is the first system which is safe and stable, it's first which really is a good OS from M$. Yes, Windows 7 is way better, but in fact, from my point of view, it's just what Vista should have been, optimized. I will go with Windows 7 for sure, but this doesn't mean Vista is bs.

Also don't compare 32bit systems with 64bit systems, especially when you're talking about games. 32bit systems will run games faster, firstly because many of the games are built as 32bit binaries, and secondly because those games with 64bit binaries where still 32bit first, and they're not optimized. I've done some tests on the PC mentioned above with XP 32bit, Vista 32bit, and Vista 64bit with a couple of games and benchmarks: on XP games ran faster, but the difference for Vista 32bit was small. The only poor performance was on Vista 64bit, where the performance was like -30% compared with XP.

So, as a conclusion for my first point:
- don't throw garbage talk on Vista if you don't know exactly the whole situation and how to manage the system.
- 32bit OSs are still better than 64bit systems when it comes to M$ and gaming.



2. Go for Windows 7 over you're old XP. You'll get slightly lower performance, but you'll gain stability and security.

The version of DX running on you're system has nothing to do with which options you have when playing games. Even though Windows 7 is DX11 ready, it doesn't mean you can't play games in DX9, it means you can play games with DX11, or DX10, or DX9 and so on. Many games have the graphics setting of changing the engine to render the game using DX11 libraries or DX10, or DX9.

So, even if you move to Windows 7, you can play your games in DX9 and lose very few or no fps at all, while gaining stability and security.



3. Macbooks are not exactly machines for gaming, you'll be better with an iMac when it comes to that. Still if you want to play games on your Macbook, in Windows, go for Windows 7.
 
The last couple of posts have mentioned MacBooks. The OP is speaking of MacBookPros or are you guys just lumping them all together? :)

Radoo said:
1. Firstly, I want to tell the guys who say Vista is bad, that they are subjective.
Click to expand...

I've not used 7 yet, but of all the Windows versions I have used, Win95, XP, and Vista, Vista is the version that has not given me any problems. I realize there were all sorts of driver compatibility issues on the PC side when it first came out, but it has worked fine for me on my MBP. Two annoyances- making me confirm when I want to open every program every time, and it's still Windows. The MacOS is far far superior. The only reason I'm messing with Windows is to play games on my Mac.

Does my MBP get hot when I'm taxing it? It gets warm, but not so warm that I can't place it on my lap. It's definitely not as hot as my previous MBP did (circa 2006).
 
Dagless said:
Lumping them all together.
Click to expand...

The problem is every time I hear 'Macbook' and 'gaming' red flags go up all over the place. :p For you Macbook owners, please don't take offense. Yes the Macbook plays games, some games, a lot of games, just not the hard core AAA games, at least it did not used to. ;)
 
Windows 7 is worth the upgrade anyway, its an excellent os. I presume your buying a mac to use both osx and windows? Not just windows?
 
Radoo said:
1. Firstly, I want to tell the guys who say Vista is bad, that they are subjective.
Click to expand...

That's the nature of opinions, they will always be subjective to one degree or another. My opinion is based on interface changes introduced during my 2 year use of the OS in a finance office. I've had plenty of stability problems with it, the 32-bit version, but I am not basing my opinion on that, because there could be underlying factors unrelated to the OS itself.

My gripe is not with the improved usability they tried to achieve, but rather with the extra controls and lack of intuitiveness and standardization that they added on top of the improvements which were counter-productive to ease of use features. Windows Vista is crap, because they did not design it to act consistently. For instance, when I save or open files, shouldn't the interface be the same with having shortcuts on the left-hand side? I would think so, but that's not always the case. I had to keep shortcuts on my desktop, in addition to the file explorer. Windows 7 doesn't appear to have that problem.

I am not expanding my opinion to running programs on Vista, I am talking about Vista itself. I am not talking about the compatibility with apps in 32-bit mode versus 64-bit mode. I am not talking about the annoyances of the initial UAC implementation; which was pretty awful considering people just want to use their computer and do not want to be double-checked on everything they do. I'm not even basing my opinion on NTFS, despite knowing that there are better filesystems than NTFS and even HFS+. I am basing my opinion on using Vista, itself. If you haven't noticed any nonconformance in design or usability, it's probably because you're remembering how it was done over the last several versions of Windows and ignoring the fact that things are being handled in different ways within 1 version of the OS.

MS put out a lot of updates and refinements to Vista so that it's not the piece of garbage it was when it was first released, but it's still inferior to Windows 7.
 
Huntn said:
The problem is every time I hear 'Macbook' and 'gaming' red flags go up all over the place. :p For you Macbook owners, please don't take offense. Yes the Macbook plays games, some games, a lot of games, just not the hard core AAA games, at least it did not used to. ;)
Click to expand...

The same problem affects them. Apple like to make their hardware as small as possible, this results in not-so effecient heat dissipation. Infact the better the video card (at the time) the hotter it'll get.
FWIW I've owned a Powerbook, Macbooks and Pros.
 
Funny how on a forum full of Mac users someone who suggests not buying a MBP for gaming is called a troll :p

He's right. If you really want to do some gaming, buying a Mac is not your best option. They do run EXTREMELY hot, they are not specced well for gaming and there's compatibility issues.

Now if you're going to bootcamp it for games, you're just going to be pining for something more. My suggestion -- get your MBP for anything but games, and save up some more money for a cheap gaming pc like mine ($500) you'll be happier in the long run.
 
Bacong said:
If you really want to do some gaming, buying a Mac is not your best option. They do run EXTREMELY hot, they are not specced well for gaming and there's compatibility issues.
Click to expand...

If you are talking desktop, I agree that you can get a better performing PC computer for less money, but the OP is talking laptops and MacBookPros are very competitively priced with like-equipped PC laptops. As far as I can tell, it's performance is also competitive. However the caveat is that you would be running Windows on your Mac to get the best gaming performance.

Here is the PCWorld Apple 15-inch MacBook Pro/2.66GHz (Core i7, Spring 2010) as compared to the Alienware M17 both are about $2000 U.S. In addition the Mac got 4/5 stars while the Alienware got 2.5/5 stars.

In the Top 10 Desktop Replacement Laptop list the No.1 spot went to the Dell Precision M6500 which sells for $4k+.

For the OP if by chance you are afraid the Mac reviews at Mac centric sites are bias, go to PCWorld, select laptops, select Apple and review what PCWorld thinks of them. Here is a PCWorld Apple link.

I'll say it again, if you can only afford or want to drag around 1 laptop, and you have an affinity for the MacOS, but want access to all those games that don't get ported to the Mac, then the MacBookPro wins hands down. But if all you want to do is play games in a Windows environment, then there really would be no reason to buy a Mac of any kind.

I know they exist, lots of people who choose Windows, but I'll bet you that for the vast majority of casual users, that have traditionally been drawn to Windows, it's because the perception of less upfront hardware costs. It's hard to argue that as long as you put the other Windows headaches out of your equation. But as someone who uses both OSs, I can't imagine using Windows as my primary. It's that simple! It's an opinion based on experience. But I don't insist anyone agree with me. :D

Back to the original subject, I'm not convinced that DX11 adds substantially to the gaming experience. Graphics are important, but it's the other aspects of the game like, genre, concept, playability, scalability, etc, that are the primary drivers. However, I think you'll find that XP is about to run out of it's useful life in which case an upgrade of Windows would be in order.

I am currently using 32bit Vista. Anyone know if Vista will be DX11 compatible? If I was to guess, I'd say no, but...
 
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Don't use laptops for high end gaming people.

If you want good DX11 experience try to save $800-$1000 and make some good PC rig. I would strongly suggest new GTX 560 Ti for DX11, runs a bit better than 470 and its much, much cooler and efficient.

And do yourself a favor no matter what hardware you have games don't look good on 15' or 17' screens :)
 
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