The Dead Gaming on MacBook Thread.

[MRU]

Since I no longer game on the macbook other than the brief experimentation back in may 2006, i have decided to kill this thread because I can't be bothered checking on it.

some threads should be left to die.

 

[Emperor]

Please give a test for Counter Strike Source as well please thats the only game i would play on when i buy my MacBook

 

[MB Buyer?]

congrats i'm glad it's working for you.
can you give us frame rates in each of the games? esp HL2
i'd also love to know about older 3d games like quake3 and return to castle wolfenstein etc.
BTW how much RAM do you have?

Thanks!

 

[TBi]

Would love to hear what WOW is like on it. Even that didn't run as smoothly as i would have hoped on the MBP :S

 

[MRU]

White (not being a black sheep - following the hurd ) MacBook 2ghz
1gb Mem (for now) and 80gb HDD.

I'm still installing HalfLife 2 - damn I hate steam

All the old games like Q3, Return to Wolfenstien should play maxed out, if more modern games aren't struggling then those certainly shouldnt.

I'm not that bothered about gaming on my macbook, besides I have a powermac and an imac, plus every console going so But i thought I'd give it a try simply because everyone has been slagging it off - and yet they were just jumping to assumptions on it's performance and not hands on performance.

I also must comment that though my HDD is 5400rpm, its very quick - to the pont of me double checking Fujitsu's website to make sure.
It's definetly as fast as my 80gb 7200rpm drive in my previous Rev E. powerbook.

I'll update later after I've had a bit more time and bloody steam has finished updating HL2 & CS:Source..

 

[TBi]

So no issues at all with your macbook? No whine or mooing? How's the temperature of the thing?

When i get refunded for my MBP i will more than likely get one now. Will probably get the bigger 80GB hard drive and get some ram from wherever is cheapest.

 

[MRU]

So no issues at all with your macbook? No whine or mooing? How's the temperature of the thing?

When i get refunded for my MBP i will more than likely get one now. Will probably get the bigger 80GB hard drive and get some ram from wherever is cheapest.

I cacked myself when I opened the brown box and pulled the macbook box out of it. The corner of the inside box was all smashed up? Yet outside box wasnt?

So I cautiously opened the box fearing the worse, but everything is perfect.

NO mooing - well apart from the cows in the field opposite my house

NO whining or squeaking from Latch etc...

No dead pixels at all.

Tempreture is fine, but then it's on an iCurve, but 90% of the time I hardly hear any fan at all. Only time really heard the fans was from gaming through bootcamp.

CD drive is a bit noisy, but nothing major different to any other small drive - mac mini etc..

 

[TBi]

Great to hear you got a good one so. I'm hoping my new laptop (whatever it may be) will be as good.

Well wear as they say

 

[paddy]

Delighted. I was one off the ones who knocked the old integrated graphics but seeing as it seems to be doing nicely I might get a Macbook after all.

 

[BurtonCCC]

World Of Warcraft and Doom 3 need to be tested... now. Let me know the findings.

Daniel.

 

[QCassidy352]

Doom 3...

rofl. good luck with that.

 

[BurtonCCC]

rofl. good luck with that.

Well it runs well on my 12" PB, but then again, apparently I've got an alright graphics card in it.

Daniel.

 

[MRU]

rofl. good luck with that.

Have you tried it? Or are you jumping to assumptions like everyone else seems to be.

I'll try and borrow a copy of doom 3 tommorow to give it a try, I'm sure it will run fine - just a matter of getting the settings right.

I'm sure it'll match or better the performance of the 12" powerbook regardless.

I'm 98% on HL2 and 97% on CS:Source. I'm giving up for now as I want to play xbox live and then goto the cinema later.

But please people dont post 'it will run like *****', unless you've tried it yourself and have first hand experience, it's not helpful to those who are geniunely interested.

 

[Mord]

GMA 950 got most of it's bad rep from an UT2k4 benchmark but if you run the latest version of UT on it it beats the 1.42GHz 14" ibook by about 20% and that had the radeon 9550 in it, it'll play practically any new game on low settings fine and most if not all recent games on low/medium settings.

 

[lucasban]

World of Warcraft runs fine

i get about 20-25fps on the $1099 model outside and anywhere from 30-50 inside with ichat and safari open. havent tried it on boot camp but id expect even higher fps there. one thing i would suggest upgrading is the ram though. i am going to buy a 1 gig stick to bring myself up to 1.25gigs.

 

[QCassidy352]

But please people dont post 'it will run like *****', unless you've tried it yourself and have first hand experience, it's not helpful to those who are geniunely interested.

What you're posting isn't helpful either unless you actually say what you mean by "high settings" or "smooth and enjoyable." Those are subjective terms that mean nothing. You want to prove that the GMA950 is decent, run extended benchmarks and get some objective data.

Because all of the OBJECTIVE data I've seen suggests that the GMA950 is utter garbage. For example:
an intel mini against a G4 mini and an intel imac in 3d games
the macbook is outperformed by a G4 powerbook and barely beats a g4 ibook in UT2004
the GMA950 chokes and dies on Doom3 and Quake4

You want people to believe that the GMA950 is decent, post some objective benchmarks (not subjective descriptions) that contradict what I've linked.

(Disclaimer: I have a macbook. I want the GMA950 to be a good chip. Really, I do. I love my macbook and the graphics are the only thing I don't like, so I'd *love* for you to be right. But you're not, from everything I've seen.)

 

[Abulia]

Hey, ease up MRU. You're not exactly being the model of helpful either.

I just got my MB today, plus 2GB and a 7200rpm drive. Windows XP is up and running as we speak. I'll be posting some benchmarks as well.

Hard numbers, that is. Not some subjective garbage. ("Runs AWESOME!")

 

[The Senator]

I am very sceptic on those bf2 reports. bf2 requires a 128mb graphics card. did you have aa on???

 

[MRU]

I am very sceptic on those bf2 reports. bf2 requires a 128mb graphics card. did you have aa on???

NO. Now That would be crazy. Never used Vertical Sync or AA as they lose you frames - they do so on a top of the range dedicated GPU, so wasnt going to go there, period.


Yes my opinions are subjective. When I say high, it was the default setting most of the games autodetected.

Thanks Don for sticking up for me, it's hard to assertain framerate on a game like Rollercoaster Tycoon and The Sims 2

Also installled and run without any problems (with settings on high - again to clafify the anal retentive in the audience, these were its own suggested settings when first run), 'THE MOVIES' but I cant post framerates for that either as i dont know how for a start.

I know how to do the timedemo in Doom3, so i'll give that a go tommorow
and I'll post my settings for Oblivion etc.

 

[risc]

BareFeats just posted 3D gaming benchmarks for the MacBook: http://barefeats.com/mbcd3.html

It also includes Core Image benchmarking it's an interesting read.

 

[mkaake]

What you're posting isn't helpful either unless you actually say what you mean by "high settings" or "smooth and enjoyable." Those are subjective terms that mean nothing. You want to prove that the GMA950 is decent, run extended benchmarks and get some objective data.

Because all of the OBJECTIVE data I've seen suggests that the GMA950 is utter garbage. For example:
an intel mini against a G4 mini and an intel imac in 3d games
the macbook is outperformed by a G4 powerbook and barely beats a g4 ibook in UT2004
the GMA950 chokes and dies on Doom3 and Quake4

You want people to believe that the GMA950 is decent, post some objective benchmarks (not subjective descriptions) that contradict what I've linked.

(Disclaimer: I have a macbook. I want the GMA950 to be a good chip. Really, I do. I love my macbook and the graphics are the only thing I don't like, so I'd *love* for you to be right. But you're not, from everything I've seen.)

your disclaimer really confused me - you have a macbook, but your only opinion of whether he's right or wrong is based on 3 reviews from other people? why can't you just try the games out on your own? especially since 'good' in a game is very subjective...

 

[aaron.lee2006]

Those BF2 reports scare me rofl, high detail lol. Are you sure he isn't talking about the MBP by mistake?

 

[TrenchMouth]

Going back to the OP, one of the things I am beginning to understand is that the Wintel version of games, running in bootcamp of course, are likely going to run better than Mactel versions, obviously running in OS X.

I also understand that this desparity is largely due to the OpenGL/ActiveX difference in many Mac/Windows games.

My point is, that's great that the games perform well in bootcamp, but I am not about to install Windows on my Mac to play games. I would rather WOW, Doom, UT2k4, or whatever, run just as well in OS X as it does in Windows if it is running on the same computer.

What it comes down to is that there really isnt a portable Mac on the market for me right now. I will stick with my 12' iBook until there is something that meshes the design of the MacBook with a little extra kick at no extra cost.

 

[iHeartTheApple]

I sure hope what the OP is saying is true. I've had my white 2GHz MB for almost two days now, but haven't gotten around to doing the games thing yet. I've got 2GB of RAM and a 7200rpm 100GB Seagate Momentus in the mail, though. Once that gets here (sometime next week) I'll load up some games and post back here with my findings.

I tend to believe that the OP is telling the truth, though. Wyrmintheapple's game testing movie and review is what got me. You should check it out...seriously. WoW runs great, UT2004 runs great...even Need for Speed. Reference for the above-linked movie:

Games shown, in order are Marble Blast (non uni-bin version) WoW, UT2004, and the Windows versions of NFS:U and NFS:MW.

Anyway, take it easy on the GMA950, eh? The only benchmarks I care about is real world gaming performance. I really don't care how it plays compared to other compies out there...as long as it plays.

 

[jdiddy]

I tried to install BF2 on my 2.0 MB and it wouldn't even launch. I got HL2 working and will download CS:S ina bit. I'd love to have BF2 working even a crippled watered down version of it. Oh well I always have my desktop.