Apple Gaming

So, I just go my wife a MBP 13, and I love it. Before, I set my eye on HP envy 14, but now I am debating if I should get it.
While I am not a gamer, I do like spent couple hours on a rainy weekend playing Dragon Age or BFBC2 or similar games. Now I know, MBP is not allienware or anything like that, but...
Here is the question: " If I dual boot Win XP into say MBP 13, what fps should I expect in most modern games, like Dragon Age, BFBC, CDMW2, etc".. and also, if I play on native resolution what would my texture setting be?

Also, while I need portability, I dont mind getting MBP 15', if it means much better results. So, not getting into technical details of video cards, overclocking, etc... What are objective real world figures.

I want to note again that I want to bootcamp XP, not 7.

 

The 320M in the 13" MBP is not a discrete GPU. It's not going to be acceptable for MW2, BC2, and the like, especially not if you want to play at native resolution. The 15" will fair much better with it's Core i5 and discrete GeForce 330M, though the native 1680x1050 resolution is probably still out of the question on the games you've listed. If gaming is a priority, there are far better value/dollar choices than the MBP, though I won't deny the 15" MBP is a very nice machine other than it's somewhat lackluster GPU.

Some other options to consider include the Envy 14 when it comes out; The Envy 15 which has a substantially faster GPU than the 15" MBP and similar build for a little less money; the Dell Studio 15 which offers a comparable build, CPU, and GPU to the 15" MBP for several hundred dollars less, or the m15x which is a beast in terms of size but offers some of the fastest CPUs and GPUs available in a notebook today at a cost comparable to the 15" MBP.

It really depends on your budget and what you intend to do with the machine besides gaming. If you need the high-quality screen of the MBP, say for professional-level photo or video editing, it's basically your only option. If portability is a concern, it's a solid choice there, too. If you need to do a lot of computationally or 3D-intensive stuff, however, there are definitely better options.

Also, I'd highly doubt Bootcamp provides XP drivers on modern Macs. Why on earth would you want to use XP, anyways? On modern processors and GPUs, 7 is going to provide noticeably better performance.

 

best to search for benchmarks... for a IGP its extremely fast, but its still not a gaming card.... but it is faster than some of the lower end discrete GPUs used in some laptops.

why XP? 7 is better... all around.

"acceptable" is completely subjective. Its perfectly acceptable to some people.

I dunno, the best GPU you can get in the Studio 15 has pretty poor benchmarking results... heck in some ways the 320m IGP looks better, at least it can pull a higher 3Dmark06

 

would a 6GB ram i7 15 incher be able to EMULATE games uisng parallels?

I'm talking COD4 and games of that level (oblivio and etc.).

 

Thanks for the responses.
So, can anyone provide me with in game fps on their mbp using windows please

 

Money is not really an issue (of course I do have a budget). Actually, the only reason I want mac is due to its aesthetics. I love the aluminum, I love the keyboard, I love its simple, yet professional look, etc etc.

 

Just tried benchmarking SF4 on 32bit win7. Why 32 bit? It was the only spare version i had laying around.

Native resolution windowed mode the benchmark gave me around 45 FPS give or take.

Native resolution full screen mode gave me significantly less. Why?

I have absolutely no idea.

 

All the fill rate in the world is useless without a frame buffer to back it up. Especially seeing as he wants to play at native resolution - any integrated solution is going to choke on those games above 800x600. It's possible to make an integrated GPU look great in synthetic benchmarks while still delivering terrible gaming performance - hell, the GMA HD posts 3DMark and other synthetic benchmark scores better than the NVS 140M in my T61, so clearly it's even in the same galaxy in terms of actual performance, right? (Spoiler: No it isn't.)

Even Apple only uses really old games like UT2004 and Quake 4 in their official marketing benchmarks. Something tells me that's because the numbers wouldn't be quite so favorable if they used something like BC2 or DA:O.

 

so your just assuming...?

the use old games because they use big names of games available in OSX.. they do not support running Windows, so they aren't going to boot into Windows to run gaming benchmarks.

I run Star Trek Online under Wine, most all graphics options on and turned up to max... and even with that extra overhead I still pull 30 - 35 FPS. my 9600GT on my other machine pulls about 35 - 40 with the same settings.... the 9400 about 15 to 20... Running it under Windows would most likely be much higher, but I don't run anything under Windows...

Even portal is running smooth at maxed graphics on OSX.. and all the tests people have done Portal runs much faster under Windows...

from every game I do play... and how I play them, the 320m is just about as fast as the 9600GT in my 15" MBP. I do realize that the 9600GTs in there were underclocked, but thats still very impressive performance for an IGP

 

Skip parallels and visit the webiste The Porting Team where they have created game specific emulation wrappers that are fantastic. The port of the week is Assassin's Creed. It took a lot of work to get that running in OSX!

Boot camp will work better. Most games will run fine at medium settings and 1440*900 resolution on my MBP which scores about 6,000 in 3dmark06.

The new 13" MBp scores about 4700 and has a lower resolution screen of 1280*800. I would imagine this would give you almost the exact same experience as me when playing games on the 15". Your 3dmark score might be a bit lower, but so too is the maximum resolution you will be playing games at.

Simplest answer: In a window you may be running a lower resolution (possibly). If the resolution is the same, the score should be the same (windowed or full screen).

 

The 320m IGP is amazing and I want to understand how Nvidia managed the performance. Maybe is has sidebus memeory or EDRAM on die. ????

The 320m is better than an 8600m GT, better than the 9500m GT, better than a RADEON 3650... it is really good.

 

you probably be better off with the 15 MBP, with the GT 330M.

YouTube - 2010 Core i5 MacBook Pro - nVidia 330M Gaming Test (Call of Duty)
YouTube - 2010 Core i5 MacBook Pro - Proper Gaming Benchmark CoD Zombie Mode
YouTube - Terry Masters Reviews the New i5 Macbook Pro (Gaming) Part 1 of 2

if you really want to increase graphic performance a bit, the Envy 14 will do that. Plus you get really good results when overclocking, without too much heat due to the 5650 gpu.

 

In order to get Portal "smooth at maxed graphics" on OSX your integrated 320M would have to be at least 30% as powerful as a GTX 285 - a card with 5 times as many CUDA cores at nearly twice the clock speed, and 1GB of dedicated VRAM.

I'd argue that ST:O wouldn't run better maxed out on Windows natively, and in fact may run substantially worse since Wine doesn't fully support Shader Model 3/4 or FSAA and therefore "maxed out" on Wine is no where near what it is on a native Windows installation.

If you could provide screenshots with detailed system specs and some evidence for these rather fantastic performance claims, that'd be helpful in determine just what is going on here. The fact is that a card with no dedicated video memory should run up against a massive brick wall when trying to run at higher resolutions and texture details, where computational horsepower takes a back seat to frame buffer and memory bandwidth. So either nVidia has managed some sort of Chirstmas miracle, or something hinky is going on.

Probably not. Here is a video of some games being played on Parallels 5 on a MacPro with dual quad-core Xeons and 8GB of RAM, along with an unspecified video card, and performance in games is very poor, though the guy rather amusingly talks about how "responsive" the games are while the framerate is clearly unplayable garbage.

 

It would have been easier for you to find the myriad performance numbers of the 13" MBP on your own rather than questioning someone who contributes a ton to a high-traffic Mac gaming site dedicated to Wine and Cider OSX ports of Windows games. LOL. It's not like there are not a ton of posts by people amazed by the performance of this new IGP.

You hardly need a Geforce GTX 285 to run Portal at 1280*800 max settings and 4x AA.

And tell me, what is the difference between 256 MB DDR3 running 1066 MHz and 256 MB GDDR3 running at 1066 MHz? I'll answer; a little latency. That's it.

 

*Blah blah technical stuff about the difference between discrete and shared frame buffers that no one would have read anyways. Suffice it to say this

is very, very wrong.

Edit: K, the only benchmark of BC2 on the 320M was for the discrete version:
"Bad Company 2: With most tested laptops not playable."
That doesn't really bode well for the integrated version. Get the 15" MBP or another notebook if you're serious about playing BC2. Please let that be the end of debate on that subject.

Edit 2: Eh, also found this, saying it's unplayable on a 13" MBP. Not spectacularly scientific, but again, it seems nobody's really bothered to benchmark BC2 on the 13" MBP and probably for good reason.

Edit 3: Also, some humor before perspective is lost.

 

so you found a posting from March saying someone could only keep around 20 FPS on BC2 when its busy making it unplayable... since its from March, that means that 13"er is a 9400M... the 320M is about twice as fast, which means same settings could keep it over 30...?

 

anyone have any idea on the real world performance difference between the base 15 inch 15 with 256 video ram and the i7 with 512 video ram.

I have been a pc guy forever and have been looking to trade in my old alienware m15x. Just need something that is more well rounded and I want to give mac osx a shot as I now do more video editing, photoshop , etc that in my hard core gamer days.

Will the base i5 mbp 15 play things like ME2, DA:O well? Any idea how it compared to the 8800gtx on my aw?

thanks

 

ha. well done.

AND yes, BC2 *is* a pretty bad PC port. I have it on my i7-920 desktop (sig) and it's untamed at 1920x1080.

but whatever. as long as Assassin's Creed 2, Arkham Asylum, my Valve games and Starcraft II work well, I'm a happy camper. that's all I'll be interested in playing for at least the next year.

 

Since you obviously missed the only benchmark I could find (you know, despite quoting the whole post), let me re-post it for you:

*Note: clearly I was being too hopeful here.

I'm not sure how you feel you can make extravagant and highly improbable claims about an IGP being able to handle the latest games at native resolutions and then act as though the burden of proof there doesn't fall on you. That must make sense from inside the RDF, I guess.

Edit: Let's put it this way. The numbers you are suggesting put this low-end integrated mobile GPU running with a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo on par with my old desktop's 8800GTS 640MB, at the time also running with a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo. Do you honestly not see that as rather suspect?

 

Let's just put it this way, the 320m a good integrated chip, but is nowhere near adequate for most gamers.

Oh, and the name of this thread is an oxy moron

 

lol at last link in that post.

 

any integrated solution will choke at anything above 800 x 600? think the 320m is weak?

i played through all of ME2 on my pro at 1280 x 800 with all settings maxed except for AA and AF (4x for AF) and got buttery smooth performance. sure the 320m pales in comparison with a dedicated chip but it's by no means weak. some of you guys are really underestimating the ability of this chip. it's a shockingly good IGP.

btw, lowlymarine: performance does not scale linearly with the number of CUDA cores or clock speed

 

You know what, this might be the dumbest argument ever because getting the answer is SO SIMPLE yet no one will do it. Would someone just try BC2 on the 13" MBP and post the damn results so we can settle this? There must be someone in this world who owns both.

I'm beginning to suspect we're working on at least 3 totally different definitions of "smooth" and few hard numbers are being posted, so this is pointless.

Apple's marketing data says it's "up to" 1.8 times as fast as the 9400M, putting it between a 9400M and 9600M, which is a perfectly acceptable supposition. doh123 seems convinced it's at least twice as fast as the 9400M, and then posted ST:O numbers that put it on par with the desktop 8800! (If I had to guess, there's probably some serious Wine-induced image quality reduction at play there.) And then someone just posted that they got "buttery smooth performance" all the way through ME2 at maximum settings + 4xAF on their MBP, a feat it takes the desktop GT 240 + Core i7 to pull off. Then according to NBC, the discrete GT 320M can't handle BC2 at any settings or DiRT 2 above 800x600 minimum. Then again, the discrete 320M may be radically different from the integrated model, because this is the wonderful world of nVidia naming schemes, where some GeForce 200s aren't even G200s.

So basically we've got accounts putting this card anywhere between the 9500M and the GTS 260M. Until we can get an actual benchmark of the card running BC2 and MW2 for our OP, I'd suggest reason dictates we err on the safe side and assume the former, especially since past experience and technical specification would suggest the latter is highly unlikely.

And that's ignoring the fact that all this arguing is totally glossing over the fact that even if the 13" MBP can scrape together a payable experience out of BC2, there are several other notebooks with similar prices, specs, and sizes that feature higher-end dedicated GPUs and therefore definitely can play BC2.

 

the GT 320m is in no way related to the 320m IGP ... confusing since they used the same numbers.

biggest difference... the GT only has 24 pixel/vertex shaders, while the 320m IGP has 48.

I have no intentions of installing Windows or pirating BC2 in order to run benchmarks.

yes the STO benchmarks are higher then they would be on Windows maxed out, there are many options that will not work in Wine right now that work in Windows. I'm just saying at the same settings, it would run even faster in Windows. I have played it in Windows before, on my old MBP I had dual booted, and I honestly cant tell a difference looking at them side by side except that AA isn't working in Wine... the rest of everything looks identical. But who knows.. theres a lot of grayed out options like Bloom, but even in Windows turning that off and on I cannot find a difference anywhere in the game... I just used STO as an example cuz its something I play.

On Portal.. maxing out every option available to me.. I'm still pulling over 30 FPS on average.. sometimes it can dip to 20, depending where I open portals up.. like un-ending tunnels. The settings that are recommended and I actually play on its easy to keep it over 50.

I do not think that it is as fast as a geforce 8800... no... its close to the 8600/9600 mobiles.

 

Portal??!!! my mac mini could handle Portal

 

we hear you lowlymarine. i don't have BC2 so i can't contribute there. to back up my claims i will make a video showing the quality settings of ME2 in the config panel and gameplay on my pro and you guys can see for yourselves as to what the performance is like. as far as i'm concerned, buttery smooth was definitely an apt description. cheers guys.

 

Actually, I do have both, and I will try to run it this weekend. The only problem for me is that I dont have win installed yet, and since I cannot install iso image via bootcamp (CAN I?), I need to get blanks, burn it, etc, which it trouble... but like I said, have most of the modern games, and I will try to run them this weekend.

 

These videos would be greatly appreciated (specially those of Mass Effect 2).
If you can, try to use the native resolution of the display and show in-game settings without cutting/editing the video. Do consider than using in-system recording systems (like FRAPS recording) could -and probably will- reduce performance. Showing the FPS alone (like FRAPS only displaying FPS) shouldn't pose such a drain of the system's resources, though.

Thanks in advance!

 

someone already posted footage of their MBP running ME2. look in the 330M overclock thread.

 

eh, mines uploading already. might as well post it. should be done within the hour.

btw are you sure that's of the 320m and not the 330m???


EDIT:

skimmed the thread I believe you are referring to. only found footage for the 330M. can you confirm?

this thread right: http://forum.notebookreview.com/apple-mac-os-x/480737-330m-overclockable-win.html

 

alright guys here's the link to the gameplay video:

YouTube - 2010 MacBook Pro Gaming Performance

again this is a base model 2010 13" MBP running the game at 1280 x 800 with all settings maxed except for 0x AA and 4x AF.

p.s.: i usually don't play so poorly. there's something unnerving about knowing people will watch this
p.p.s.: image quality was a lot better before youtube converted it. the video should still suffice though.

 

Thanks! I've been reading that thread for a while and think it's very nice, but didn't manage to find the video for the 320M. Must have missed it (or misinterpreted ).

Thanks a lot! It's nice to have this kind of evidence. Will surely help the community establish a good idea of what this GPU is capable of gaming-wise. Rep coming your way!

Cheers!

 

The integrated 320m (not GT) is roughly an underclocked 8600GT. (use the DDR2 scores)

The 4700 3dmark06 must be 1280x800 as the real 1280x1024 scores are apparently 4200-4300ish. (second hand, from a personal machine of a technical mac user here at work)

Given that it is an integrated chipset, it is still quite decent, and can game to a reasonable extent as long as you do not ask too much from it.

The only downside is that laptops in that price range currently have MUCH more potent GPUS.

 

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT BUY ANY of the MBPs if gaming is your priority. None of the current MBPs, including the 15-inch one with a GT 330m, are good enough for moderate gaming. If you need a Mac laptop for other reasons and you're a very casual gamer, then go ahead and buy one. Otherwise, you're better off with a strong PC laptop like an Alienware. Sure, it runs Windows and it's a bit heavier, but it round circles around any MBP. Even the tiny M11x, with a GT 335m, will blow away a top of the line 15-inch MBP gaming wise. Sorry to burst your bubble guys, but even with a C2D processor, the M11x will beat the best MBP out there simply because it has raw GPU power. I have one personnally and I can ensure that. Please check youtube for actual gameplay footage.

 

"good enough" is subjective... so its not good enough for you, but it could be good enough for someone else.

but I also agree that... if the main thing you do on your machine is game... why would you get a Mac? nothing to do with the hardware, but if your machine is mainly for gaming... you really want a Windows machine designed for gaming.

If you want to see how out of touch Apple is with gaming... read this link.
Apple - Games - Hardware

 

Oh of course. Nobody is going to contend that the MBP is a machine one should buy if gaming is a top priority. I think most MBP owners see gaming capability as a nice bonus more than anything else. Also, we tend to lean towards systems like this because they have the best balance between price, performance, reliability, battery life, portability, software, etc.

Sure you could get a faster and arguably more portable M11x for instance for much cheaper, but according to many threads in the Alienware section many already seem to be falling apart. Additionally, even the working systems seem to exhibit some strange behavioral problems. Add on not having OS X and a much slower CPU and it can become a difficult choice.

Some decent desktop replacement gaming notebooks exist around this price range as well, but they don't have the same level of portability. Picking your notebook is always an art of compromise.

 

although ME2 looks pretty, it isnt hard on a gpu at all. For moderate gamers, they continue to game, so what they need to consider is the future of gaming. Games like BC2, Crysis, Metro 2011, really show where gaming(in terms of graphics) is going

And why does everyone keep mentioning "dont buy a mac if your top priority is gaming"? Sorry but youd be an idiot if you did, this is common sense and is worthless to mention. The OP seems like a casual gamer, if he's willing to sacrifice some graphic eye candy, and some FPS, then he'll be fine with the MBP. If he wants to take advantage of it, there are better options than Apple, and still maintain portability.

Its an investment, these Macs arent cheap, so if you plan to keep this thing for the next 2-3 years, the graphic card may not be able to handle future games.

 

first people go off saying that the 320m is craptacular and can't handle anything current and will choke on any modern game even at 800 x 600 on low settings.

Now that there's some gameplay footage showing this to be untrue now the direction has gone to "oh well it may be ok now but in the future it won't be able to game worth a darn".

Can't people just accept that the 320m is actually pretty decent? Besides I think some people here are forgetting that maxing out a game on a 1280 x 800 13.3" display takes a lot less processing power than on a desktop display at higher resolutions. On a display this small even 720 x 480 looks good.

My point is, for small notebooks you don't need as much processing power to begin with due to the smaller displays and lower native resolutions. I think that too many people are extrapolating their experiences from their desktop systems thinking that they are directly comparable to notebooks which is the wrong way to go about this.

Sure my notebook can't max out games at my desktop display's resolution of 2048 x 1152 but do I care??? I play games at 1280 x 800 on the MBP if I can but honestly, even at 720 x 480 there's hardly a visible difference. The 320m will age reasonably well as far as I'm concerned.

 

haters gonna hate. enjoy the gaming on your MBP's.

 

Is the guy in the vid you? dudududdudu... friggin hilarious.

I'm most impressed, I never in a lifetime expected Mass Affect 2 to run on an integrated chip.

 

talking about taking things out of context. back to topic, OP, by the vids I posted, you should have good enough juice on the MBP 15, on the 13 you might be pushing it a lil for the more demanding games, but adjusting the settings should take care of it. Enjoy your mac

 

To all haters. Gaming is not the priority, but like someone said, a nice bonus that I want to enjoy once or twice a week.

Anyway, I just installed Win7 ultimate on bootcamp, and tonight will try to run BFBC2 and dragon age: origins. Btw, right now I am working in Shanghai, so my evening will be your (US) Morning. What program should I use to tap fps without any performance blocking? Also, I want to check out the temps as well. Can you advice me on the program as well?

 

If you are using an external camera (like Smelly Cat did), using FRAPS to only show frames per second (FPS) should not diminish performance by a noticeable margin (if any at all). It will show FPS on a corner of the screen (over the game you're playing) in yellow numbers.
As far as monitoring temps, I have used and recommend HWMonitor. I found it to be pretty good on Windows Core 2 Duo laptops. I suppose Windows in Bootcamp should not prove otherwise. You open it before you start playing and leave it like that. When you're finished (or not) it will display the minimum, maximum and current value for different parts of your notebook (CPU, GPU, etc.).

I hope this information helps! You sure are helping us xD.

Good luck!

 

damn it, people.

a thread focused on gaming performance already exists.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/apple-mac-os-x/480737-330m-overclockable-win.html

benchmarks. screen shots. youtube videos.

post this stuff in there. it also answers questions you'll inevitably ask too. thanks.

 

except thats about the 15" and 17" macbook pro and gaming with the 330m... this is generally just about gaming on Macs period. Not everyone uses a 330m.

 

true, true.

 

please tell me how these run....mostly in multiplayer i am very curious thanks

 

This thread has always been about BF:BC2 and MW2; I'm not really sure why ME2, Portal, and the like were ever brought into the discussion, but it wasn't by the OP, and it certainly wasn't by me.

No one ever claimed it couldn't handle Portal or whatever at native resolution. I very specifically spoke of MW2 and BC2:

Though in retrospect, I'll gladly swallow my foot on the "800x600" choice; perhaps 1024x768 would be have been a better example.

I'll readily admit the results of the 320M have already greatly exceeded my expectations (and frankly, the technical limitations of the card, but perhaps some sort of technical wizardry has been worked on the memory controller). I'm thankful for the efforts of those who have provided solid benchmarks and videos of the card in action, because that lets us all build a better profile for gaming performance.

BC2 is a completely different animal than Portal or ME, though. It's not only much more stressful on video hardware, it's also brutal on processors. I'll have to retract my suggestion of the m11x, actually, as apparently the 1.7GHz Core 2 Duo used in that model can't pass the muster for BC2, so much so that the much weaker 310M in the U30Jc delivers slightly better performance due to the vastly superior Core i3.

Those results are interesting, actually, because it could mean the MBP is able to eek out an average ~30 FPS in BC2, but it'll really come down to memory bandwidth requirements and whether clock speed or threading is the bigger issue at hand. Since BC2 is (in theory) fully multithreaded, it's an interesting study in how the Core 2 Duo and other two-thread CPUs are finally reaching the end of their usefulness.

 

*yawn*

you guys are hilarious. and kinda sad too.

 

modern games = subjective.
like these... blah blah = examples.
and even ended with a etc.... sure yes that means its only about the specific example games listed...

just cuz someone disagrees with you, doesn't mean you have to take it personally and try to defend your opinions.. your free to have whatever opinion you'd like.