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    Bootcamp gaming on 15.4" MBP with 8600M GT 128mb

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by septentrio, Jul 28, 2007.

  1. septentrio

    septentrio Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hi

    I'm considering leaving Vista for OS X. The wonderfull MBP (and the ADC student reduction) have a lot to do with that.

    I still have some questions though.

    1) Will Vista via Bootcamp perform just as well as on a native windows laptop? Will I be able to install all required windows software?

    2) Will windows games run in the same manner as they do on a native windows laptop with 8600gt 128mb?

    3) Would I be able to play games like Halo 3, GTA 4 and Crysis in a fluent, enjoyable way via Bootcamp on a 15.4" MBP with 128mb 8600m gt?

    4) How does bootcamp work? Does it allow you to use all of the laptop resources (cpu power, hard drive, memory,...) in the windows environment or just part of it?

    thanks!
     
    septentrio, Jul 28, 2007
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  2. taelrak

    taelrak Lost

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    Yes, but there are a few minor quirks, some of which should be resolved by the time Boot Camp goes live:
    You're on a Mac keyboard (i.e some of the key mappings aren't exactly where they'd be in Windows native - for example, the left Alt key would be to the left of the Windows button, instead of to the right)

    Can't turn trackpad off yet - you *can* rightclick though the same way you do in OSX.

    Yes.

    Yes


    Skipping this to someone who has more experience with those particular games. But you'd get the same performance as any other 15.4" PC laptop with 128MB GDDR3 8600M GT.

    Boot Camp just lets you boot into Windows natively. You get an option at boot-up whether or not you want to load Windows or OSX. Once you're in Windows, everything is the same - 100% of your resources are used by Windows and its applications. You're not running OSX at all.
     
    taelrak, Jul 28, 2007
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  3. Sam

    Sam Notebook Virtuoso

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    Yes. Any game that runs in Windows on a PC will run on Windows on a Mac via Boot Camp.

    It will perform just as well (or at least very close) to a Windows laptop of the same specs. I don't have any benchmark scores for you though.

    Yes, Halo 3, Crysis and GTA 4 will run well. Of course, 256 MB 8600M GT is better, but 128 MB isn't bad.

    Boot Camp allows you to run all your resources for a single OS. When you're running Windows, OS X isn't running at all. If you're running OS X, Windows isn't running at all. To go to the other operating system you have to restart the computer.
     
    Sam, Jul 28, 2007
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  4. septentrio

    septentrio Notebook Enthusiast

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    Thank you very much for the quick and very helpful replies!
     
    septentrio, Jul 28, 2007
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