Considering getting a Macbook Pro 15, have some Qs.

Hello all. Back in April my gateway (P-6831fx) died and I am in need of a replacement laptop. At first I was looking at an Envy 15, but then saw the announcement of the Envy 14 and 17. I was interested in the 14 and have been following it for some time. The Envy 17 came out a few weeks earlier and I have been watching people complain about heat, construction, and general HP customer support. I am also afraid this is going to carry over to the Envy 14 that came out today.

As I have been reading more of the issues, I have started to consider a MBP 15. My friend got the 13” model in April and it seemed pretty slick. My previous gateway was a heavy 17” computer with an 8800GTS. Overall, it was a fairly beasty machine and could run games pretty well and I got it so that I could play games on it. However, I found out quickly I played games on it very little because I was usually just browsing the web or doing school work and used my desktop for gaming. So now that I need a new computer, I am willing not to get some beast of a machine. I also want a light weight machine as I will lugging this around daily on campus and walking probably at least a mile or so a day with it.

I want to make sure it can meet some requirements, though. First of all, I want it to be able to do some light gaming:WoW, starcraft II, Heroes of Newerth. Luckily, all of these games I play have Mac clients. I want them to run nice and smooth at high or near high settings, though. Also I am a computer science major and program in various languages such as Java, C++, PHP, etc. I like netbeans and I know there is a Mac client. I really like visual studio when writing in C++ and I wanted to know if running windows 7 so I can use visual studio in a VM would be fairly smooth on an i5 MBP?

I was also considering upgrading to the hi-res screen. On one hand, I do programming and I enjoy extra screen real estate. I was using a 1440 x 900 screen on my last laptop and it wasn’t overly annoying with the resolution. Like I said though, I want to be able to play games at high(er) settings and am afraid of the performance hit of a higher resolution screen. How is the performance of the hi-res? Would it be in my best interest to just stick with the 1440 x 900?

How is the heat level when playing games? Is it bearable?

Thanks.

 

it's pretty hot albeit stable running games -- temps runs around 70-80c, depending on local climate and room temperature. the 330 discrete gpu is in the 8800m ballpark for performance, although it's gonna tank on shader and fill rate intensive settings. it runs wow (dalaran aside, but that's not a gpu issue) at mostly high settings at 55-60fps at 1440x900, and runs starcraft 2 at mid-high settings just fine with no-to-minimal drops. none of these games should tax it much at 1650x1080, either; you might have a few more stutters/drops, but nothing that impairs playability.

one warning: although the temps are fine, much of the heat dispersion is through the frame, and the upper left corner and upper middle of the chassis above the keyboard gets painfully hot. i don't find this to impair my game playing, but you can feel the heat even down into the keyboard a bit. just fyi!

 

There is no performance loss at the higher resolution. The graphics circuitry takes care of this in hardware for the most part.

My son has the 15 inch with high-res screen. It can get warm with games. We are going to see if we can set it to always run with the integrated graphics. He has been running his games on my old Dell XPS M1330 though they are somewhat sluggish. The new MBP integrated graphics is supposed to run three times as fast as the old Intel X3100 graphics.

We haven't tried Windows VMs on any of our four MBPs. I've put Windows under BootCamp on these systems and that runs Visual Studio and the other developer software that you mentioned just fine (he's a CS major too).

 

The MBP definitely won't the same as your former 17-inch notebook, but its definitely solid. Those games will have no issue on the 15-inch MBP!

Running VMs on the 15 MBP won't be an issue either, its solid performance for that. The resolution isn't a huge issue, just pick the best one for your eyes! For me, I think 1680 x 1050 is a bit high for 15-inch notebooks (in terms of how small the menu bar and stuff would start to look), but that's just my eyeballs!

 

Switching to a higher res screen will decrease gaming performance if you want to play at native resolution. Playing at native really does make games look better, so I'd stick with the 1440 screen if gaming is a high priority.

 

The MBP would definitely be able to run those games. But I suggest you invest in using mouse and a pad or something on the palmrest, as Macbooks get pretty hot while gaming. But before you jump, it might be wise to see what the Envy 14 brings to the table and see if the reviews are good. If you really can't wait though, the MBP 15 is a solid choice.

 

I was hoping macmall would run a sale on for the 4th of July and I may bite then. Sadly, it seems their prices went up yesterday .

 

I was going to say this. It depends on your priorities and what you're willing to sacrifice. I am going to assume you'll be doing more school work, programming, web browsing, typing papers etc than you will be gaming. A higher res screen would all benefit from that.

As for gaming, the resolution won't drop your frame rates that much considering those games, but you must be willing to either drop down some settings, especially GPU based ones (for WoW and SCII) or be willing to scale down your resolution. I, personally dislike playing at anything other than native res. It's just not as sharp. SCII will only allow medium on some graphics due to the 256MB ram though and the i5 will be superb for SCII but it turns out SCII aside from higher clock frequencies, it also likes some GPU power, especially when it comes to a lot of on screen action. The 330m is not the best, also given the fact that OS X typically does not perform as well as Win7 for gaming but your listed games are not that demanding either.

You want my end opinion? If the money is not a problem, I'd get the i5 + anti glare higher res screen if those were the only games I cared to play on the notebook (I have no desktop). If I planned to play other games, I'd stick with the 1440x900 since native res is important to me and that resolution still is very good to me.

I'm also looking into the Envy 14 though. Waiting for some reviews!

 

Macmall is running is a sale where I could get the standard definition screen MBP 15 for $1,667.39. The hi-res is $1818. Is it worth that much more?

 

It is to some people. If you make a living off your laptop and the extra pixels help, then it might be a no-brainer. If it's just a luxury that you don't need, then it probably isn't worth it.

If Apple had the 1920x1200 in the 15 inch MBP, I think that I'd buy it today.

I have a Dell Inspiron 8500 15.4 inch notebook with 1920x1200. They were easy to find around 2002/2003. Then they went away. I would still use that old laptop today but it has a Pentium 4 chip in it and it gets very, very hot running most anything. Yes, even hotter than modern MacBook Pros.

 

I ended up getting the MBP 15 + hi-res glossy. Looking forward to getting it.

 

Congrats. You will love it.