Does the MBP heat up a lot when gaming?

The MBP has a great-looking and small design, but how well does it vent the CPU / GPU?

My Vostro heats up a good bit when playing Mass Effect / Bioshock (not too much for Starcraft).
What about the MBP?

 

As much as I love Macs (I have both a MacBook and MacBook Pro), I must admit that they are heat producers. Now, I must moderate that answer depending on which perspective you are asking your question from.

If you are asking whether or not the MBP internally heats up and locks up or crashes in Windows, then the answer is no. I have quite a few new titles loaded on my MBP, and have never experienced performance or stability issues due to heat generated by the GPU (or, really, at all).

If you are asking whether or not the case itself will generate enough heat for you to be concerned about the impact it might be having on your ability to procreate when it is sitting in your lap, then the answer is yes. OK, perhaps a slight exaggeration (maybe not). But, yes, your legs will get toasty if you sit with a MBP in your lap for a couple of hours.

Of course, I don't ever game with any laptop in my lap, it is always on a desk or on the airplane tray table.

Hope that this helps.
- Vr/Zeuxidamas.>

 

No, he was asking about games and the HEAT they produce.

Adding more memory might give you a little bit better performance... but it isn't going to change the heat output. Yes it does get hot, it needs to be on a desk and well ventilated, and its going to get hot anyway. Its not going to hurt it, but it won't be comfortable to you.

 

In games the 512 doesnt even get more than 5% performance increase than the 256 counterpart.

Anyways to topic starter; try thinking of a frying pan, thats what the mbp becomes after gaming for a bit.

 

Just put it this way: you won't want to be playing on your lap

 

Yeah, it will get hot on the bottom, so leave it on a desk and not your lap or on your bed or something. But it won't damage the internal components!

 

I comfortably played Civ IV with my MBP on my lap during a 6 hour road trip to Indianapolis. The heat isn't too bad. Although the MBP's all aluminum construction makes it a natural heat sink so it will feel hotter than a plastic notebook when it really isn't.

 

hot enough to make my left palm sweat.

 

With the speculation of all 8600s being defective, that may be debatable, lol.

 

If you have pants on, then you COULD play in your lap. Shorts or bare legs, will get uncomfortably hot, pretty fast.

Either way, it gets hot, might just wanna stick something inbetween the MBP and you, if you do game in-lap.

 

Wuss! I have my MBP on my lap all the time with naught but my underwear

 

Doesn't seem like you care much about your future successors.. ;p

 

its terrible load up even doom3 and the mbp can double as griddle.

 

Even videos make it heat up quite a bit.

 

If I play games on it, it probably won't be sitting in my lap
(I'd also like to wait for a refresh, hopefully with Centrino2 and a 9500m, so less overheating.)

What about multitasking? It doesn't get too bad then?
But it does for playing videos? From HD? Or DVDs? Or both?

This will be more tricky: Would it be a really BAD idea to overclock the graphics card?
I have my Vostro's 8600m overclocked slightly, and I need to keep it a bit raised to it can vent hot air better.
Is that possible with a MBP?

 

You can with a MBP, just keep the fans on full blast, and a notebook cooler is recommended if you're overclocking. Without an overclock it reaches 80 degrees on mine.

As for multitasking, it depends on what you're doing. I find it gets pretty hot when I'm using photoshop and stuff. And any video heats it up a bit. Just keep in mind that the outside getting hot is normal, and it's meant to get hot. The whole thing acts like a heat sink. Basically, if you're doing anything where the GPU is being used more than normally (normally as in seeing pictures, running non-3D apps, etc), you will feel it get hotter. However by no means is this "overheating," and it's nothing to worry about.

 

I always keep my Macbook Pro on this when I'm gaming. It works great for both desks and laps.

The thing is a passive cooler that gets hot so the MBP doesn't have to.

 

I've overclocked my MBP since I picked it up back in Feb. The highest I've seen the temp go in XP without using my cooler is 84c, normal ranges for me seem to be within 70-80 (after gaming), idle 45-50c.

I guess what Im trying to say is as long as your not playing on a shag carpet or blocking the vents, you should be fine.

 

Well at the moment, you can only overclock your video card within windows, which i'm assuming you'd be using anyways to play games. The thing is, the hotter the gpu gets, after a while you might get a gpu failure cause of nvidias problem. Overclocking will help for sure with frame rates, but it will probably lead to a faster failure.

But to me, the most important thing for better games, is to update your drivers. If you're running on stock bootcamp drivers, overclocking wont help much. I was struggling to get decent fps a while back in Conan, and then after I upgraded my drivers, it was like a had a brand new card. It ran really smooth after that.

So I guess its important to upgrade drivers, and if you want to overclock, thatll help as well.

 

Which is the best driver for OC? I tryed few drivers & non of them support OC