For those who want a MBP for gaming

Ive had my MBP for about 4 weeks now and im satisfied with everything except for the gaming. While running world of warcraft i have the graphics at medium and it runs descent. When i turn them all the way up it is just a lag machine. It cant even handle vertical sync enabled at medium settings. It just lags. For a laptop with the specs that are amazing i dont understand why it runs bad. My friend has a hp with 1gig less of ram and a lower level graphics card and can run it on full. What is wrong with this picture?

 

It depends on how much latency your computer is having with the WoW servers. I'd check your network settings.

 

Are you running WoW on Mac OS X or on Windows via Boot Camp? Running the Windows version of WoW will be better if you're using the Mac version, because DirectX is better than OpenGL in graphics.

 

im running off a wireless connection right now with full connection. Im also using osx. i dont have the money for windows right now.

 

yeah I ran WoW in windows w/ full settings and I get 60 FPS during raiding, and 35-50 In shat or flying thru detailed areas. I do have vsync on tho so 60 is the highest.

 

mine lags in the undead starting zone with vsync on

 

well depends on resolution too. Many 15" HPs only have a resolution of 1280x800, which is easier to run than 1440x900.

 

you should easily be able to run WoW at native res in windows.

unfortunately os x is not a good gaming platform (comparatively) at the moment. Halo doesn't run well! what the hell is up with that! HALO. hah. i should be rocking 60fps and im getting slowdowns on the first level in the first 10 seconds. ridiculous.

tuaw.com even talks about how WoW will run better in windows maxed out than in os x with the graphics at the default

running games in windows with updated drivers will give you a great gaming experience. if you don't have the money on hand, just play with lower settings for the time being in os x. its possible that a mac driver update will help some.

 

halo runs flawlessly for me... better than my desktop. im using osx and i installed the halo 2.something update. before the update, halo lagged a bit

 

I assume you mean in this specific game, right?

 

In all games that have a Mac version. Mac OS X uses OpenGL (as DirectX is exclusive to Windows), and OpenGL isn't as good as DirectX.

 

common misconception ^^

opengl is really powerful. games like quake 4, doom 3, prey, use open gl (doom 3 engine based) among others.

the problem is the mac implementation of open gl is bad.

in other words: win opengl is about equal to win d3d. win opengl or d3d > mac opengl.

 

I am really disapointed with games for OS X. I have tried Call of Duty 2, Age of Empires III and World of Warcraft. Call of Duty 2 for the mac is super buggy... but when it works it works well. AoE3 runs really bad. World of Warcraft is just like you said. Cant run it in high details and sometimes it just stutters and I cant even exit the game anymore. I need to reboot then. Under Windows XP World of Warcraft and Call of Duty run perfect.

EA said they will bring out more mac games. I wonder if it will be worth getting any of them.

 

Just wondering, has anyone tried gaming on Windows through parallels? I know it won't be great and it'll be much better through bootcamp, but how does it perform vs OSX? I know OSX is very bad for gaming atm and the FPS for certain games can double once you run it on windows, just not sure about how games through through parallel or VMfusion?

 

You can only run directx 7 games in Parallels. Pre 2002 or 2003 games should work. But all of them wont need much graphics power by todays standards.

 

As masterchef said, it is a common misconception that OpenGL is inferior to DirectX; OpenGL actually tends to give better effects with less overhead on slower hardware, but usually image quality is a little lower, and jaggies are more apparent.

The issue with games on Mac is not that OpenGL is worse than DirectX, it's that these games weren't written in OpenGL; they are written in DirectX. When they port the game to OS X, it works in kind of the same way as Wine for Linux; it simply translates the DirectX calls into OpenGL calls, which is slow and uses much more resources, as the game is essentially operating in both DirectX and THEN OpenGL. Look at OpenGL based games such as Doom, Quake, or UT, and see how they run on OS X; I find that Quake 4 and Doom 3 run better in Linux than in Windows.

As a matter of fact, Windows' implementation of OpenGL is worst because it is in fact a competitor to Microsoft's DirectX. This is very evident in Vista, but not as much in XP. Microsoft had originally planned to drop OpenGL support in Vista to push the market into a DirectX monopoly, but had to back up on that.

 

maybe windows vista open gl is really bad. i don't know. but i do know that running the most up to date version of quake 4 on my laptop in both osx and windows xp provides a drastically better result in xp, even though both are being rendered natively in open gl.

as far as translating directx to open gl, it does suck. but its not happening actively. thats all done in the port job. its still not optimal in any sense, but its not actively translating dx to opengl in the backround while you are playing or anything. i don't know if thats what you meant.

edit: with the 2.0.2 update, i can run halo perfectly in 1440x900, whereas before it would slow down even in 800x500

keeps halo installed*

 

If windows OpenGL is the worst then how come I still get higher FPS in windows game OpenGL mode than OSX.

 

yeah... its not... that was obviously incorrect.

whats funny is that mac halo looks better than windows halo. there is a design flaw in the engine that doesn't allow anti aliasing. in the mac version, everything has been ported over to open gl, and anti aliasing works properly. aside from that they look the same

mac > windows for one game

 

wish there was a directx emulation thingy for OSX then id get a mac

 

I'm running WoW on Windows XP through bootcamp at 1440x900 with everything set to max, and it runs at ~60-65 fps all the time...

 

they don't really need direct x. they just need a solid open gl implementation. that would be enough to get games like rainbow six vegas, unreal tournament 3, gears of war...

at least those last two are coming to the mac, but you won't be able to run them well as it stands i bet.

 

I m an "hard gamer" i bought the mbp 17" for gaming (80% of the time), and with boot camp Battle field 2 on full hight run smoothly, same for Trackmania nation, CS source, battle field 2142, Half-life 2, but with lost planete extreme it run a 15 fps with full high detail or not, I think a bug :/