Looking to Upgrade from a MB to a MBP

Hi everyone! I am going to University in September, and I received a MacBook from a family member for Uni. It's my first time using a Mac, and I have to say I really like using the OS, finding it visually pleasing and very easy to use (although I've had to consult help a lot for various keyboard shortcuts and the like!). However, one thing that grinds me about this laptop is that it has very, very poor gaming performance (something I'd like to do at Uni, obviously ), thanks to its Intel Integrated GMA graphics chipset.

Since I really like the Mac OS (although I plan to install Windows using Bootcamp, to install games etc), i'd like to upgrade to a MacBook Pro. The best way I thought of doing this is by selling the MacBook, and then using the funds from that with some extra to buy the MacBook pro.

I have a few questions for all you experienced-MBP users

Firstly, how is the gaming performance for current games on the new MacBook Pro with the 8600GT?
I would be getting the 128MB version as, quite frankly, the 256MB version is far too expensive, especially in the UK, as it's £1600, which is over $3200. That's £300 ($600) more expensive than the 128 MB version, which I don't think is justified.

Secondly, has anyone tried any DirectX 10 games on the new MBP? How do they look and perform?

Thirdly, what are any recommendations as to where to sell my current Macbook? Amazon? Ebay?

Thanks a lot for taking the time to read my babble and answer my questions

 

directx 10 games do not currently perform up to any reasonable standard of play, with any hardware.

however, the current sentiment is that this crop of games is more of a dx9 to dx10 patch job than anything else. crysis will be a better indicator of real dx10 performance (designed for dx10 since its inception).

that means that no one really knows how dx10 is going to perform. in all likelyhood it will add some image quality and some performance enhancement, just a little bit of each.

how long have you had your macbook? can you just return it?

 

I've had my MacBook for just over a month now, and I think the period for return here is 14-days, so it's beyond that.

 

oiy.

i would use ebay.

the 8600m gt is a really good card. 128 megs of ram isn't exactly optimal, but it obviously doesn't halve the performance.

you may or may not be able to play upcoming dx10 games in native resolution, although i would bet you would play them in 1280x800 (or 1280x720 if you wanted to hook it up to an external 720p HD tv)

 

The 128mb 8600m GT does fine with the current games, Future games such as Crysis also should be dealt with handsomely. The price difference between 128Mb and 256Mb is just not worth itm go ahead with the base MBP .. u will love it

 

Thanks a lot for the positive replies! Looks like I'm going to go ahead with this. One question I've been meaning to ask about Resolutions:

Is it possible to play a game at a lower resolution, but instead of retaining the same screen size (and thus make the game more blurry etc), downsize the actual screen size (for example with a black border), so the game still looks sharp, just in a smaller window.

 

Depends on the game, some have the option of running in a windowed mode instead of full window.

 

I suppose windowed mode would suffice, although I was trying to describe a full-screen mode, where the screen just gets smaller to compensate for the reduced resolution. Just curious as to if you can do this on macs

Oh! What's this "Turbo Cache" I read about?