Who uses their MBP/MB for gaming? My experiences.

randal

randal

randal

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So last night I decided to try and get some gaming done on my late 08 MBP in Vista Boot Camp. I found it to be a bit of a mixed bag, mostly in part I think down to Apple's drivers offered in the Boot Camp process.

Starting off with the good, Steam and Source based games ran brilliantly. TF2, HL2 etc.. were all excellent, cranked up and ran really well. As did Call of Duty 4, patched up to latest and cranked up. Couldn't fault it until...

Fallout 3 - a completely different story. :( Now I know F3 has had it's fair share of criticism for being a buggy game, but on the MBP it's just ridiculous. Problem started off with crackling on the speakers, which apparently is a common MBP problem in Vista due to shady Broadcom Wifi drivers. Not so for me. Updated those, Realtek sound drivers, and disabled band "a" on the wifi... no difference. It crackles, then 20 seconds into a game the sound dies altogether. Seriously annoying. Then it crashes to desktop, just to shine you on.

One F3 related crash caused Vista to black screen completely. Then it wouldn't boot at all. Holding option got me into the boot menu and back into OSX, but to get into Vista I had to clear the SMC and the PRAM.

What are other people's experiences with gaming on this more-than-capable spec'd machine? Are drivers the main source of problems, or is it something more inherrent in the hardware?
 
so to summerise you had a good experience with two game engines and a bad experience with a known buggy one?

wow runs great in OSX never had a problem with it.
 
I should have really delved deeper on F3.

On my desktop I ran F3 fine (only a couple of crashes), played all the expansion packs OK. The MBP, it would run for 20 seconds tops.

Reading up on various forums it appears that the MBP has as known sound stuttering/crackling/popping issue in Vista in certain games down to drivers and the wireless card - not specifically limited to F3.

There is also a known issue with the latest MBP touchpad driver in Vista that kills the sound in F3.

My gripe I guess is really down to Apple offering the option of Boot Camp for it's users, but not following it up with decent drivers and support.

I agree, gaming in OS X is a much nicer affair... well what there is to play in OS X. Crossover Games is all well and good, but it doesn't support a lot of recent games and Steam games are limited to DX8.1. DX9 is in progress but it's not very stable.

Still would be good to hear others experiences with various games in Boot Camp.
 
maybe its vista? I have XP installed and can play Crysis and COD 4 fine, I'll download a demo of fallout 3 and report back to you in the afternoon.
 
Wingz said:
maybe its vista? I have XP installed and can play Crysis and COD 4 fine, I'll download a demo of fallout 3 and report back to you in the afternoon.
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Nice one, be interested to hear your results. I'm going to pull down a fresh install of F3 from Steam later tonight and try again, have to wait for the Mrs to go out so I can nerd away without any interruptions :D

thehitmen said:
LOL

Mac user myself.

But Macs for GAMES LOL FAIL

Get a pc
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Explain "FAIL" please, can't be because of specs when you consider the MBP is a P8600, 4gb DDR3 and a 9600GT, 7200rpm disk. PC I was previously plaing F3 on was: e8400, 4gb DDR2, 8800GTS, 7200 rpm disk.... oh wait, there's not a lot in it...

As mentioned above, the MBP handles pretty much everything else with ease it just appears to be me having problems with Fallout 3 at the moment. Other's experiences are much more successful.
 
I used to dual boot Windows on my Mac Pro simply because I played the occassional game of Counterstrike: Source, and CoD4.

Never tried to game on a MBP though..
 
If I can, always try to get the game on OSX if I have a choice, if not is had to be boot camp windows 7.Not had a problem yet, but not really put any games on there that will push it beyond its means. Exhaust air gets very hot in this weather now though.

Edit: Macbook 2.4 13' 4 gb ram.
 
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sorry turns out there's no demo of fallout 3, the one i download was a old style game made in 2003 :rolleyes:
 
randal24 said:
Yup, latest and greatest NV drivers/Realtek Audio/Broadcom LAN...
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Any idea why the drivers from the NV site wouldn't work on a W7 install on my iMac (current model)?

W7 installs fine but getting working drivers on there is a different beast altogether...
 
MuGeN said:
its the ATi 4850 (sorry my mistake i said above i'd been on the NV site i meant the ATi site...) - are you saying i maybe need the Radeon Mobility drivers rather than standard desktop?
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The iMac is a glorified laptop, so yes.
 
EVH said:
The iMac is a glorified laptop, so yes.
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is this a definite? since posting the question i have looked on a few sites and it looks about 50:50 what people reckon...

does anyone have a link to a site with a list of the drivers that are needed to successfully get W7 going on an iMac? that'd be a gem :)
 
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