A few questions about gaming on a MacBook Pro

glitch · 11 Feb 2010 at 22:17

I've recently found myself wondering if I could get some games running on my MBP to help kill time and I'm hoping you knowledgeable people might be able to help me out.

The sort of things I'd be looking at playing would be The Orange Box (never got round to playing HL2), Bioshock, Dead Space, Mirrors Edge and stuff like that. But before I do, I've got a few questions to ask:

1. Is Bootcamp and XP the best route to take?

2. Do I have to 'tell' Windows to use the 9600 GPU or will it work that out?

3. What sort of performance can I expect from a 17" MBP with a 2.8GHz C2D and 4GB of RAM?

4. Is there anything I should know before looking into getting Bootcamp working and buying a few games?

Irish_Tom · 12 Feb 2010 at 00:31

glitch said:
1. Is Bootcamp and XP the best route to take?

Bootcamp will definitely give you the best gaming performance. As for XP, I'm not sure how much difference there is between XP, Vista or W7. I guess it depends whether you have a copy already or if you will need to buy one. If you have something already then just use that. If you need to buy then W7 might give you better performance.

glitch said:
2. Do I have to 'tell' Windows to use the 9600 GPU or will it work that out?

Sorry, I'm not sure about this one.

glitch said:
3. What sort of performance can I expect from a 17" MBP with a 2.8GHz C2D and 4GB of RAM?

I've got the 17" MBP 3,1 (the one before unibody) 2.6GHz C2D with 4GB of RAM 8600M GT and the 1920x1200 screen. I was able to play HL2, COD4/5 etc very happily in a Bootcamp install of Vista. However, I couldn't put all of the graphics settings on max without it slowing to a crawl. With the 9600 you should see even better graphics performance and the extra .2GHz CPU speed might make a bit of a difference. Expect your fans to go hell-for-leather while gaming (unless they've changed the drivers recently). It might be worth investing in a set of headphones to drown out the noise!

glitch said:
4. Is there anything I should know before looking into getting Bootcamp working and buying a few games?

The Bootcamp installation process is a doddle so don't worry too much about that. You also shouldn't have too much trouble with Windows drivers for the MBP. There should be drivers on your install disk but check online to see if there are more recent ones available.

In the end I decided it wasn't worth the loss of HDD space and the hassle of booting into windows all the time just for the odd game so I removed the Vista partition and haven't looked back. I've still got a massive Steam account sat there doing nothing. If I had the time/money/inclination to game a bit more seriously then I would probably invest in a dedicated gaming rig (or buy a PS3).

Other than that, there's not really much else to say.

Panzer

Spyhop · 12 Feb 2010 at 01:34

AFAIK you can only use the 9600 in Windows Bootcamp. The 9400 is out of the picture completely.

The 1920x1200 screen is the biggest obstacle for playing modern games with good frame rates. If you're OK with playing at a less than native resolution and having it scaled up, I doubt you'll have any issues.

Draeconis · 13 Feb 2010 at 22:07

@Panzerbjorn, you have the MacBook Pro 4,1, because I have the same machine

The 3,1 was a Core Duo machine with an ATI x1600 Mobility GFX card.

glitch · 15 Feb 2010 at 10:01

Panzerbjorn said:
Other than that, there's not really much else to say.

Panzer

Thanks for the detailed answer. Much appreciated.

wush said:
The 1920x1200 screen is the biggest obstacle for playing modern games with good frame rates. If you're OK with playing at a less than native resolution and having it scaled up, I doubt you'll have any issues.

Good point, well made. I'll have to experiment with various settings to see what works best.

Irish_Tom · 15 Feb 2010 at 14:07

Draeconis said:
@Panzerbjorn, you have the MacBook Pro 4,1, because I have the same machine The 3,1 was a Core Duo machine with an ATI x1600 Mobility GFX card.

Unfortunately not.

Mine was one of the very last 3,1 models just before the 4,1 came out. It's exactly the same as a 4,1 but it doesn't have all of the multi-touch gestures. I can zoom in and out with pinch, I can scroll with two fingers but I can't use the three-fingered swipe.

I waited for the January 2008 event to see if they were announcing an upgrade. When they didn't I ordered in early February then the 4,1 revision came along a month or two after that. There's very little difference but it's still officially classed as a 3,1 in 'About This Mac'.

Panzer

pingwing · 15 Feb 2010 at 18:55

I have the 15" pro (with the 9600gt) and as said above its the only card you can use in windows, its pretty good too (can drive 2 screens pretty well so as long as your sensible about the detail level in games you wont have too many problems till you hit dx10 games on more than medium). All source games motor along fine as they really are a bit cpu limited opposed to gpu, and the 2.8 is (well better than my 2.66) and is going to be very good for it all.

My main advice is get vista or w7 over xp as (if nothing else) it looks a bit rubbish on the mac (purely in os appearance as its dated and not all that refined). Compared with my mates mbp (the older 8600 one) the drivers for vista/7 are a bit better too as it seems to have better temperature control (that might just be the age of his mac though)