Gaming on this MBP ?

Randall8686

Randall8686

Randall8686

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Joined
31 Jan 2011
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Hampshire
Hi everyone,

Well its time to replace the lappy and well im very out of touch with laptops. I really really like the apple form factor having an air 2 and iphone 6 plus i think it will fit right in. However what sort of game will i be anle to play on the below spec ? I will prob dual boot osx and win 10, im guessing gta5 will be out the window even on low ? But what sort or gaming could i expect to achive ?

Summary
15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display
2.8GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz
16GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
512GB PCIe-based Flash Storage
Intel Iris Pro Graphics + AMD Radeon R9 M370X with 2GB GDDR5 memory
Force Touch trackpad
Backlit Keyboard (British) & User's Guide (English)
Accessory Kit
 
Going to be low settings on most games at the screen res and inly 2gb vram will really limit u.

Dont get a macbook pro for gaming. Plenty of gaming laptops out for a lot less than that that will do better. There workstations not gamers.
 
passey89 said:
Going to be low settings on most games at the screen res and inly 2gb vram will really limit u.

Dont get a macbook pro for gaming. Plenty of gaming laptops out for a lot less than that that will do better. There workstations not gamers.
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It will mainly be used as a work station well i would say 70% of the time. And video editing. However there are no gaming laptops i have found that can offer the slim design of the MBP, i really dont want to be hauling a coal fired ugly brick around all day that offers an hours battery life. It needs to look sleek when visiting customers and doing presentations on it. Having some over the top ripspeed laptop just wont cut it :( also i use trains quite a bit to get up north as i dont loose work time so needs 6 hours battery as a minimum.
 
It depends what games you're playing really.

You're not going to be running the latest games at retina resolution on very high but maybe on low to medium at a sensible resolution.

Also bare in mind you won't get 6 hours of battery life while gaming in the windows environment, you'll get 1 hour, maybe 2.

I was in the same position as you, I wanted a rMBP and something I could game on, it's a compromise. What do you need more, the benefits of having a rMBP or a gaming laptop? Unfortunately you can't have both without compromise.

It sounds like a rMBP is the right choice for you, you'll just have to live with the fact it's not a gaming powerhouse.
 
Its a tough call, i would like to game @1080p i guess on medium to high settings. There is no real limit on the price of the laptop i would draw the line at over 3k ish i guess. I just wish apple offered a graphics upgrade too. The format for traveling is ideal imo. I have yet to find an ultra book /slim light machine that packs a punch.
 
It isn't Apple but I think the Razer Blade is worth a consideration and it might have flown under your radar. It's only 14 inch, which may or may not be a concern for you but it does have a 970M, good battery life and the option of having a 1080P screen which will really give it the edge over anything else this size unless you really feel you need to trash performance and get a 3k screen for it(or alternatively just scale the res down).

Some info here on buying one if you're interested(they're not available in the uk). Also thought I may as well put up a review, as you can see it has a very similar look to a MBP, the battery life takes a bit of a hit but its still very impressive for a thin, high powered laptop. Before anyone asks, no, I don't work for Razer but this really does seem like it would suit your requirements
 
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Randall8686 said:
Its a tough call, i would like to game @1080p i guess on medium to high settings. There is no real limit on the price of the laptop i would draw the line at over 3k ish i guess. I just wish apple offered a graphics upgrade too. The format for traveling is ideal imo. I have yet to find an ultra book /slim light machine that packs a punch.
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Take a look at this, specific to GTA:

http://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/33gkz0/rmbp_15_gta_5_best_settings/

Your GFX will probably see a gain of around 10-20%.

I also wish I could game on my 2k rMBP like I could on a 2k windows laptop but it's not really what it's designed for.
 
I have a rMBP and I wouldn't recommend it for gaming.

The WASD area gets really hot under load so it's really uncomfortable unless you change the key bindings.

The CPU throttles quite heavily too and the laptop takes more than 85W at times so even if the power cable is plugged in you still lose battery.
 
Hmm, this is really making me think. I would love to play games such as GTA5 when away traveling in the evenings etc. I will look at the new dell stuff (alien) im really no fussed on going higher than 1080p as thats all i game at any way.
 
I wouldn't bother gaming with a macbook pro, the GPU is mostly under clocked and cooling isn't great.

If you want a good value gaming laptop then I'd suggest you look at brands which do custom clevo laptops such as Eurocom.
 
Ok so i habe looked into this and how about this,

I buy a new macbook (the real thin things for regular daily travel where i have no time for gaming any way) then an alienware 15 with a i7 and 980m for longer travel trips where im usually office based for a few days and stuck in the same hotel for a week.

It does not solve my problem 100% but i think its a happy medium. Any one have any experience of that addon box where u can put any desktop gpu in and connect to the latop ? Almost tempted to do that for my main pc them and just stick a 980ti in it... Looks like a tempting idea.

I might even try the alienware first and see how i get on.
 
I dipped my feet into the whole Thunderbolt GPU a while back. It did work well (pretty much ultra graphics on my 770GTX in BF4) and worked straight out of the box it was a pain having this noisy box (with no actual cooling) and running PCIx1 and the whole to reboot you need to shutdown power off the module, power it back on, wait for it to go green and then power the mac back on.

It cost me a couple of hundred quid getting the bits but to be honest you would be best off either spending the money on one of the more expensive, proper enclosures or build a mini PC and use Steam streaming
 
Thunderbolt 3 and a eGPU could be a viable solution. I know MSI are releasing an external box for a desktop GPU, and with TB3 it should be a single cable plug and play to your laptop. Although a somewhat bandwidth limited solution I remember reading you'll get around 70-80% performance out of current desktop cards.
 
I think it's best to way for TB3, fingers crossed Intel might relax the licensing on it that was stopping a lot of companies from building an actual GPU enclusure
 
Huddy said:
Thunderbolt 3 and a eGPU could be a viable solution. I know MSI are releasing an external box for a desktop GPU, and with TB3 it should be a single cable plug and play to your laptop. Although a somewhat bandwidth limited solution I remember reading you'll get around 70-80% performance out of current desktop cards.
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Sounds great but the box will need to be a very good price. For the same price as the current boxes you could build the rest of a PC and get 100% of the performance!

In the future though this will be a hugely enticing solution.
 
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