Macbook for gaming?

Uhtred

Uhtred

Uhtred

Soldato
Joined
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Location
Bedfordshire
Hi guys, my friend has had nothing but problems with laptops the last few years so I recommended he get a mac this time round. The main requirement is that it can play starcraft 2 at a reasonable quality.

2.6 GHz processor or equivalent
1 GB RAM for XP, 1.5 GB for Vista and 7;
2 GB RAM for Mac OS X
128 MB video card (minimum, Mac/Windows)
512 MB video card (recommended, Mac/Windows)
DirectX version 9.0c or better
12 GB hard disk space
Internet connection[8

I don't know much about macs but what would he have to spend roughly?
 
Check the apple website, the configs for macbooks/macbook pro's is pretty limited.

It's either that or buy one second hand, and I doubt you'll pick up anything in reasonable condition for less than 700 quid.
 
Got a late 2008 MacBook, 2GHz Core 2 Duo, 4gb ram and a 9400m. Plays SC2 on low graphics without any problems at all :)
 
If you want to play PC games with anything more than a reasonable amount of enjoyment, you don't buy an Apple product and you don't buy a laptop. You're doing both.

:/
 
LiamJ said:
If you want to play PC games with anything more than a reasonable amount of enjoyment, you don't buy an Apple product and you don't buy a laptop. You're doing both.

:/
Click to expand...

I'm playing most of my PC games on full/reasonably high settings smooth as silk on my 2011 15" MBP, so I don't know how you can say that.

And just for a bit of 'proof':
 
I just got the 2011 15" i7 with the 1Gb AMD card and even in OSX I was getting 100+FPS in TF2

I have yet to get boot camp setup for it.
 
If all you do is play games, go PC, Mac isn't really a substitute, and I'm saying that as someone who used to own both.

Only reason I sold my PC is I no longer play games, previously 90% of my time was on the PC.
 
MacBook 2010, 2.4Ghz Core2Duo, 2Gb Ram

Plays StarCraft II on medium/high very smoothly.

However, do not run the OS X version of StarCraft II the performance is TERRIBLE compared to Windows. He will have to use boot camp if he wants good performance with some eye candy turned on.

Just don't bother running games in OS X if you want the best performance. Always boot into Windows. It doesn't matter for games like Plants vs. Zombies but when you need extra FPS you will get that in Windows, you're just crippled using OS X.

It's the same for pretty much every single game I've tried, Civ IV, CSS, TF2, Half-Life 2...the performance in Windows is much better.
 
Zap said:
Hi guys, my friend has had nothing but problems with laptops the last few years so I recommended he get a mac this time round. The main requirement is that it can play starcraft 2 at a reasonable quality.

snip

I don't know much about macs but what would he have to spend roughly?
Click to expand...

Why recommend a mac if you dont know much about them? :confused:
 
Because he gets on very well with his iPhone (very it illiterate) and has nothing but bad experiences with pcs. I thought macs were quite good for gaming but didn't realise they were so expensive to get decent performance.
 
Zap said:
Because he gets on very well with his iPhone (very it illiterate) and has nothing but bad experiences with pcs. I thought macs were quite good for gaming but didn't realise they were so expensive to get decent performance.
Click to expand...

A Mac is very different from an iPhone still. :p

Lion will change that a bit though.

Well PC's are rarely the issue, the user usually cocks them up. 7 is a fantastic OS however, takes care of itself better than past versions of Windows.

Edit: But yep, price/performance ratio is still way off with Macs, the laptops are more reasonably priced but the desktops have way too much Apple tax.
 
Would have to be the 15" MBP with the upgraded video card. Not cheap mind...

The 13" MBP and the 15" with the low end ATI card aren't really up to the gaming task. More than fast enough for everything else you can reasonably throw at it though.
 
Well, 95% of games won't work on mac OS (because they require directx), so you will need to dual boot windows on it. So then you have just got a windows machine for 2x the price...
 
Last edited:
NasherUK said:
Well, 95% of games won't work on mac OS (because they require directx), so you will need to dual boot windows on it. So then you have just got a windows machine for 2x the price...
Click to expand...

No, he has a Macbook which also has windows on there along with the build quality and service from an Apple product.
 
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