New 13" macbook pro a fail in gfx

It has intel graphics now lol.

Much better cpus, but the battery life and graphics have taken a major hit, total fail.

what do you mean i am trying everything to try to get one before my next semester starts this upcoming saturday any bad info about would be helpful thanks jim

The Intel HD 3000 GPU used in the MBP 13" is integrated within the CPU itself. According to Intel it can use the on board memory cache in addition to memory allocation from the system. Here is a LINK to benchmarks.

As far as battery life is concerned, the new battery life given is more realistic. No one was getting 8 hours or 10 hours from the older models anyway.

Keep in mind that the new 13" models now sport an i5 CPU.

yes the 13 inch does have an i5 cpu, but that intel graphics killed any sort of gaming on the 13in MBPs. For example before you could buy a midgrade 13 inch MBP (with the nvidia 320m graphics) that could play civilzation V. Now you can't buy any 13in MBP that has the specs to play civilization V and that's all because of the intel graphics.

so basically the i5 is a great leap forward, but the intel graphics is a horrible step back. It ends up not being a wash.

Gamers and video encoders will feel the pinch.

general tasks should be quicker (i would include video encoding here but gpu matters as much or more than cpu) the new 13in MBP is a pick your poison situation.

ljbad4life said:

yes the 13 inch does have an i5 cpu, but that intel graphics killed any sort of gaming on the 13in MBPs. For example before you could buy a midgrade 13 inch MBP (with the nvidia 320m graphics) that could play civilzation V. Now you can't buy any 13in MBP that has the specs to play civilization V and that's all because of the intel graphics.

so basically the i5 is a great leap forward, but the intel graphics is a horrible step back. It ends up not being a wash.

Gamers and video encoders will feel the pinch.

general tasks should be quicker (i would include video encoding here but gpu matters as much or more than cpu) the new 13in MBP is a pick your poison situation.

Click to expand...

Though you come off a bit arrogant, I do have to agree with you from one standpoint. I said this earlier and stand by it...The 13" lacks the type of GPU which is synonymous with the "Pro" in the MacBook Pro name. It's got pretty much everything else, but seriously.. if you're putting something like that in a Pro line, and it can't handle Pro type tasks, that's seriously false advertising as far as I'm concerned.

This bugs me because I feel like the only reason they put it in the line up was so they could tack on a Pro model price. They could easily have put one of the other Graphics cards in there and kept it at the same price without any monetary loss.

All that aside, I seriously doubt that any real "gamer" is going to purchase a Mac in the first place. We've got some serious catching up to do where games are concerned, and OpenGL really needs some more stuff for the platform as well as serious enhancements. Also, what kind of Gamer is going to want a 13" screen? Sure, there's external LCD's n such to hook up to, but it still makes little sense should there be none around. Just sayin'

Doug

I haven't looked at the specs on the new MB/MBP line. However, I can say that if you bought a Mac for gaming you are going to be disappointed. While you can game on them, it's not going to run as smooth as a computer that is dedicated and made for the task.

Apple basically had to choose whether they wanted to stay with the old slower Core 2 Duo processors and be able to put any graphics chip inside or give us faster Intel i5/i7 chip processors that doesn't allow third party integrated graphics cards.

I think Apple should have went with a third choice and given us dual graphics processors on the high end 13" MBP like they do on the 15". I think it would also differentiate the 13" MBP 2.3GHz from the 2.7GHz more and make it a more worthy upgrade choice over the 2.3. As of right now the biggest difference between the two 13" seems to be the processor speeds.

I prefer the 15" size but there are people who really like the size of the 13" and forcing people to upgrade to the 15" just for the graphics card doesn't make a happy customer in my opinion.

All I want to do is play Sims 3.

Lots of talk about the GPU performance of the HD 3000 in the new MBP 13".

Take a look at actual benchmarks here. You'll see that the new machine's GPU is only marginally slower than last year's model but overall the new 13" machine is much faster than the 2010 13" MBP.

Also, why would you buy a 13" MBP to game? Neither model is a gaming machine.

Most graphically intense games are going to be optimized for the older GPUs, not the current GPUs. Give the game companies a little bit of time to optimize their code for the new chipset, and things should smooth out considerably. Even still, from my limited testing since last night, WoW seems to run great on the new Intel chipset, as does Portal through Steam.

CrimsonRequiem said:

I haven't looked at the specs on the new MB/MBP line. However, I can say that if you bought a Mac for gaming you are going to be disappointed. While you can game on them, it's not going to run as smooth as a computer that is dedicated and made for the task.

Click to expand...

why shouldn't someone be able to buy a brand new 13in MBP and play a game that was released for MAC six months ago when an older machine could play it?

I'm well aware that macs are not for gaming, but it makes no sense to buy something new that can't handle a game that it's older iteration could.

People can dress it up any way they want, and make whatever excuses they can think of.

The fact is intel graphics (forget benchmarks, they're slower anyway but don't show real world performance and STABILITY) has always been terrible, and far between anything nvidia or ati release.
What's more, they're releasing a newer model with worse graphics.

It'd be a real viable upgrade if it had an ati chipset in there like the 15 and 17 do, but as it stands it really isn't.
And the battery life has taken a major hit too, real disappointment.

And the battery life has taken a major hit too, real disappointment.

Click to expand...

You might be right about the GPU, although that remains to be seen.

However, the new MBPs 13", 15", and 17" have the same batteries as the older models. Admittedly, the newer CPUs may be more power consuming but I believe that Apple has just given us a more realistic view of battery life. No one was getting 8 hours or 10 hours from the older models anyway.

Again, I'd like to hear more from actual testing rather than speculate.