Playing games lag???

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I have a slightly newer macbook that a friend (his was the last of the older design), and I'm not a technical wizard but he had less RAM than me which I assume could affect the speed of running games? But anyway, Playing games like Team Fortress 2, my mac lags every other second, at first I thought it was my internet connection, however even playing offline games like Minecraft and some other offline games downloaded from the app store, the game works fine for a few minutes then the speed slows down then reutrns to normal and repeats literally every two second, like it's lagging. I have no idea why it does this when an older macbook that my friend has can work perfectly fine. He recently upgraded his ram to the same as mine and is happily playing Diablo 3 when I can't even play Minecraft or Team Fortress 2. Any help anyone???
 
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I have a slightly newer macbook that a friend (his was the last of the older design), and I'm not a technical wizard but he had less RAM than me which I assume could affect the speed of running games? But anyway, Playing games like Team Fortress 2, my mac lags every other second, at first I thought it was my internet connection, however even playing offline games like Minecraft and some other offline games downloaded from the app store, the game works fine for a few minutes then the speed slows down then reutrns to normal and repeats literally every two second, like it's lagging. I have no idea why it does this when an older macbook that my friend has can work perfectly fine. He recently upgraded his ram to the same as mine and is happily playing Diablo 3 when I can't even play Minecraft or Team Fortress 2. Any help anyone???
 

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Merged threads - please do not crosspost.
 
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In the TF2 video options is there a checkbox for something about multi core support?

Forgot to mention TF2 in my last post, I tried downloading it via steam just a few weeks ago and as it turns out with my GPU (Intel HD x3100) it will not launch the game at all. I think this has more to do with a lack of drivers than actual capability however, I've seen people with lower spec'd PC's play TF2 with no issue, so I'm fairly confident I would have the necessary power to run it if given the chance.
 
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I'm assuming the drivers update themselves with regular apple software updates?

The fan makes a lot of noise so I'm just taking a guess that my macbook just simply overheats and the only solution would be to get a cooling pad?

I've tried the fancontrol software other forums have recommended and they did absolutely nothing.
 

cwa107


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I'm assuming the drivers update themselves with regular apple software updates?

The fan makes a lot of noise so I'm just taking a guess that my macbook just simply overheats and the only solution would be to get a cooling pad?

I've tried the fancontrol software other forums have recommended and they did absolutely nothing.

Overheating implies that the machine is running at a temperature other than what it was designed to. And if that occurs, the machine will turn itself off.

So, no, your machine is not 'overheating' per se, it's just running warm - which is normal when gaming.

Your fans are thermostatically controlled by the systems management controller, which was programmed by the same engineers that designed your Mac. They knew what they were doing. There's really no reason to try to manually control your fan speed - and in fact, it can be to the detriment of your machine's long-term reliability.

Yes, use it on a cooling pad if you find it uncomfortable.

I would also recommend going into the game's settings and experimenting with settings - the first one to look at is antialiasing. This smooths jagged curves, but at the cost of performance (sometimes severely). When you're playing a fast-paced game like TF2, you likely won't notice it. If that doesn't do the trick, knock the screen resolution down and the detail settings.
 

cwa107


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I've tried changing the settings within the game and it doesn't help.

That's unfortunate. It pretty much says that your hardware resources are inadequate to the task. You might try adding more memory.

Truthfully though, gaming (in general) sucks on a laptop. You might be better off building a dedicated gaming rig. Even for a few hundred bucks, you could build a gaming rig that'll run circles around most MacBooks - and it will be a whole lot more immersive with a good size monitor and full-size keyboard/mouse combo.
 
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When I bought the macbook I upgraded the memory to 4GB. I would love a gaming PC but surely a macbook should be able to play simple games likes Minecraft and Limbo without the fps dropping.
 
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Also just something extra... When I switch to my windows partition on my macbook, games like minecraft play perfectly fine with no lag or fps drop at all and there is much less free space on the windows partition
 
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Also just something extra... When I switch to my windows partition on my macbook, games like minecraft play perfectly fine with no lag or fps drop at all and there is much less free space on the windows partition
The amount of free space on the partition isn't that relevant, it's only bad if it's a very small amount left.
 
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But still why are there no issues when using the windows partition compared to the mac partition?
 
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Try adding more memory. The more memory you have the more memory your GPU will take. For example if you have 4GB of RAM then your GPU will take about 256MB, and if you have 8GB your GPU will take about 512MB.

The problem is probably you graphics card (GPU). It is an integrated GPU meaning it is built into your processor. The Intel GPU you probably have is not designed for gaming. It is designed for simple word processing or maybe HD videos, but not for heavy gaming.

Do you know what your Mac's specs are? If you post them we might be able to figure out what is causing the lag.
 

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