Gaming on a MBP

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I have a black macbook and i love it!

I am currently gaming on an old PC laptop but would much prefer a macbook pro!

What i want to know is how good are they for running windows based games on, and how good is the graphics card?

I need it to be good with the graphics and last quite a while since its pretty expensive, so are the graphics up to date or should i hold out until leopard or later and see if they come with a more up to date graphics card?

thanks for any help!

if some of this makes no sense its because it was written with my dog biting at my ankles!
 
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15" Unibody MBP 2.4 Ghz C2D, 2 GB RAM, 250 GB HDD, 320 GB Time Machine HDD, 1 TB Ext Media Drive
I use my MBP for World of Warcraft, and it works very well. You just have to get used to the fans running pretty high-speed all the time, since the case is so small. If you REALLY need to game, I would spring for the higher-end 15" or the 17" version, since they have the 256 MB video card. To my knowledge, the card DOES have hardware T&L, which I think is the biggest requirement for today's newest games.

Also, chances are you're going to need to run Windows XP under Boot Camp with quite a sizable partition allocated to it, since all of the good games need at least a few GB for an install. Add in to this that we all know Windows does NOT fare well with less than 5 GB of free space, since it uses so much space for a paging file.

All in all, I'd get the upper-end 15" or the 17", with a HDD upgrade to the 200 GB. Then, dedicate at least 50 GB to your Windows install for all your gaming needs. Once you get Windows installed and the Mac drivers CD finished, make sure you install the latest ATI drivers for the card model that's in the MBP.

Then you should be all set!
 
OP
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Cheers, i have played WoW on my normal macbook and it runs great but im now playing lord of the rings online on my PC laptop. It is OK for now but im saving up for a few months and then going to be looking at buying that macbook pro in september! itll be a long summer!
 
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Mac Pro 8 Core 2.8, 6gb Ram, 2TB HD space, Geforce 8800GT//Macbook Pro 2.16, 2gb Ram
So far on my macbook pro, the lower end model with the x1600 128mb card, WoW runs silky smooth with maxed settings even in places like Orgrimmar. I don't know the exact fps, but it runs great compared to my iMac G5 with a ati 9600 128mb card. I'm talking about a huge astronomical difference too.
 
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Sooper Fast!
A gaming computer, it is not.

I have a 17" Dell e1705 with an nvidia go 7900gs that runs at a normal resolution of 1920x1200. It's blows my 2.16 c2d 15" MBP out of the water as far as gaming goes and was about $300 cheaper. Plus the Dell's video card is capable of overclocking with no adverse affects, as long as it's done correctly.

So far, the only comparison that I can go by is www.eve-onlin.com . It has an older graphics engine and isn't very intensive. I have ran Eve on the Dell with XP Pro and Vista as well as on the MBP with XP Pro and Vista. On the Dell, it runs at 1920x1200 flawlessly with no hiccups or anything out of the ordinary, where as on the MBP it's running at 1440x900 (maxed settings on both computers) and it has graphics based lag problems when ever you get into any screens that have too much going on.

I'm pretty sure That if I put wow on the MBP, I'll see similar results. Right now I have it on the Dell running at 1920x1200 with almost max graphic settings and I run at about 60fps unless I get into a screen that's just loaded with a lot of people/charaters/enemies/whatever and I don't recall dropping much below 40fps on that rare occasion if ever.

The MBP will run games, just keep in mind you may not be able to run a huge resolution and that you might have to cut the settings down to prevent stutters or lags...
 
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I have the 17" MacBook Pro and use it to run City of Villians. On 200% on all graphic options it runs and looks amazing. I had issues with EverQuest2, even on lowered settings but I think that may be just cause that gmae has issues in itself (and customer support sucks) I also run Fable, Medal of Honor and Age of Empires: Warlords all at full and it runs like a champ.
 
OP
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decisions! The price difference between a high end gaming laptop and a macbook pro isnt very much so that makes it all the harder to decide and the fact that i have become a mac fanboy sways me towards apple! But i will keep looking around and see whats available! I do have months to sit and stew over this!
 
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decisions! The price difference between a high end gaming laptop and a macbook pro isnt very much so that makes it all the harder to decide and the fact that i have become a mac fanboy sways me towards apple! But i will keep looking around and see whats available! I do have months to sit and stew over this!

I think after the next hardware update (whenever that may be), Apple laptops will have the hardware to run most newer games well. They won't ever be gaming laptops until they do harware refreshes with brand new graphics processors when they're realeased. I mean, you can get an excellent mobile GPU in an Inspiron, which isn't even Dell's gaming line of notebooks, but you can only get an x1600 in the macbook pros.

It's adequate, but just won't give you the graphics that a non Apple notebook will for the most part. And you can build a pc notebook that will outperform the MBP, in gaming performance, for less.
 

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