Gaming on the Macbook Air! Thoughts appreciated!

Can you the Macbook Air tackle any type of gaming? What are its limits? Has anyone put it to the test in any way? World of Warcraft? 1st person shooters? RTSs?

Thanks guys!

 

Pretty much all modern computers can handle WoW. The integrated graphics on the Air are more than enough for older games like WoW, WC3, and Halo 1.

 

If i'm not mistaken, i think the AIR has a x3100, which is the same integrated solution in my c712nr. You could probably play wow. RTS's will depend on how powerful the processor is (Not sure if theres an option between processors)...but i hear its offered with a ssd, which will increase the speed games load at, lol. My personal experience (as many others will tell you). For games 2004 and older, you'll be ok. (most my laptop can play is UT2k4) and that's with everything on low, windowed 1200x800 @ 16bit lol.

 

Well, to kind put you into perspective, I have a toshiba laptop right now running windows vista, it has a 1.7ghz core duo processor and 2 gigs of ram with intel gma 950, it runs WoW decent at medium settings (1024x768). I play age of empires 3 with more resolution and better settings and it runs smooth. I guess it depends on the game, but the x3100 and core 2 duo processor of the Air should give you better performance.

 

I just thought of something else as well...I think one of the features of the mac-book AIR is the fact that it dosn't have a CD-ROM...this could be a sever let down for some games...not only when you install them. But theres alot of games out there that only let you play if the CD is in the drive. 0.o

 

You can download cracks so that you don't have to insert a CD. They're perfectly legit as long as you have a legit copy of the game.

 

Halo will struggle because it is an awful port.

 

I wouldn't have mentioned Halo if I hadn't personally experienced it. It runs flawlessly @ 1024x768 with low to medium settings on my e1405 which has a lesser GMA 950.

 

Well, thats why they have no cd-cracks.

But WoW in particular allows you to d/l the game, as does any game on Steam.

Considering how under powered the processor is (remember, its not as fast as a 1.8 c2d in a MB, its very, very slow) may not be able to handle some of the tasks games require. I would seriously never attempt to game on that.

It also gets really hot. From the temp readings on some sites (buried in some threads about the air here) it gets much hotter than any of the other Apple laptops.

Not really sure why you would spend 2k on the air and want to game on it. Get a MBP...

 

Halo 1 is a fine port, played it many times on integrated graphics. Halo 2 is the bad port.

 

They're both heinously slow when you consider the level of eye candy.

 

Disagree. It was known as a legendary bad port (pun intended). It would not run on any high end hardware when released.

I assume patches fixed it. But it was a piss poor port.

 

Any FPS that can play on integrated solutions is fine in my book.

 

Out of curiosity, go compare Halo 1 to Quake 3. I bet you'll get 2-3x the FPS in Q3, if not more... Or any other FPS around that time.

Again, patches may have made a difference. It was very well known across the gaming community to have been one of the worst console to pc ports ever made. Figured an 9800 Pro should have been able to play it. NOPE!

 

Well, I remember having a LAN party during a web design class where everyone downloaded the demo and we had a 8 v. 8 using craptastic computers. I don't know what exact video cards they used, but I'm pretty sure they didn't have anything dedicated.

 

Also if your into other OLD blizzard games Starcraft and Warcraft 3 the latest patches also enable it so you don't require the cd in the drive to play. And of course wow has never required a cd after initial install... Although once you hit outlands your going to take a beating in terms of FPS and when Wrath comes out I'm sure the performance will again take a hit.

 

I suppose Halo might run in a satisfactory way on a Windows machine. I myself have the Universal Binary version, and on my Macbook with 2GB RAM and Intel GMA950, I can only run it with a playable framerate if I disable all eye candy and go 640x480 in OS X.

 

hmmm maybe little mini games like chess or something but basic/casual gaming will be doable at bare minimum but not going to be a good/pleasant experience on a mba..

 

My experience with Halo 1 is that it was a terrible terrible terrible port. I had a decently high end system at the time and it would struggle to run it even at low settings. The problems it had were (probably) fixed in later releases but in so far as I remember it was terrible.

To put it into perspective: I could play other contemporaneous games in native resolution at a good 40 fps at med-high but halo struggled at 800x600 on low.

To answer the OPs question: yes you should in theory be able to play most older games (as someone said before 2004 and older). Would the MBA's "ultra-low-voltage" processor effect performance at all or would it perform similarly to other comparable processors?

 

mba does not have an ultra low voltage like other ultraportables. mba's processor is the same as the one you find a macbook just clocked lower and the board shrunk.

The reason why the mba would run slow for games is 2 things, #1 is the hdd is just too damned slow, #2 the integrated graphics.

 

The two processors used in the MBP (1.6 ghz and 1.8 ghz) core 2 duo processors were specially designed for the air by Intel. They are not ULV, they just reduced the size of the processor by 60%.

 

Pretty sure that they're not legit / violate the EULA.

 

Whatever. Finding, inserting, and removing a disc is really annoying. If you own the game, you should be able to play without disc checks. They're not going to find out. (I've stripped the DRM off my iTunes store songs).

 

Yeah, it's at least ethical, if not completely legitimate.

 

It's technically not classified as a ULV, but it's as slow as a ULV.

go look at the benchmarks. They are no where near the speed of a 1.6/1.8 c2d.

 

I remember the days of dragging a "mini tower" to lan parties. In fact, some people would bring their huge CRT monitors as well. Then there were those little shuttle cube pc's. The mac mini is a decent machine to drag to a lan party. Of course, most notebooks make decent lan party machines provided their graphics chipset isn't crippled and their LCD refresh rate isn't too slow but imagine walking in with something as small and light as the MBA? An MBA and a usb gaming mouse would make a killer lan party combination. Why wired? Bluetooth may be subject to minor lags and glitches and you gotta pull the trigger at exactly the right time to get credit for that headshot!

 

If you wanted to get a Mac for a Lan party, the obvious choice is going to be the MBP. I would never bring a MBA to a lan party. Especially when people are going for top performance.

 

After lugging around the older heavier stuff, I'm thinking more about weight than fps. Of course, if fps is your main concern, the MBP is the only reasonable choice.

 

About Halo 1, I've had experience with a mid-high gaming system and integrated graphics. To my surprise the fps difference isn't that much, but they both run smoothly.

Integrated: 945gm
Mid-end: 7600GT

 

Right, and for most hard core gamers going to Llan parties, FPS is the most important thing. Most have moved over to LCDs. Towers will still be heavy, but aluminum towers are much lighter. But when you're going for top FPS you will want a gaming tower with SLI. Even a notebook using SLI will be heavy and cost a good amount of money.

Right, but at the time that halo 3 was released, that 7600GT would be faster than 4 of the best cards out there.

Something weird about a card being able to handle Doom3 and FarCry but not Halo1...