MBP + BootCamp + Vista = Stable gaming?

I'm really only going to use Bootcamp w/Vista for gaming. How well will the newer MBP's run games like COD4, Orange Box, etc?

 

I have a 2.2GHz mbp, just bought it. I have xp, which I think you will get better results while gaming. I can play WoW @ 1440x900 and max settings, 60fps+. Gears of War, which is probably more demanding than CoD4, I can run everything in high @1280x768, and I hover between 30 and 45fps.

If you buy the 2.4ghz mbp, you will get better results as it's nvidia 8600gt has double the vram, 256mb instead of 128mb.

 

Never did CoD4. Orange box is fine (THE CAKE IS A LIE!).
Granted, I have the underclocked x1600...

Only other games I've played on here was WoW, Civ4, Oblivion, and Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy. It handled Oblivion ok. But it's one of those games where you don't want to play it if the graphics are up pretty good. Then again, I doubt most laptop GPU's can handle it with the graphics almost all the way up, considering that it was eating some of the 7800 SLI cards alive.

Not sure if you'll be seeing it handle Crysis very well... :-/

 

Yes. I have both Vista and CoD4 on my MBP. I wouldnt say Gears if more demanding. I have it, it just seems it pushes your system more because it's just a bad port. Stutters no matter how powerful your PC is. I play CoD4 with everything on, except AA fine. Might experience some drops in single player, when theres like 50000 explosions and bullets flying around (not serious drops but you might go down into the low 20s a couple of times.) But multiplayer always stays between 30-60 FPS unless the server is like on the other side of the planet.

 

As long as you go with the 256 8600m, you should be able to play basically everything at reasonably high resolutions and quality levels. Overclocking would also improve performance if you are willing to do that.

You can see some of the benchmarks I put up awhile ago for FEAR and for Crysis here with before and after overclock. They are done in XP, but from what I've seen theres very little difference in performance in gaming compared to Vista.

Either way just make sure you update your drivers and you should be good either way.

 

i got 2.2 mbp. I get about 30 fps on ground in major airports in flight simulator 2004 , around 70 everywhere eles.

 

laptopvideo2go.com has great drivers. Only 1 problem with them is that because they arent sent to you by Apple, it sorta conflicts with screen brightness. Basically what happens is whenever you make something full-screen, or exit something that was full-screen your brightness will automatically max out, but pressing any brightness button will bring it back down to what you had it set to. It's slightly annoying, but worth it for an increase in performance.

 

I've played WoW, HL2, and CoD2 and all performed very well on my MBP 2.2 GHz, on Vista even.

It does run hot though so don't play them with the MBP on your lap.

 

Hrm... where would one get stable laptop drivers for the x1600 on teh older MBP?

I can't use the official ATI drivers as it says i don't have a compatible card.

 

I have problems with Oblivion on my C2D MBP. It seems to crash rather often, every couple of days. Other than that it is fine.

 

Cash, Oblivion is a buggy game. It's pretty well documented that a LOT of people have various crashes and other bugs. Bethesda has always been like that. Great games, but not the most stable. I wouldn't blame it on your mac. Everyone I know who plays it has that problem. Even crashes on the 360.

BTW, I found some official AMD drivers for the MBP (for the x1600). They were actually labeled specifically for bootcamp. I still don't think they're that great.

 

That would not be an issue with the MBP itself. Some PC games just do that, because, well, they're PC games, and it's just something you need to accept. They've got bugs. For example, Far Cry crashes once in a while, not often, maybe 1/10 times I play it. Gears crashes randomly, sometimes every 5 minutes, sometimes once a week. But then I play CoD4 hours on end and it never crashes or gives me any trouble. It comes down to the actual game itself in most cases. MBP is as reliable and stable in Vista as any other similar speced PC on the market.

 

hollownail, have you tried using the latest omega drivers? Depending on how old your drivers are you might get a nice performance increase...

 

True, i tried Gears in Vista and XP on my desktop PC with an 8800GTX and it still does not run that smooth.

 

ive played the orange box on max settings with the native resolution, not sure about the fps but its all smooth (ep2 had some drops a bit).