MacBook Air 2010 vs. 2011 for "light gaming"...

I'm a little undecided...

On the one hand, we have the 2010 with an under-performing ULV Core 2 Duo but an impressive GeForce 320M IGP.

On the other hand, we have the 2011 with an impressive ULV Core i5 but a lackluster Intel HD 3000 IGP.

Which am I better off with if I would like to do some very light gaming on the system? I need the extra "oomph" with regards to the GPU but I will not be running anything fairly recent, older games mostly (prior to 2007).

 

The Nvidia 320m is nowhere near impressive. It is nothing more than low level IGP graphics from Nvidia that actually doesn't drastically outperform the Intel HD 3000. In fact, under Mac OS X, the HD 3000 beats out the 320m in almost every test. The 320m pulls ahead in Windows due to better driver support. For whatever reason, Apple (or whoever) has made some nice HD 3000 drivers that really use the HD 3000 quite well.

Either way, both are low level IGP solutions that are about equal. The 320m pulls ahead in some tests (mainly under Windows) while the HD 3000 pulls ahead in others (mainly in OS X). Neither of them are meant for gaming, not even light gaming. They were designed to use a low level of power while enabling high resolution output and HD decoding.

Personally, I think any advantages the 320m has over the HD 3000 are going to be overshadowed by the Core 2 Duo processor whereas at least the Sandy Bridge ULV processors in the 2011 MBA can help make up for some of the slack. The 2011 MBA is definitely going to be the all around more powerful system. It is even capable of beating out the 17" 2010 MBP in all areas except for graphics performance (the 2010 17" MBP has a dedicated GPU along with an Intel IGP).

 

Mainly all the big tests showing the 320m better in Windows are DirectX tests... but it does come down to drivers as well.

I don't think the two are drastically enough different in performance to even worry about it.

 

Programs taking advantage of Nvidia's technology/architecture are also performing better under Windows. Photoshop and a few others perform a bit better but whether or not that is actually noticeable is a different story. A benchmark advantage of 5% doesn't really translate well to "you will notice the 10 ms quicker response time." Of course, those are arbitrary numbers that I pulled out of my butt to express what is going on.

 

I think you would be ok with the intel chip. i was looking into the hp dm1z 11 inch computer so i checked you tube. it showed a TON of games being played on this system. however the graphics capability is literally half of the hd 3000 in comparison plus you get a better cpu. honestly seeing how well such a low end system like the dm1z did i think you would be set with the hd 3000 on older games. you figure people are playing all these games on literally 1/10 of the system.

 

I have a slightly different opinion. I recently had 2 macbook airs in my possession and did some performance testing with a mix of steam games compatible with the mac (including recent source games like L4D2 / portal 2).

One of them was the high end 2010 13" model, the other was the low end 2011 13" model.

It was the 2.13ghz core 2 duo / 320m vs. the i5 / hd3000.

I'm just going to talk about source games because it sticks out in my head and it's the type of AAA game title you should expect to be able to play on this type of laptop. Portal 2 in particular was barely playable in OS X on low settings on both laptops. The HD3000 may have benched slightly higher, but you would be hard pressed to tell, it was about the same and pretty abysmal. I turned down the graphics all the way and put the res. to 1024x640 and it was still bad. You'd be hanging out around 20 fps, jumping into the 35-40 range, but really variable and difficult to deal with.

In windows, the 320m was much better, the hd3000 was about the same. In windows the 320m was doing more along the lines of 35+ frames per second at native resolution (1440x900 instead of 1024x640). So it's really not like "if you're using windows the 320m is marginally better and if you're using os x the hd 3000 is marginally better". It's more like "if you're using OS X the performance is in the gutter either way, if you're using windows you can get by with the 320m".

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short version, people are kinda making it seems like this:

OS X hd 3000 > OS X 320m (slight)
windows 320m > windows hd 3000 (slight)

Based on my experience, it's really more like this:

OS X 320m < OS X hd 3000 << windows hd 3000 <<<<< windows 320m

 

over one game? or one game engine? not much to go on... for your own examples, there are examples that counter it. The poster needs to base it on what they want to do... all the benchmarks in the world do not matter if its in programs that the buyer has no intentions of running.

Its odd you had Portal 2 as barely playable with a HD 3000 though... I've seen different.

 

that was my experience. i tested a variety of games and engines: starcraft 2, l4d2, portal 2, killing floor, and a few other titles. similar results across multiple engines. I couldn't get any 3d games that I tested to consistently stay above 30 frames in OSX using either system. Source engine is huge, UT2 engine is huge, SC2 is sort of its own thing engine wise, but a lot of people play it. Windows situation was a little better for the hd 3000, and much better for the 320m.

you could play portal 2 on the hd 3000, my tolerance for low framerates is low. I couldn't stand jumping around between 20 and 40. Other people might be able to.

In the back of my head, I'm also worried about compatibility with the hd 3000, that some games just "wont work" because I've experienced that in the past with intel chips, but I didn't notice any of that this time around. Intel at least launches the games this time round.

 

I am still loving my 2010 13" air. The c2d is more than quick enough for my websurfing/xcode/mail/itunes etc any heavy lifting work (ie video encoding) is done on my mbp 17 2011.

I love that I can chuck it in my bag and take it to work with my work laptop. Been gaming on battery in my lunch breaks a lot lately and the 320 is brilliant in bootcamp.
I have been playing the following at native 1440x900 res and medium settings:
DOW2
SC2
COD MW2
SupComm2
COH

Sure it wont play BFBC2 or Crysis 2 at a good fps but I dont care, wouldn't really want to play them on the 13" screen anyway. But for my lunchtime rts fix its brilliant. Get a good 1.5-2 hours out of the battery whilst gaming with RMclock undervolting the cpu

 

Has anyone played the Warhammer demo on their 11" 2011 Air? I am curious how well it plays compared to the 2010 model?