MacBook Pro 13-Inch Gaming Video Thread

Hey guys, I am making this thread to display the current gen MBP 13-inch's gaming performance. The videos will be edited to be in the first or second post. If you would like any specific games to be tested post them here. I have almost one hundred games on Steam, so I can get through a lot. OSX and Windows games are welcome, I'll probably post the first one up tonight.

My specs are in my sig.

 

FahrenheitGTI:
Crysis Warhead


julian-nold:
Battlefield 3 (Win 8 DP)
Counter Strike: Source (Win 8 DP)
Crysis 2 (Win 8 DP)

 

Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3

 

Some sort of RTS, like Starcraft II? And perhaps the latest CnC game?

 

I can do BF3, but I am not going to buy MW3 . Not feeling up for a MW2 re-hash, if someone wants to let me download it, I'm down.

And yes, I will try to do Starcraft II and a CnC game.

I only have BF3, though, of the titles selected.

 

Would love to see Half-Life 2, Portal 2, Crysis (1 and/or 2), Bioshock (1 and/or 2), and perhaps some open-world-style games (Mafia II, GTA IV, Just Cause 2, et al).

When you do post your videos, please be sure to include resolution and all other relevant settings.

 

just showing that it can work is encouraging and good enough imo.

I doubt games like mafia II will even launch on mbp13 or am i missing smth?

 

I wouldn't be encouraged by seeing a game run at 15 fps. If there is a trick through changing resolutions/settings to make the experience at least somewhat tolerable, I think the community would like to know.

Not in OS X, but the OP specifically stated that he will test titles on both operating systems.

 

Just to clear some discrepancies:
- I will use OSX and Windows 7, respectively.
- When used on Windows, I use Fraps to show the FPS.
- I show the video settings before I get into the gameplay.

Also, if you would like a specific game tested, if you can find me a demo or let me download the title, that would be awesome.

 

Definitely want to see STALKER: Call of Pripyat. I've been trying to find a video of that on the Macbook Pro 13 for about a year.

 

I'm getting the 13 inch this week and although it's primarily for work I'll see what this babe can do.

I can't see STALKER CoP running on this, game requires quite a machine.

 

I am right now uploading a video on youtube of BF3 on my early 2011 MacBook Pro (Windows 8 DP)... but I forgot to show the settings... I set everything to low and AA to 1 (there is no lower option) but kept the resolution on 1280x800.. with ^ and render.drawfps 1 you can let BF3 show the FPS and so did I...

Impressive on one hand... sad on the other...

Since I am running Modded drivers on Windows 8 DP I still want to see how it would perform on Windows 7

Here you go... (the disappearing of the weapon and bodes can be "fixed" by looking down, I guess it's an issue with the limited shared ram of the HD3000 getting "too full" )

Don't expect too much... it's just 90% of one round with no comment.

Greetings
Julian

Edit: link coming soon... 48% ETA 30 min...

 

metro 2033
BF3
Crysis 1/warhead
3dmark 11/vantage

 

I have Warhead footage, since I could install it quickly. I am editing the footage right now, somewhat satisfactory, for what it is.

 

here you go

Battlefield 3 on a MacBook Pro 13" early 2011 (Windows 8 DP)

 

Oh gawd, haha, I'll test it too, not gonna be pretty, lol.

 

year... and I even had some trouble to get it running... I ended up plugging in my TV as a secondary monitor to stop BF3 from crashing after loading
strange game...

 

Did you try it in 1024x768? Your average frame rate was like 10FPS

 

How about Oblivion? Seems fair

 

Yeah, I can do Oblivion, in fact, I was playing it the other day.

Also, I uploaded the Crysis Warhead video, but it is taking a terribly long time to process. I will post the link on the OP, and when it works, just look there.

 

i am very curious to know if anyone tried warhammer 40k space marine on the macbook. and how it performs. if you do, appreciate your actual hands-on feedback. no speculation please.

 

I tried but every time I switched back into the game it changed back to 1280x800, some times it asked me "save changes" but not always... I'll keep trying

 

There appears to be a demo for Space Marine, I'll check it out.

 

thanks much

 

I just signed up for the site and stuff, and they ran out of Steam demo codes .

 

bummer. thanks anyway.

 

mass effect 2 please

 

No Skyrim yet? tisk tisk Its playable through Wineskin as well (with minor bugs) if you want a performance reductions, but at least you don't need Windows. Seen a Cider hack wrapper out there too now.

 

Wineskin I've never heard of before.

Do games play well? Like can you launch steam in "wineskin" and then use everything?

 

It uses Wine ( www.winehq.org), same as Crossover if you heard of that. It cannot run everything. It can run Steam and several Steam games ok, but not every game will work, or work good. Its not a simple process to port things yourself really... Hobby porters do the work for you though if you search around the net and find hobby ported versions of games... they come in a "wrapper" form so you basically install your copy of the Windows game inside of it and play and someone else took all the time to get it working right.

 

If someone lends me money to play these games...then I can get all of the newest titles. Also, Mass Effect 2 doesn't start up, I couldn't find a fix either. There just seems to be no support for the Intel HD 3000.

 

But I guess you will lose fps, or in other words, on windows you would get more fps right? If not it would be too good to be true

Greetings
Julian

 

Very likely that using Wine or Crossfire will lead to a decrease in fps. In essence, what is happening when Wine is being used is that the Windows program will send commands to Wine, then Wine will translate those commands to OSX (or Linux) commands, then receive commands from OSX/Linux, translate them back into Windows commands, and repeat. Very complicated process.

This is fine for non-games, since fps in something like Excel is irrelevant, but for games it will always be faster to run the program naively rather than running them in a shell like Wine.

 

faster yes... but it depends how much faster you care about, and it varies game from game. In many games I can have decent graphics settings at a high res and still pull over 50 fps so I don't really care if the same thing in Windows is getting 70 fps...

 

True, it does depend on the game and a user's subjective experiences (I wouldn't mind a 50 to 70 fps difference either). I only aimed to technically explain why Wine will be slower than using the native OS.

 

sorry for OT but may be I find some help here

I have a problem with Windows, my Bluetooth Keyboard makes trouble and because of that I searched for Windows driver (newer than the one that comes with Bootcamp) but wasn't able to (even find an "old" one)...

I tried google, even the search here (and landed in the year 2007 ) but had no success

I wanted to make a movie with Counterstrike Source in action but without a keyboard it's impossible to "play + record + be awesome" ... to show some serious gaming (and the FPS)

Thank you guys!

 

Le Pirate Bay

 

I'd be careful, as that's against forum rules to talk about copyright infringement of software here.

 

and an other one... here it comes... Counterstrike Source on the MBP

Counterstrike Source on a MacBook Pro 13" early 2011 (Windows 8 DP)

Hope you enjoy it

 

and as wished: Crysis 2

Crysis 2 on a MacBook Pro 13 inc early 2011 (Windows 8 DP)

sadly the quality isn't that good this time (wrong angle + youtube = ) but it's sooo much fun

 

Modern Warfare 3 can run quite well on my MBP 13" 2011...i think it runs even better than MW2

 

Haha some say MW3 looks worse than MW2 so may be this is the explanation why MW3 runner smoother

Can you film and upload with fps running (not to record, just to show the fps) pls

Greetings
Julian

 

I'm downloading Skyrim for anyone interested .

 

a follow-up on my request - i installed space marine on my mba 11" over parallels desktop 7 over the weekend. it was surprisingly playable. albeit at low framerate (i did not measure the actual fps) and occasional freezes during large hacking and slashing situations. remember. this is on parallels. it should perform much better on boot camp.

 

Great! I am looking forward to that!

 

I am sorry but I have to move all my videos to a new account, so here are the new links (@Farenheit may be you can update the links in your video link post)

BF3
Battlefield 3 on a MacBook Pro 13" early 2011 (Windows 8 DP)

CSS
Counterstrike Source on a MacBook Pro 13" early 2011 (Windows 8 DP)

and Crysis 2
Crysis 2 on a MacBook Pro 13 inc early 2011 (Windows 8 DP)

sorry for the trouble

 

Will running the games through Parallels reduce performance a lot? I cant film any games at the moment as my camera is not working.....

I tried League of Legends on Windows and it is always above 40fps and sometime even reaches 70 fps

 

I run it stable 30-60 fps (I don't like jumpiness) with really good looking settings.

And yes, I will update links, and sorry I am catching up on school work but I should be able to film soon.

 

what about borderlands?