Macbook Pro 15" i5 2010 Heating and Gaming?

Hey
Sorry if there is a clear answer to this but I've heard very mixed things about the Macbook Pro 15. I'm looking into purchasing this laptop within the next month and I have a few concerns:
I want to be able to run WoW, SC2, and CS 1.6 on this laptop. I know for certain that WoW and SC2 will run because Blizz is that cool, but CS 1.6 has no native Mac version. Is there some sort of elegant solution that will allow me to run CS 1.6 on OS X? When I say run, I mean 100fps, no input lag, OpenGL.
My second concern is heating. I've heard different things from "warm" under load to scalding hot. What kind of heat will I be feeling on the palmrest if I had the Macbook Pro 15 on a hard, flat, wooden surface running WoW native resolution with all settings low and CS 1.6 Native Resolution? Both at the highest fps they can run at?
Thanks for taking the time to read my post and looking forward to feedback.

 

I'm sure there is a Wineskin port or something like that for CS 1.6. CS:S has a Mac version though so maybe Valve will port CS 1.6, but I doubt that.

There's no heating issue. The laptop will get warm but nothing outta the ordinary. The palmrest doesn't get hot either. For mine, the one part that gets really warm is the area around the port where the power charger plugs into.

 

I don't think you'll pull 100 fps on that machine unless you Bootcamp and install Windows... and run it completely native.

Can you get it playable with Wineskin or anything else Wine based (Crossover, etc...)? most likely, yes.

 

I play Wow and SC 2 currently, the laptop doesn't get to hot, and performance is good!
What I notice is, make sure when you game you have the laptop on a desk, sometime with WoW I'll have the laptop on my lap, and then it gets hot, and the fans come on full, because I assume I'm blocking the air flow. On the desk the fans aren't to bad.

 

none of those games are going to have great performance without windows. but yes, you could get them *playable* within os x.

 

what is this supposed to mean?

I don't play WoW, but I play SC2 in OSX and am certainly getting between 35-60fps in SC2 @ 1920x1200.

or is this no longer acceptable for anything other than a designation of *playable* ?

 

yeah the 330m graphics certainly has enough power for games like wow and sc2. I've been looking into the different things available such as parallels and VMware fusion. does anyone have any firsthand experience on how well cs 1.6 runs on those?

 

running a game in a VM isn't gonna get you anywhere... rather, just install windows via boot camp - run native, it' will work fine.

 

hard to say. we might have different computers. i'm using the i5, that might make a difference (probably not more than a few frames, though)

let me double check my sc2 performance in os x and report back. off the top of my head, it was horrible in os x. i also couldn't stand the negative mouse acceleration in game and could never get it working quite right even with fixes in place in os x.

basically, to get what I felt was acceptable performance I had to turn everything to lowest, and it still wasn't running as well as in windows on medium/high.

but - i do have sc2 installed in os x (just for watching replays without rebooting ) so let me do a bench and double check.

anyway, to answer your question, i meant exactly what i said. imo you will need to be running windows to get great performance out of the games listed. i didn't say it wouldn't be "acceptable" or "playable", just not great. don't put words in my mouth.

edit: i was wrong about sc2: seems to be running fine now at medium settings and native resolution. i checked this earlier and it was bad and i never tried again. it may have been related to apple's performance patch issue / 10.6.4 or something. i am still having horrible performance out of source games though in mac os x.

and i still can't stand the mouse tracking algorithm for os x. it works well on the trackpad, but not at all on the mouse.

 

cs 1.6 runs decently with Wine... forget VMs though they are horrid for gaming. If you want to game in OSX with a Windows game, you need something Wine based to get decent performance.

 

Gaming in OSX is kind of a joke.

OSX mousing, for one, is perfect for a touchpad but unsuitable on a mouse for anything more than simple browsing or desktop work.

The other joke is that OSX suffers a large % of performance loss running just about any game in existence, poor coding most likely.

Also, if you are running Starcraft 2 at 35-60FPS @ 1920x1200, you probably are running at the lowest settings or with nothing happening on screen. My Quad Core i7 running 4.2ghz and a GTX480 can manage that range of FPS with high settings (and nothing more than 4x AA), but nothing better. Starcraft 2 is insanely demanding for a Blizzard game, or just poorly coded.

 

my i5 macbook pro handles sc2 about as well in os x as in windows, surprisingly.

mousing is completely fail though in os x, this is true. even on the desktop.

 

I think "joke" is a bit of a bad way to describe the mouse. Its very subjective, and while 1 person might find it horrid, another can find it fantastic.

 

what's exactly bad about the mac mouse that windows has over it?

 

Do you love it?

The problem is that the acceleration curve for the mousing is negative. What happens as a result?

As you move the mouse slightly to the left to try to point at something very close- you will overshoot. The pointer moves extremely fast. Further targets are also difficult to get precisely because as you continue to move the mouse, the speed drops off suddenly, so you undershoot. With a lot of training, you may be able to compensate but it is fundamentally different than our natural notions of object movement in the physical world and it IS difficult to deal with.

Windows has a positive acceleration curve by default. It can also be turned off easily. It's also possible to turn off acceleration in osx with third party software, but I haven't found a way to get it to stick in sc2.

 

Over the past 5 years I've had macs, I've never faced the mouse acceleration issues that people talk about. I've killed 3 motherboards due to gaming, and again never had any issues with mouse acceleration.

The only thing I can say thats different is that either I'm just used to it, or somehow razer mice act differently within osx.

Either way like other people have said, some people love it, and some hate it. Maybe its just that people who dont like it complain about it, and you never hear people who like it supporting it?

 

yes, but I hate using a mouse of any type. I only use trackballs (logitech thumb controlled preferred) or Apple's touchpads are great... I do not use any type of a traditional mouse because i find them awkward on any OS.

 

Nope, I have a Razer Orochi and it blows in OSX. Wired and wireless.

 

this can (and should) be adjusted with BetterTouchTool.

 

no idea then, I guess I've been drinking the apple juice too long, and dont notice it anymore.

 

do you use an external mouse?

 

well... we are talking about the mouse behavior here. touchpad is great, i agree.

but, regardless of accuracy, the trackpad and trackball don't offer enough dynamic range of motion for fast-paced gaming like first person shooters, and probably not sc2 either... the trackpad can't work in sc2 just because of the click mechanic. i dont think anyone can issue click bursts on a trackpad, and tons of left and right clicks...

 

i hear people say that about trackballs all the time.. but its untrue. Its just what your used to and skilled with. Most people only use a mouse, so its what they know how to use... it doesn't mean its better. Yes gaming with the trackpad is very difficult though because of button usage.

 

I've used both. I'm not saying the mouse is better in all scenarios, but for certain types of games it definitely is. In fact, not every mouse setup is ideal either:

You want to turn off mouse acceleration and work towards a 1:1 map on your movements to cursor movements. That will limit the range of motion on your cursor in a sweep, so you will need a sufficiently large surface to minimize having to sweep more than one time per desired motion.

If you have a smaller range (smaller surface) you *have* to give up either accuracy somewhere by incorporating a non-zero acceleration curve, or changing the ratio of your mouse movements to cursor movements (small cursor movements making large changes to cursor position is not desirable for precision), or some combination of these. Or - you will have to accept performing multiple sweeps (takes additional time) to move the cursor to the desired position.

The trackball system doesn't have enough range of motion to handle these things in the same way that a mouse with a large tracking surface does. It's pretty simple, and it is related to skill, but this would be between a skilled mouse and trackball user.

In short, and using the correct terminology: a skilled trackball user with an optimal trackball setup can be just as accurate as a skilled mouse user with an optimal mouse setup. However, the optimally setup mouse user will have more precision in the particular scenario where mouse movements include a mix of extremely small and extremely large cursor movement (large dynamic range of movements), and all movements are required to be extremely fast.

In desktop work, this is not really relevant, because it is not usually the case that all 3 criteria are met. But, often in 3d games, it is the case.

 

Actually mouse is 100% better than everything else because of accuracy. This is just scientific fact, if it isn't patently obvious on its face. It's like arguing an FPS is better on a Xbox controller. Your fingers are not able to make the same level of sensitivity in movement adjustments as you are with a mouse and your arms and wrist.

It is the same idea as adjusting DPI on the fly, lower your DPI and you can move your mouse a huge distance while your cursor does small accurate movement across your sniper scope. Trying to snipe on 12000DPI and good luck!

Of course, where accurate cursor movement is not necessary (or designed as part of the game), many games are better played with gamepads, joysticks, etc and are much more fun for it than using a KB/Mouse.

 

I talked about this some. I think it is technically a precision problem.

 

ignorance is bliss

 

10char.

 

I love apple juice: want a SB with a 445m GT or better video card. In January please Steve!

 

I don't care if they put a gtx 560m in the thing if they can't fix the mouse cursor movement.

 

I did some further testing on SC2 - and I have to go back and say that I was right the first time. Performance in OS X is a joke.

Windows frame rate is commonly 1.5-2.5x the mac performance, usually about 2x. Its the difference between solid 60 frames per second and bouncing around (and under) 30 frames.

To get performance back up, you have to put shaders on low, which forces shadows on low, and changes the fundamental look of the game in a really bad way (but, it isn't the end of the world by itself). Medium and higher settings (used in windows only for apple laptops that want above 30 fps on all maps) all look pretty similar, the higher settings just add on additional lighting effects, etc.

Also - the mouse situation is just horrible. I did more testing. And, although the acceleration curve is faulted with Apple, the primary problem is actually some sort of glitch with SC2 itself. I haven't quite figured it out yet, but it is overriding system settings one way or another and is very finicky as a result. I've also had a lot of mouse jumpiness (within SC2 *only* - not osx) where the pointer will warp around a bit as you move it.

Bagh.

 

masterchef, yes I do use external mice, mainly razer mice. I've had 3 different models over my mac life (and a few replaced through rma)

Interesting you mention the weird jumpiness within SC2, I remember I was facing similar issues, and I was couldn't figure out if it was the osx "lagginess", my mouse, or what, but good to know it wasn't just me.

 

yeah- i've given up. I would absolutely install windows to play games for now. They might be able to fix this eventually.