New MBP for gaming?

Is the new MBP, specced out, going to be a fairly good gaming machine? I know that the 9600M GT will excel in games like World of Warcraft and the Orange Box, but what about newer games, like Crysis, COD4, Farcry 2, Fallout 3, etc.

Specs

- Core 2 Dou P9500 (2.53Ghz) or T9600 (2.8Ghz)
- 512MB 9600M GT DDR3
- 4GB DDR3-1066Mhz RAM
- 320GB 7200rpm HD
- 15.4" LED screen

 

COD4/Crysis works fine on my 8600M GT card so no need to worry. Crysis @ all medium settings you can play pretty well.

 

I think the 8600M GT is already quite capable so the 9600M GT should be a great upgrade.

this is definitely going to turn into a spec for spec Price comparo, PC vs. Mac thread unfortunately. I will be impressed if it does not ^_^

I don't think it would be necessary to go for the 2.8 option if it is just for gaming. if you are doing actual video/animation or any type of serious rendering however, 2.8 is definitely a good idea. if you aren't doing the latter it may be a good idea to just save the $300 so you can pick up Apple Care for the machine as well.

 

The 9600 GT has DDR3 memory, it's gonna score around 5500 in 3dMark06.

 

Hmmmm.....yes!

he ..he ..people want something to talk mate.

 

So, the MBP with P9500/T9600, 4GB DDR3, and the 512MB 9600M GT (GDDR3) should be a viable gaming machine. How does it compare to the Sony Vaio FW - T9600, 4GB DDR2-800Mhz RAM, 512MB HD3650 (GDDR3)?

 

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-9600M-GT.9449.0.html

Crysis is not playable on medium at the 1440x900, the MBP screen's native resolution. You can try 1024x768, but there's huge difference between 1440x900 and 1024x768.

 

But can I play games like WoW, Orange Box, and possible COD4 at 1440 x 900?

 

You can play COD4 @ 1440x900 with 2xAA

 

All games before 2008 play well, but don't expect anything from 2009 to play well. Even though the 9600M GT supports DX 10.1, expect a performance drop of at least 30% when switching from DX9 to DX10. Crysis is a perfect example of this. Try playing Crysis DX9 and then DX10 and compare the frame rate.

 

What's the point of AA when you don't really see the difference? At least, I don't. I prefer to be able to run everything on high with no AA (~30fps) then everything on medium with 4AA.

As for the gaming, many doesn't point the temperature during gaming. After all, a 9600M GT in a <1'' thick laptop will get hotter when gaming. But the DDR3 and 9 series GPU is a great improvement to come closer to a decent gaming machine. For a good performing laptop, the MBP have a big advantage over the .Dell .XPS .m1530 (9series GPU) or .HP .dv5t (DDR3) although the Compal JHL90 should be considered.

Btw, I didn't know the MBP had Montevina (P9500)?

 

So the P9500 + 4GB DDR3 RAM + 9600M GT will be outdated soon? Or is already unable to play new games at high resolutions/good settings?

 

The P9500 and 4GB of DDR3 are more than enough to get the job done for high-end gaming but you can expect Intel to always release newer processors although the performance gain is not significant compared to the GPU. The 9600M GT is not made for enthusiasts but delivers good performance without sacrifying the battery life. It is not able to run Crysis on high but I expect it to last a while, as long as you are not looking to have all settings on high with 4AA, max res. and DX10. But just look at the 8600M GT: its still able to keep up even with the 9 series although this 9 series didn't have much improvements over the old one.

 

The 9600M GT actually doesn't support DX10.1. nVidia refuses to because ATI is supporting it. Kind of like how nVidia refused to support full Pixel Shader 1.4 in DX8.1 because ATI was promoting it.

It shouldn't actually effect gameplay since I don't think any current games use DX10.1. The only one that did was Assassin's Creed, but they disabled it with a patch. There were speculation that nVidia pressured the developers, but it was denied by all parties.

What the 9600M GT does lack though is 64-bit double precision floating point which would be useful for the GPGPU and OpenCL that Apple promotes. The 9600M GT only does 32-bit floats. Only ATI's 3xxx and 4xxx series and nVidia's GT2xx series supports 64-bit floats.

 

Again-

you ll see that mbp has no problems with crysis

EDIT-Check this out! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4jvz7qa-e8

 

The Apparently the 9600M GT is about 25% faster than the 8600M GT, but the 9600M GT is a good overclocker, people can get stable performance when clocking up to 25% above the stock speeds.

Do that and you'll probably get good medium/high Crysis performance, obviously even better on Warhead.

I'm getting my new MBP today, will try this and let you know.