X3100 Question

I assume you guys get many questions about the X3100. But here is my situation. I am 15 years old and I was looking around for a good laptop for school, gaming and photoshop use. I went to the Mac store a month ago with my uncle to get his old PowerMac G4 fixed. We had to wait a hour so I went ahead and hopped on a MacBook Pro. Being a long time XP user I was sure I was going to hate the Mac. But I was wrong. I loved the Mac. It was so fast and the interface was so clean. I really wanted to save up for the MacBook Pro for a few reasons: 8600GT Graphics, 2GB standard RAM, SantaRosa C2D Processor and the beautiful 15" screen. But looking at the price I knew that I was never going to come up with $2300. So I was checking out the MacBook and at first I wasnt too happy with the integraded graphics. So I then thought of building a PC. But just yesterday i was looking at the Apple website to check out Leopard features and noticed the had Upgraded the MacBook graphics to X3100. I was supprized and happy. But here is my main question: Can the new MacBook run the games; Battlefield 2, Counter Strike: Source, Battlefield 2142 and some other games? Thats what I mainly need to know. Thanks in advance for the replys and sorry for the very long first post.

 

Well? No.

 

Thanks for the quick responce. But can you tell what i can run on the X3100?

 

yes itll run bf series and the source. also company of heroes. However ....
you won't play on the max settings. usually medium.
i don;t know about the new games

 

Ok awesome. I wasn't expecting ultra high game play. I just need some decent graphics for some games I like.

Thanks

 

The X3100 does represent a massive step up from the old GMA 950. Certainly, if these MacBooks had existed when I bought my T61, it would have been a far closer call. Reports are that it can play CS:S with low graphics settings at 1280x800 acceptably. BF 2142, not so much I imagine, but 640x480 or 8800x600 should work fine. With optimized drivers, basically any last-gen game should be fine. Even UT3 might work at minimum settings. But don't expect to play BioShock or Crysis, ever, at any settings. Certainly plenty of performance for a casual gamer, however.

 

I might have to get an iMac beacause of the 2600. Not sure yet though... im still looking into desktop and laptop as well if I should go OSX or Vista.

 

I don't know how the Mac OSX is for driver quality. Vista is certainly a bad choice, but here is how it runs on XP.

http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread.php?t=129343&page=26

"In CS:S, (I'm using the De_dust2 map) The 14.31b just gave me 20 - 30fps, the same at the 14.31 drivers, and when I upgraded to the 14.31.1, I got a tad 25 - 38 fps, but when I bought the new RAM, it soared to 30 - 60 fps... Of course, I was using Dxlevel 81 (DirectX 8.1 mode) at that time... but when I shifted to 9.0, It tuned down back to the 25 - 38 fps mode, that was both with HDR and without. So, I just tune it down to 8.1 since there's no point of using 9.0 and I couldn't see HDR effects at that map. I would like to have a suggestion regarding a map in CS:S that has HDR..."

On XP, you can run Half Life 2 with 1024x768 everything high(even HDR+Bloom) and get 20-40 fps. In Vista I think its worse, and I have no idea about Mac.

In BF2 series, it gets around 15-20 fps once the textures load into memory(it lags for 10-15 secs in the beginning). Playable, but not excellent. It currently has problems rendering some textures/water. I doubt BF2142 is too much different.

I agree you can play CoH with medium settings. But still, this is with XP.

 

I might be pointing out the obvious, but you won't be able to play BF2 or Counter-Strike Source in OS X. There are some emulation software available like CrossOver that say they support CS:S, but I doubt the perform will be acceptible, especially on a GMA X3100. BF2142 is available for Mac, but EA said they don't support the GMA 950, but I don't know if they made a recommendation on the GMA X3100 yet. Basically, if you want to play those games you will have to buy and install Windows XP or Vista yourself separately via Boot Camp.

As to how well the new MacBooks perform, you should keep tabs on www.macworld.com and www.barefeats.com as they should have reviews out this week.