MacBook Pro :: Using Unibody MBP 13" - Performance In Games?
Jan 4, 2010
Well anyway, I got this MBP about 3 or 4 weeks ago. It runs great so far, but when I play a game, it will run fine, then about 10 to 15 minutes after I start, the performance will drop below 50% of what it was, then 10 minutes later, it seems to speed up again.
I've also noticed it seems to kick up performance again once the fan comes on.
So is this normal or some odd coincidence. Also, is there anyway I could prevent this period of low performance from happening.
I am planning to buy a new 13" MBP but I am kind of concerned on the battery performance. Specs: a) 2.26 GHz CPU b) Upgrade RAM to 4GB c) Upgrade HD to 500GB 5400 WD d) Brightness at 70% / with keyboard backlight / Bluetooth OFF
Questions: (Can you give me an estimate on the following) 1) How long will the battery last if I play Facebook games nonstop (poker / mafia wars / cafe world / etc.) 2) How long will the battery last if I play Sims3 nonstop? 3) How long will the battery last if I watch a DVD movie nonstop? (from the drive) 4) How long will the battery last if I type documents nonstop? BTW, can this MBP 13" play sims3 in the default normal settings?
For one thing, games perform terribly. And they used to work quite well! I played through all of Mirror's Edge on this machine and everything was silky smooth. Same with COD5 *and* 6, though I do realize those games were very well optimized and designed from the start to have high frame rates. I also played through Dead Space on this.. the performance wasn't as great as on the other titles mentioned but it was absolutely playable and fun. Now, when I run Amnesia: The Dark Descent or Starcraft II, the performance is absolutely terrible. In Starcraft II I get less than 10 FPS and in both games, I noticed a strange effect. The performance fluctuates. It will run smoothly for about 2 seconds, then the frame rate goes to slideshow-level for about 2 or 3 seconds, then back to smooth, back to bad, ad infinitum.
I did what anyone would try as a first step and killed all apps, especially windowed apps but also background apps that shouldn't really make a difference normally..................
I bought the vanilla octo-2.8 early 08 Mac Pro back in January. (I've since added in the nVidia 8800GT and a couple 500GB harddrives). As many of you know it's a beautiful machine and I've had very few problems with it. I play World of Warcraft and have recently delved into the world of dual-boxing to take advantage of a triple XP bonus currently available. Running two instances of WoW from separate install locations worked fine. But I found that I was hitting a limit. I couldn't really use iTunes while playing without taking a noticeable hit to the games' performance. So I did the logical thing in this situation: I bought more RAM. Specifically a 2GB kit (KTA-MP800K2/2G) from Kingston.
At first I had them in the wrong configuration. Since the default location for the 2GB that come with the Mac Pro are in slot 1 of each riser, I put the new sticks in slot 2 on each riser. I saw ECC errors and a very odd framerate issue in-game. After about 15 minutes, one instance of WoW would run at 60fps (v-sync is enabled) and the other instance on the secondary monitor would drop to 2-5fps. They would stay like this for about a minute then the framerates would swap: the primary monitor would tank to about 2fps and the secondary would fly up to 60fps. I stopped playing, read up on the RAM placement and found out that the pairs need to be on each riser together. I put the Apple RAM on riser 1 in slots 1 and 2, the Kingston on riser 2, slots 1 and 2. Same story. ECC errors and alternating horrible performance. I then tried swapping the RAM locations and put the Kingston on riser 1, Apple on riser two. I also reset the PRAM as I read that might clear any ECC error issues when installing new RAM. In this setup I had no ECC errors. The framerate issues were still happening though.
At first I thought it was bad RAM. But when placing them on riser 1 I see no errors. My other thoughts are a bad riser board or overheating. Although I've never had heat problems and the RAM seems to work fine if the Kingston in on riser 1.
I have a 2 x 2GHz Dual Core Intel Mac Pro, with 9GB of DDR2 RAM and 2 Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT graphic cards each running a Samsung 24 inch screen. I recently bought Call of Duty 4 and found that the game runs terribly on anything higher then around medium sort of settings. I know the 7300 Graphic cards aren't the best for gaming, but they have done the job for me perfectly until now. I'm a photographer so I calibrate my screens with a Spyder and run a separate colour profile through each video card per screen, and its always calibrated perfectly.
I'm just curious if there is any actual performance advantage of having 2 video cards other then running a separate colour profile through each card? So for example, If I'm playing call of duty and only 1 screen is displaying information, does the other card just sit there, or does it jump on board and process information for the game being played? Because I would have thought having 2 7300's would somewhat give better performance during gaming then just the one?
After a year and a half owning one of the first Unibody MacBooks, i feel its time for a little polishing!
I have been considering a new HDD (probably a WD Scorpio Blue 500GB) along with a 4GB upgrade from 2GB provided by Crucial. However, I've been reading articles on SSDs and how the performance is unmatched. Considering the lowering prices, and the approxiamte equal price value of HDD/Ram and SSD, which path should I take that would increase the performace significantly?
I know the main question would be, well what do you use you're MacBook for. Primarly listening to music, surfing the internet, using iPhoto (for viewing and editing, iMovie (for the obvious movie editing I do a couple times a year), GarageBand (a unsigned musician that just loves recording and playing around), and the obvious student tools (office and iwork).
I just got a Early 2011 Macbook Pro 15" i7 that has a broken scissor for the "x" key (I still have the black "x" key itself. Would the scissors from an late 2007 Macbook Pro 15" be compatible (I've got an old dead keyboard for it that had coffee spilled on it)?
I was told to run Vista 64bit for games, but I was wondering about this� Since many applications don�t even have a 64bit version out and I don�t think games are 64bit, will they all run under vista 64bit? I have a feeling this might be a dumb question, but I just wanted to make sure before I go out and buy Vista 64.
Also do you think windows 7 is better for games? Will it even run games that have not been written for it? Or would I just be better sticking with vista 64 until everyone has caught up and made their apps compatible with the new windows 7? I mean will antivirus programs, ripping apps, etc work under windows 7 without a hitch, or should I wait and just use vista64 for now?
Can anyone with an 11.6" MBA comment on how it can handle Steam games on OS X?I mean anything like HL2, Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress and stuff like that.If you could make a video that would be awesome!I am not really looking to use it for gaming, but if it can run some of these decently I might go with the larger SSD since I can put Steam games on all of my machines.
my computer lags whenever i play a desktop game such as minecraft, call of duty modern warfare, and team fortress 2 and it never did this before. can anyone tell me why? Model Name:MacBook Pro Model Identifier:MacBookPro8,1 Processor Name:Intel Core i5 Processor Speed:2.3 GHz Number Of Processors:1 Total Number Of Cores:2 L2 Cache (per core):256 KB L3 Cache:3 MB Memory:4 GB
I have recently purchased a second hand MBP from a friend, its one of the older models with the silver keyboard, has 2.33 GHz intel core duo processor, 2GB ram, 160GB HD and runs fine. I have one problem though, when I load flash games or when I try to play a flash game it slows right down and runs slower than crawling speed. Is there any way I can speed it up or will it always be like this?
Has anyone tried playing Windows games using Crossover Games for Mac? It fully supports Steam and lots of other games. Just wondering as it might bring performance improvements using it over playing them on Windows. Just wondering.
Right now, I have a 2009 MBP with 2.66 core 2 duo and the 256MB 9600gt. I am looking to buy a 17 inch i5 with the 512MB 330m. With regards to gaming under bootcamp, how much better is the 330m to the 9600gt? Will I notice a big difference in my games or will it be barely noticeable? I tried to play black ops under bootcamp and it was barely playable.
I'm not a big gamer, just a couple hours a week, perhaps. This particular problem occurs while playing Left 4 Dead 2 and Half Life 2. Basically, the computer just goes to sleep while playing the game. It doesn't seem to hurt anything. Hitting they keys a few times brings the computer back and the game back into play without a hitch. Except the audio sometimes needs to catch up. But it sure is annoying. I haven't actually timed it. But it doesn't seem entirely random. It seems to be at somewhat predictable intervals. Maybe 15-25 minutes. I looked all through my settings (especially Energy Saver), and keyboard shortcuts and it doesn't seem that any of them would cause the computer to sleep. The computer is plugged into the wall.
Runs well under bootcamp in my 1.8/SSD. I would even say it runs at 60fps But you need to download the beta X3100 drivers from intel that solve the crashing problem when you play the game with the normal drivers. And download the game from direct2drive or EA so you wont need the DVD Why does Mac OS suck so much ass when you play games? Under bootcamp I can run anything and the games wont run slow.
I know the MBA isn't a gaming computer, not by a longshot. However, I was wondering if folks think that there are some games out there that could run decently if not well on the MBA. Specifically I'm looking at Civ 4 and Age of Empires 2.
this rev B i got is much better than the rev A i used to owned. the youtube and movie lagging is gone. but it's still not powerful enough for a game. i played eschalon book:1 which is not quite heavy and demanding like the new games out there. let alone playing half life 2. it's overheating and locking down the cpu to 800mhz just like my old air. see the screenshot. after playing for 20 minutes, it's becoming very laggy and unplayable. i guess this thin mba is not ok unless playing simple games like gamehouse's card and board games.
My top-of-the-line Macbook Pro 15" locks up after about an hour (or less) of use when playing what is usually a Source Engine based game running in Windows on Bootcamp (booting into Windows). The screen goes black and the audio gets stuck in a loop and the game crashes. My only option is to hold down the power button.It seems of course to be caused by the GPU overheating.I can play a little longer when I have the laptop sitting on a packet of frozen spinach, sometimes peas or even chicken fillets.. but I don't need to say that this is unacceptable, especially when you're 3/4 a way through a L4D2 campaign.
As I play some games, the CPU's temperature gets around 70 Celsius (160 or 170 in Fahrenheit). Fans are around 6k RPM (playing The Sims 3 on Windows 7 Professional, using Everest Ultimate Edition for monitoring). I just wonder if it's ok or not to be like that. BTW, should I put on the hard case while playing? And can someone give some advice for playing games on the MBP?
I know the heating up issue has been raised several times all over the internet. But none of the discussions has satisfied my the concerns I have with my system. So I am going to put my case a new, although I believe the answers are going to be the same as on other similar discussions.
I recently bought MacBook Pro (15 inch, 2.2 GHz, late 2011, OS X Lion). The system usually runs perfectly. I just have two issues:
i. Occassionally it freezes up when more then one apps are running. I have noticed this is usually when Firefox is running in the background. Also happened with Safari a couple of times.
But my main concern and query is the point no. ii (below)
ii. During the normal usuage the fans don't make a noise (even with multiple apps that are not burden on the RAM). The systems heat up is as normal as that of a PC while running on its normal situation. However, when I play games (like BioShock, Sims etc) Mac just heats up immensly and fans kick in. I have never seen/felt a computer get this hot before.
I would like to either install Windows on another partition on my 256GB SSD on the new rMBP and run games off an external, or install Windows on an external and games as well. What would be the most efficient (price wise) way to do this without having to sacrifice speed? I was thinking I could use an external thunderbolt hard drive, but it seems like they are all over $300 and over 1TB. I would only really need around 500GB with preferably 7200RPM speeds. Would USB 3.0 be fast enough or would I need to use thunderbolt? I prefer not to have to install 30GB games on the Windows partition on a small 256GB SSD, though I guess I could uninstall and reinstall them as I need (but does this wear down the SSD write speeds over time?) I couldn't get myself to pay another $600 to get a 512GB SSD logic board on the rMBP.
I have a MacBook Pro late 2011 with low end spec (Processor: intel i5 2.4 GHz - RAM: 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 - VGA: Intel HD Graphics 3000 384 MB) I want to play some games with my macbook like Pro Evolution Soccer 2012.
I've succesfully installed Windows 7 64 bit in my macbook but when I click the game this note appear:
“Warning:Your Computer does not meet the Minimum System Requirements to run this software.As a result, you may experience errors during operation.Your Video Card does not meet the required specifications. (GPU:VRAM 128 MB)”
How come I don't meet the system requirements? It is said that I have 384 MB memory.
Info: MacBook Pro (13-inch Late 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.4)
Ok, so i have a game, age of mythology to be specific... and i want to install it onto my macbook pro!!All good so far, so i insert the disk it spins nothing pops up or anything.I go into finder click autorun, progaming and junk comes up in text edit... So i click SETUP.EXE nothing happens.
I just got a macbook air 2012 (4gig RAM, 1.8ghz, 13" inch) and I want to play games such as FIFA and Team fortress 2 which I already have on my mac. Does playing these games affect the speed or the battery life of my mac? Are there any negative effects??
I was just wondering if 256 GB is enough to divide Windows 8.1 and OS X equally? I will install some games too like: Arma 3, Garrys Mod (to escape the memory leaks of the Mac port), Train Simulator 2014 and Kerbal space Program. And probably Chrome, Malwarebytes and Avast(necessary?). If it matters my specs are: MacBook Air 13 inch mid 2013 along with: The i7, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB flash storage. Im thinking to upgrade to the rMBP later this year if Apple get their hands on Broadwell and maybe a GTX 850 or better?
