Discussion Cheapest Mac Laptop that can still play Windows Games

[smirkus]

I am going off to college next year, and I want to bring a laptop to school. Lets please not start a flame war, but I want to bring a mac with me. The only thing Windows I personally will miss are my games, specifically CS:S and Battlefield. I was wondering if anyone knew/could link to info about what of the current Macbooks and MacBook Pros out there can handle the games with the hardware they come with (not necessarily at best settings, but at a playable fps).

I was thinking for anything decent I would have to go for the $2500 Macbook Pro, but that's a lot of money to shell out, and I don't want to be responsible for such a pricey piece of merchandise. Can the iBooks, booted up into Windows play CS:S with its hardware at all? At at least 30 fps?

Any info would be amazing. thanks!

 

[fishmahn]

Really, you're in the wrong forum to ask for help like that - would have to be a hardware forum... maybe one for laptops?

But... You need to find out what video card/graphics chip is in any of the macs you're considering, then find gaming benchmarks at Tom's or elsewhere for that video card to see how well it runs your game. Pretty much any CPU you get will run the game fine, what's uncertain is how well the graphics will run.

IIRC, most of the mac laptops use Intel integrated graphics, not really gaming graphics. I'm not much of a gamer (my 'gaming capable PC' still runs an Radeon 9600), so I can't help there.

Mike.

 

[raynoldharrison]

Just bought myself macbook pro i7 (top-end baseline for 13") and installed need for speed most wanted. Run very well and i'm very very happy at blacklist no.9 at this moment.

 

[Guest]

This topic has been moved from the section Opinions and Experiences to section Mac OS X by Grumpy9117

 

[diellur]

I was wondering if anyone knew/could link to info about what of the current Macbooks and MacBook Pros out there can handle the games with the hardware they come with (not necessarily at best settings, but at a playable fps).[/quote]

My £700 Acer 6930G performed at the same level as a £1,300 MacBook Pro...I know this, as a mate loaned me his MBP to try out and the performance was virtually identical. For games, you will likely need a MBP as they have a dedicated graphics card.

I was thinking for anything decent I would have to go for the $2500 Macbook Pro, but that's a lot of money to shell out, and I don't want to be responsible for such a pricey piece of merchandise.[/quote]

Simply put, don't get a Mac then! I think they're very capable machines and have nothing against them, but the one thing that puts me off getting one year after year is that any increases in stability and performance over a decent Windows 7 machine are certainly not worth the £1k-ish mark-up. You're paying for a brand as much as for the technology.

 

[diellur]

No idea why Acer went in bold and underlined itself above...

 

[TheTech214]

No, an ibook will not play games at all. I do not mean to shun apple, but they are bad for games and not a lot of programs are compatible with them. I understand that you want to use a Mac, but it is not the most cost effective and compatible computer. Not to offend the Mac fan boys, but all apple computers are good at is looking "cool." So in the end I would not get a Mac, but if you must get the $2,500 one a spend the extra money a buy a copy of windows and run it on boot camp.

 

[megamanx00]

The most cost effective option is a Hackintosh, ie a non apple laptop that has OSX installed on it. Other than that the default Macbook as a GeForce 320M which is a bit sad for games. If you want more you need to step up to the Pro and configure it with something better. Even then they don't have a stellar selection of GPUs. You can get special education pricing by going to

http://store.apple.com/us-hed/findyourschool

You may as well take advantage of their discounted programming tools in case you fancy making any iOS apps.