[Macworld]

Post your comments for Will the next MacBooks be better gaming systems? here

[Mav]

Hear hear, Peter! I've always wondered when Apple will start getting serious about boosting the graphics power in their systems. Not only does it help games, it also extends a Mac's useful life as new releases of OS X inevitably tack on features which tax or benefit from the onboard graphics card.

[fletc3her]

I stopped buying video games for my Mac altogether a few years ago. I got sick of buying games that should have modest requirements like SimCity and Age of Empires and being unable to use them on machines that were just a few years old. If the game companies can't make games with reasonable requirements then I'm simply not going to buy any of them at all.
I buy Wii games instead. Every Wii game works on the console. There is no need to look into system requirements. I'd suggest that a PS3, XBox, or Wii is a lot better investment than a Mac or PC for gaming.

[BearsFan34]

While I didn't purchase a 2.2GHz white MacBook for gaming, it sure would've been nice to play some of the PC games I have received as gifts over the years. Couldn't afford a MacBook Pro at the time (still can't).
Just for laughs, I tried installing PC versions of Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142, and Call of Duty 4 to see if they'd run. They failed, this in VMWare Fusion.
I'd be curious to know which games are able to "eke out" working on the GMA x3100 chipset. Anyone get the games listed above to work?

[medienhexer]

Yes, back in the days...
My first Mac was an iBook G4 1,2 GHz. While always one step behind the Powerbook, it always had a discrete graphics solution. The MacBooks definitely were a huge step forward in processing power and all but graphics wise it just smelled funny.
I really hope Apple pulls some nice well-fed bunny out of their hat!

[medienhexer]

I think for serious gaming, you'll still hav to bootcamp windows and run it natively.

[kriri]

I doubt that a new integrated chipset by NVIDIA will turn the MB into a gaming machine. It will still use shared RAM to keep the MBs profile small and cheap. I only expect an incremental improvement over the GMA, so much that they will be able to benefit from Snow Leopards improvements.

[Peter Cohen]

BearsFan34 said:

Just for laughs, I tried installing PC versions of Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142, and Call of Duty 4 to see if they'd run. They failed, this in VMWare Fusion.

Running games in VMWare Fusion or Parallels Fusion is a lost cause, especially on a MacBook. Boot Camp will yield better performance.

[Peter Cohen]

medienhexer said:

Yes, back in the days...
My first Mac was an iBook G4 1,2 GHz. While always one step behind the Powerbook, it always had a discrete graphics solution.

That's because neither Motorola nor IBM -- Apple's two other partners in the PowerPC "AIM" consortium -- were able to provide an integrated graphics chipset. You'd better believe that if they could have, Apple would have gone with such an architecture, as a cost savings measure.

[BearsFan34]

Peter, are you saying that should I go the Boot Camp route I can run the likes of BF2, BF2142 & the like? I have the white Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz MacBook with 4GB of RAM and a 200GB 7200rpm HDD.

I thought I'd read in some other forums / websites that such games were "unplayable" on a MacBook due to the "requirements" listed on the game box, hence the FAIL message I got when trying to install via a VM. I'm not unwilling to install Boot Camp if there's a good chance the game will work. I'm not concerned about "sweet frame rates" & such, as long as the game(s) is (are) reasonably playable.

[Peter Cohen]

You already have Windows, since you're running VMWare Fusion. You have nothing to lose by trying. But if the game's system requirements are higher than the MacBook, then it won't run -- or won't run well -- just the same. But VMWare Fusion, Parallels and other virtualization software imposes a performance penalty and compatibility issues that running Windows natively on the MacBook simply does not.

[snapdragon69]

I hope not. Gaming is a frightfully low brow affair.

[jimwick]

Re: will the next MacBooks be better gaming systems?
Who cares? The money and time spent creating gaming code could be much better spent on more serious problems. Gaming is an utter waste of time and intellect.

[Steve_S]

Macworld said:

There has been some suggestion in technical circles that Apple is going to make the move to a different motherboard design with its next generation of MacBooks, to a system that uses more sophisticated graphics hardware from Nvidia or AMD (owner of ATI).

Technical circles or rumor sites? I suppose you're not going our to far on a limb with this one since there have been plenty of rumors suggesting nVidia chips in the new MacBooks. However, I doubt Apple is doing this for gaming. As you mention, if Apple is going to promote OpenCL and Snow Leopard in general, it will have to be able to demonstrate the benefit. Given the reasonably high entry price for a MacBook, it's inexcusable to still be using integrated Intel graphics. Let's hope you're right!