The Bottom Line (Condensed)

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A MacBook to play

The MacBook is not a gaming machine. The very bad GMA 950 (or actually the GMA X3100) is incapable of correctly animating a game in 3D. Unless you are fans of games from your childhood (Read Rattler, Harrier or Commander Keen) avoid the MacBook like the plague..

The Pros:

  • You can launch Quake 4 in Mac OS X, but not play it

The Cons:

  • Performances are much too weak in the majority of cases
  • When the game works, there are graphical bugs

A 24” iMac

Is the iMac a good gaming machine? Yes and No. If you are not too picky and that launching Windows isn’t a big deal it can be used to play from time to time. Don’t count on it to launch the latest popular games because it’s more for people who want to occasionally amuse themselves but not the reason sole reason for buying it.

The Pros:

  • Good performance
  • Very good quality screen
  • Powerful Processor

The Cons:

  • The laptop graphic card is underclocked
  • The resolution is too high for the graphic card
  • The lack of power causes it to suffer when faced with recent games

A 15” MacBook Pro to play

In the Apple selection the MacBook Pro is the model the most apt to play games. It has a good graphics card and a screen which doesn’t have a resolution which is too high. However, the problem is the same as in the world of Windows PCs: a laptop is not as powerful as a desktop. In practice, the MacBook Pro allows you to play, but recent games are not recommended.

The Pros:

  • Very good performance for a laptop
  • A screen of very good quality (in matt version)
  • Powerful processor

The Cons:

  • The graphic card is underclocked
  • Only 128 MB of memory in Mac OS X
  • The lack of power causes it to suffer when faced with recent games

Talkback

rtfm 15/02/2008 01:29
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rtfm
The Bottom Line (corrected): Macs = No good for games (maybe battleships and doom II)
human_error 15/02/2008 04:28
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human_error
Quote :The Windows part was tested with Windows Vista Ultra Edition.


Do you mean ultimate? (as far as I'm aware there is no "ultra" version of vista) and was it ultimate 64bit or 32bit?
Akula971 15/02/2008 07:17
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Akula971
A very weak and uninformed review. The MacBook and MacBookPro are not designed for gaming, but for media and business use. So why test them? The IMacs that can play games very well, Just search in Youtube.com for "Imac crysis" and watch the videos. Why did they use Vista? everyone knows that it creates a huge performance hit for games, that why Mac Gamers who use boot camp use Windows XP. The bottom of the range MacPro was excluded? why? because it might have shown a result that the authors didn't like? it only costs $2299. Not $3000 and comes with the HD2600 XT card not the 7300 mentioned in the article. I guess the article was written some ago before 10.5.1/2 as both updates have enhanced features that benefit gaming and in bootcamp you can put any Windows graphics card in. I guess that Pierre already had his conclusion and wrote an article to back it up. Very poor composition, certainly not constructive journalism! Why not find someone who knows about Mac's to write an article on getting the best out of gaming on a mac, just pop along to http://forums.macrumors.com/forumdisplay.php?f=125 there are lots of people there who could tell you differently. Overall a disappointing article for its lack of accurate information and depth.
ebernet 15/02/2008 08:28
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ebernet
Pretty bad review....
There is a 256 version of the MacBook Pro, which if you are a gamer would be the one you go for...
You CAN scale the res on all those machines, and even have the apps autoswitch them, so I don't understand your comment that the Mac cannot do resolution scaling so you had to go with full res...
While I agree you should not be buying a Mac if what you want is gaming, this article was just uninformed....
orthorim 16/02/2008 02:54
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orthorim
Good points above - a proper review should use the latest machines.

I still found the review very interesting because it directly compares the performance with Parallels and VMWare to OS X native and Windows native. One of the big selling points of Parallels (which I bought) is that it emulates accelerated 3D graphics in Windows. And this review shows that this is just marketing hot air as that 3D acceleration makes the difference between 5 FPS and 1 FPS, 5 times as fast in marketing speak, still completely unusable in the real world.

So, big thanks for making the effort!

PS: I am not a native english speaker myself but the english in this article is pretty hard to understand in places. I am sure you'd find english-speaking volunteers to edit / proof read this...
Macbrewer 16/02/2008 09:35
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Macbrewer
Face it, the MAC is a far better computer because it has support for a far better operating system. Windows is just BS, as you will see quite easily for yourself if you actually use the computer and don't just play games. Life is short folks, do yourself a favor and give it a try. Be warned though, it's very true, once you go Mac you don't go back.

But some readers jump to conclusions (e.g. "Bottomline, Macs are no good for games"--geez did you read this at all?), and even the writers of this article have many misconceptions--it is obvious you are out of your element a bit. But I applaud your efforts nonetheless, don't get me wrong.

Windows is basically 'owned' now by OS X, OS X has Windows running in a window, or available at the touch of a button. And there are plenty of instances of "It is even faster, generally, than on Windows."

Thanks for pointing out that even WINDOWS runs better on Mac! Which it does. And, you don't have to rely on Windows horrible and almost complete lack of security.
darthpoik 18/02/2008 02:02
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darthpoik
Macs suck
darthpoik 18/02/2008 02:24
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darthpoik
What we wanted was a more direct comparison between hardware and OS. Macs use PC hardware now so the comparison should be much easier. I suspect Tom is being paid, forced or coerced into not showing us this important comparison. Macs suck but I suspect their OS is far less addled than vista.
Hyperchio 19/02/2008 01:45
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Hyperchio
Are They Any Good For Gaming? The reveiw is flawed in some ways yes, but the definitive answer is that if you want to play the latest and best games, why get a mac?

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