How is the Video card?

[MitchellH]

How is the ATI working in terms of games?

[Steve1496]

Excellent!:)


Steve

[Cynic821]

you try FEAR yet steve? how is that? FPS?

[teamhot]

The video is great. So far I've played guild wars at top specs, warcraft iii and warlords battlecry iii. Everything runs top notch!

[bittersweet]

The graphics are pukka, top dollar, big bananas etc.

[OptimismPrime]

@ teamhot:
You mentioned you played Guild Wars amongst other games.

What Machine did you play it on (iMac / MBP) ?
how much Video Mem does your Machine have (128/256) ?
Did you use Bootcamp or Omega Drivers?
And was it in any way overclocked?

I am asking because i am currently planing on getting a MBP 2.0,
but it is very important to me that i can play Guild Wars at the LCDs native resolution in a decent framerate, even in typical slowdown situations like the snowstorm in "Iron Horse Mine" (Run from Yak's Bend to Ice Tooth Cave) or Excessive casting in PvP.

I know it is silly but the only requirement i realy have for a Winblows Box is "must play Guild Wars with decent performance", and that while NOT being overclocked, cause i relay dislike running anything outside spec. even if it is below the hardwares potential.

[hokutorii]

@ teamhot:
You mentioned you played Guild Wars amongst other games.

What Machine did you play it on (iMac / MBP) ?
how much Video Mem does your Machine have (128/256) ?
Did you use Bootcamp or Omega Drivers?
And was it in any way overclocked?

I am asking because i am currently planing on getting a MBP 2.0,
but it is very important to me that i can play Guild Wars at the LCDs native resolution in a decent framerate, even in typical slowdown situations like the snowstorm in "Iron Horse Mine" (Run from Yak's Bend to Ice Tooth Cave) or Excessive casting in PvP.

I know it is silly but the only requirement i realy have for a Winblows Box is "must play Guild Wars with decent performance", and that while NOT being overclocked, cause i relay dislike running anything outside spec. even if it is below the hardwares potential.

I'm playing everything on a 1.83Ghz MacBook Pro with 128mb video and 2GB ram and this stuff is DAMN fast, full graphics settings on all games and plays flawlessly.

[Bluey]

MBP 2.0Ghz 2GB ram

UT2k4, CS.S, Farcry, BF2

all play well with high res but with a few detail tweeks (ut2k4 had the most effect) you can get a really high frame rate for clan games.

3D Studio Max is also fantastic rendering speed is lightning for a laptop tbh


that was untill i thought id updatre the ati drivers to the omega ones ... and err now my macbook BSOD so im recovering it and reloading the apple disc ones..


which has just finished .... and windows has booted ...which is nice..

[moo083]

I've been playing Fable and it is gorgeous. MBP 2 Ghz 256 MB VRAM. This is really a treat. I can actually play games now. I can be a complete gamer. My birthday came early this year :D

[gygysamurai]

I've been playing Fable and it is gorgeous. MBP 2 Ghz 256 MB VRAM. This is really a treat. I can actually play games now. I can be a complete gamer. My birthday came early this year :D


Woo! I just started playing fable yesterday on my iMac! What a fun game!! :D

[Krevnik]

There is one minor thing though... I am personally noticing some sort of dithering in the graphics in pretty much everything. It is /almost/ like when you play an old Rage Pro card in 16-bit color mode... everything is noticably dithered, and you can see pixel color differences where there should be none at all. Almost as if things were overcompressed JPEGs. FEAR was a good example in the black display screens, it wasn't black, but rather pixelated black-ish.

The same thing does not happen in OS X, so it isn't the hardware itself. WoW may run faster in Windows, but it looks better in OS X.

[PShot07]

Oblivion runs on my MacBook Pro without being overclocked. Graphics are set to high. No problems. It's sad for Microsoft really. No PC company has been able to make a truely good Windows computer, and then Apple comes by and makes this BootCamp on a whim, and it owns. :D

[paulyras]

Actually my best friend came over tonight and saw CS:S on my 20 inch iMac. Omega Drivers 425:425 clock and memory. 74.5 FPS on the CS:S video stress test. It was AWESOME

Oh, and that was at 1680X1050...

[kitch]

Actually my best friend came over tonight and saw CS:S on my 20 inch iMac. Omega Drivers 425:425 clock and memory. 74.5 FPS on the CS:S video stress test. It was AWESOME

Oh, and that was at 1680X1050...

Very interesting, what kind of numbers were you seeing pre-Omega and pre-Overclock?

Also curious what the stance is on the Omega drivers? How do they differ from the out of the box stuff? Am I sacrificing video quality or anything? OR are they really just better drivers?

[paulyras]

Very interesting, what kind of numbers were you seeing pre-Omega and pre-Overclock?

Also curious what the stance is on the Omega drivers? How do they differ from the out of the box stuff? Am I sacrificing video quality or anything? OR are they really just better drivers?


I didn't really play with it much before the omega drivers (they download WAY faster than CS:S does), so I installed the omega drivers first. Before messing with overclocking I was getting somewhere in the low 60s for FPS though.

I'll be totally honest. I don't know too much about the nuts and bolts of the omega drivers. I certainly don't think you give anything up, but from what people who should understand these things have explained to me, it's faster with more options (At the end of the day, I'm a biologist who likes to goof around with computers, so my depth of knowledge is a little thin)

[Amazingant]

hey, does anyone know how well guild wars will work with less ram? $500 for the 2GB doesn't sound like my cup of tea. I've played guild wars before on this PC of mine and it hates me because I don't have enough memory in it.

[DarthOverlord]

Don't ever buy memory from PC makers, whether it is Apple, Dell, HP. They gouge you. Go to newegg and buy 2GB for less than 200 bones. I bought 512 in my MBP and bought a stick of 512 Corsair Value Select for $70 from ZipZoomfly.

[gez]

Running a 1.83 MBP with 1G Ram and 128 VRAM - games are like butter!

So far I have played all these games on high settings with no problem:

Counter-Strike: Condition Zero
Counter-Strike: Source
Half-Life 2
World of Warcraft
Halo

All run at or above 30fps, with some running at 60 and up. The MBP is on par with top-end gaming laptops like the Dell XPS. This is truly an amazing experience. I have NEVER seen a laptop do games so well. My MBP outperforms my friend's desktop system - 3.2Ghz P4 and a X700! Outstanding.

Cinema 4D also runs beautifully in OpenGL mode.

[selonscience]

i played the new tombraider on my 2GHz 2 GB MBP and i have to say i can not play it at native resolution with all details on. :(

It is very slow. Had to decrease the settings ...

[sincitymedic]

What did you decrease them to? And, are you OC'ed at all?