MacBook - Problems with game support

Invicster

Invicster

Registered
Hi,

This has probably already been said, but I was wondering if anyone else had seen the issues with the MacBook's support of games?

Apparently, as an example, Aspyr are not supporting the MacBook with any of their games (once they're been 'Universalised').

The issue appears to be due to the fact that the MacBook comes with an integrated Intel graphics chip rather than a dedicated graphics card.

Is this not somewhet short-sighted of Apple, especially as the MacBook is aimed at the consumer market etc?

I was looking forward to playing a bit of SimCity 4 on the go.... Oh well :(
 
While I would agree with you, consider that most of the Windows desktops now sold to the general population have the integrated Intel GMA chipsets. This also goes for the Windows notebooks. The only desktops and notebooks that you'll see with better graphics are those comparable to what the MacBook Pro has built-in and for about the same price.

The majority of people aren't looking to play the most graphics-intensive games out there. For thsoe with the desktops, they can easily purchase a video card. Once the Mac Pro comes out, I'm sure this will be the case. Also consider that the iMac has discrete ATI graphics that should handle games without a problem.
 
Do you reckon that the integrated Intel chip will handle SimCity 4 or The Sims 2? Just wondering what it's limit is.... My MacBook should arrive this week, so will try installing them and see what happens.

I'm sure older OS X games like StarCraft etc will work fine though...
 
I have to go with fryke's comment. The best place to check is the system requirements for the game from the developer's site if you want definitive information regarding games on the Intel Macs.
 
They've so far said that the company won't support games running on MacBooks, though they didn't say that the games wouldn't run on them.

It's therefore difficult to gauge whether they will or not.....
 
If they're older PPC applications for OS X, then they will run through Rosetta which is a PPC virtual machine of sorts so that you can run PPC-based OS X apps on the Intel Macs. The speed has been compared to that of a G3 or G4, depending on the specs of your Mac. If they're older games, then they should be able to run decently on the Intel Macs.

If they're newer games, it's possible that they don't plan on making a Universal Binary (which is native for both PPC and x86 Macs) anytime soon if at all. Sometimes ports are made by other companies they've contracted so you would have to refer to those specific developer sites.
 
Here's the official response from Aspyr, after I bugged them a bit more:

You might be able to get the games to run, but you will probably have problems that we can't fix. We might include support for these IGP's in future releases, but we have made no official announcements yet.

So they may fully support the Intel integrated graphics chips at some point.
 
It's possible....remember that most of these companies are small ones so they might not have enough resources to make the change fast enough, and some are doing it without much help from the original developer.
 
nixgeek said:
While I would agree with you, consider that most of the Windows desktops now sold to the general population have the integrated Intel GMA chipsets. This also goes for the Windows notebooks. The only desktops and notebooks that you'll see with better graphics are those comparable to what the MacBook Pro has built-in and for about the same price.
Click to expand...

I don't want to pull the Dell card, but they have a $1300 CAD notebook with an 128MB ATI MOBILITY™ RADEON® X1300 which I'm sure is better than the Intel graphics. And that's with a Core Duo at 2GHz. So Dell can do it, so can Apple.

I know Apple wants to make a higher profit than Dell does, but they really need to get rid of the integrated graphics.
 
So the Macbook pro, in which the graphics card is not integrated, should run games fine?

I'm not sure if I understand all this...
 
The Macbook will not be a good game machine. It will likely NOT run Civ IV. Even the Power Mac G5's seem to be struggling with it. The integrated graphics will not play the newest games.

Simcity 4 may work. The problem is that I don't think it has a Universal Binary, meaning that it will work at full speed on both older Macs and new Intel Macs.

The Macbook _Pro_ is a decent game machine. It has a very fast dual-core processor and a midrange grapics processor by ATI (Mobility 1600), NOT wimpy Intel graphics. the MB Pro's, may I say, are beautiful machines. That will be my next Mac.

Doug

P.S. Strictly speaking, Uduckhead, almost ALL notebook have "integrated graphics", that is, not on a separate card. But ATI and nVidia have much faster notebook and desktop graphics chipsets than Intel because they're specialists. They call the graphics chipsets such as the Intel chipsets in the Mini and Macbook "integrated" because in desktop machines they are integrated onto the motherboard instead of on a separate card.
 
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