Gaming with Boot Camp on the MacBook Pro
Tags: apple,
bootcamp,
gaming,
half life 2,
leopard
Posted 30. October 2007.
Boot Camp in Leopard has gone beyond beta and turns the MacBook Pro into excellent gaming hardware for the casual gamer.
Not so long ago when I first installed Boot Camp beta I was surprised to find out that my recent MacBook Pro Santa Rosa 2,2 Ghz was not that bad at all for playing recent 3D games. In fact, it was so good at it, that my productivity decreased dramatically for some weeks. Half Life 2 runs at very smooth 60 – 70 fps with most detail settings set to their maximum value (with Bootcamp beta).
After installing Leopard this friday I was even more surprised. Apple seems to have improved the performance of the MBP’s graphics adapter greatly with the new Bootcamp 2.0 drivers.
Half Life 2 on a Mac – Benchmarks
So I took some benchmarks with the in game video stress test from Half Life 2: Lost Coast, which I had taken before with Bootcamp beta installed.Video configuration in both tests:
Half Life 2: Loast Coast – Video Stress Test
1440×900 Pixel resolution
Mode: DirectX 9
All polygon and texture detail levels set to maximum.
Reflections: world.
2x AntiAliasing.
2x Anisotropic filtering.
Vertical sync: enabled.
HDR: disabled.
Results:
Bootcamp 1.4 (beta): ~ 35 fps
Bootcamp 2.0 (Mac OS X 10.5 / Leopard): ~ 50 fps
Both tests were performed in Windows XP. Of course these benchmarks were not performed under perfect conditions and I am not able to reproduce the test for Bootcamp 1.4 since I don’t have it installed anymore and don’t want to go back there. Still, the increase is noticable. Half Life 2: Lost Coast was just about playable (choppy at times) in Bootcamp 1.4 and runs pretty smooth now.
Half Life 2 rocks with Bootcamp 2.0
Overall performance is pretty nice now for most games. All games from Steam’s Orange Box run about 20-30% faster with Bootcamp 2.0 from my subjective perspective. Half Life 2 runs completly smooth on the Macbook Pro 2,2 Ghz, with all video settings set to max. Team Fortress 2 is impressive, too. HL 2: Episode 2 and Portal need a little tweaking of the video settings – more than 2x Antialiasing in combination with Anisotropic filtering or HDR (High dynamic range lightning) is just too much for my Mac with these two games – but at the end of the day, performance is still impressive.By the way, I still have a Steam gift coupon for “Half Life 2: Episode one” to give away, since I purchased it twice: once inside the Orange Box and once it came bundled with HL 2 Deatchmatch.
Be the first one to ask and I will send you the free download pass for the game. You can find my email address in the about section of this web site.
Subscribe to this Feed
Social bookmark
