Expert Advice Please!!!!

Hales and all you other technical gurus, take a look at the specs on this please (if you would) and tell me if this lil' sweetheart is any good for running high-end games.

Mac Air



~Eta ~Ebs ~Zah

Hey Eta,

This powerbook will run WoW great and the next expansion of WoW no problem as well. It is an amazing piece of technology if you need to do computing on the go, I really love it. You can install boot camp on it so you can install windows xp as well.

However...

I would be concerned about the graphic capabilities standing up to next generation games. The Apple powerbooks (and a lot of other PC notebooks) use Intel's graphics processor. While the air uses the 3100 which is the latest and greatest which DOES support the unified shader model (geek speak for the new way graphics engines draw pretty pixels on the screen) it also shares memory with the main processor which always leads to 10% or so reduction in graphics performance, sometimes worse, simply because all the processors have to wait for each other as they try to touch memory. Intel is also way behind ATI and NVIDIA in graphics hardware experience so I don't expect the performance will be as good as chips from those guys, but I hear Intel is doing some great catching up.

Now, I am not saying you shouldn't buy this beauty. I love Macs as you know However, you should consider what "high-end" games you want to run and how that stacks up to what you want to use it for otherwise such as work and creative play.

I'll bug you in game and we can talk about it a bit more so I can get a feel for what you are expecting.

OK.so I bought a MacBookPro...very cool so far, however I have a question on the whole Boot camp vs vitual machine thing.

I have VM Ware..a third party program that creates a virtual machine for another operating system. It says I can just drop in Windows software and it will do the rest. This is different from Boot Camp...I guess. IT also says it can uses a preexisiting Boot Camp...I have yet to do anything LOL...any ideas? I know I need a licenced Windows version, ubt I think these new programs allows a virtual machine to run at about 90% of processor speed, which would allow Eta and myself to run these high end windows games....For me that will be Age Of Conan perhaps

However WoW for Macs works fantastic

Help from the Mac guru needed

Without getting too damn technical, the VM ware application will simulate a windows box running in a window - there are a few problems with this, mostly when you try to run games unfortunately - it has to do with the game wanting to go into full screen mode and capture the entire display. I have not used VM ware though my cousin (another geeky Hales) has and was getting frustrated threatening to install bootcamp instead...

So, bootcamp is the "hardcore" way where you partition a section of your mac hard drive (I used 32 gig) and install windows as if the mac were a pc such as a dell, etc. The mac can then boot into windows or macintosh OS. The biggest limitation here is the fact that you can copy stuff from your mac to your windows partition (if it is FAT) but not the other way. Since I use mine for a game machine / development target this isn't a problem as I can use my 2nd mac to hook to the windows box via my local network.

"WTF just give me a F#$%in answer"

Ok ... ok ... my technical oppinion is use VM ware for applications such as word or "light" applications running under windows. If you want to run games, be 1337 and go with boot camp.

By the way, boot camp seems to work quite well, I've ran a few games on it that have been released recently.

Hope that helps somewhat...

I've been doing some more research and it seems my fear about the air's graphics card are coming true. The general consensus seems to be buy a powerbook pro for games, roughly the same price as an air. In my mind, the specs back up this view.