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Gaming Benchmarks for Powerbooks?

post #1 of 7
10/21/04 at 8:45pm
Thread Starter 
Hey folks,
I was wondering if anyone might have some gaming benchmarks for the newest Powerbooks? I'm curious how the various flavors stack up for gaming. i.e.- Nvidia 5200 64MB (yes I know it's a 12" notebook ), Radeon 9700 64/126MB. I'd be curious in particular about UT2k4.

Thanks!
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post #2 of 7
10/21/04 at 8:56pm
Powerbooks can play games?

Quote:
After playing with Unreal Tournament 2004 I must say I'm very impressed with the performance on the laptop. Although the fps is probably too slow for some of you 1337 gamers out there, i was getting 30-45 frames (using ~stat fps) per second on death match maps with about 16 players an 800x600x32bit resolution with all other settings at default except trilinear turned off, which is very playable for me. The only real problem is Onslaught mode where I occasionally dip into the low teens but usually I'm at the low 20's for fps. But keep in mind that a lot of people have had problems with fps in Onslaught mode (which is why I specifically mention it) and that Unreal Tournament 2004 is a very new game that is very graphically demanding. That said I have not really tried to tweak the performance much and I bet I can squeeze a few more fps out. How bout MAX settings? haha don't expect that on this small laptop or any ultraportable/thin and light notebook for that matter. But just for reference, I was getting about 6-8 fps at everything at the highest settings on onslaught and high teens to low twenties on smaller deathmatch maps.
Read the rest here:

http://notebookforums.com/showthread...ight=powerbook
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post #3 of 7
10/21/04 at 10:06pm
powerbooks aren't much of gaming notebooks, especially not with that puny FX5200. I suspect it's partially because of the power of the hardware and partially because of the resource requirements of the OS (You thought Windows XP was a hog? HA!)
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post #4 of 7
10/21/04 at 11:34pm
Thread Starter 
Yeh Scoob I'm aware of the "puniness" of the video chips in the powerbooks, but for the 12" in particular both the ibook and the powerbook are steals compared to anything from windows-world.

The 15" and 17" models step out of the price/value ratio for me. If I was going to spend that kind of $ I'd definitely go w/ something Centrino, Radeon9700, and 15"+ screen, etc.

Like the link posted above, I'd be willing to get the 12" for portability. Gaming on any 12" would be a luxury and I wouldn't epect it to really compare to my desktop system where I'd be doing the vast majority of my 2k4 dirty work. If I could get playable fps in your occasional fragfest in CTF or DM I'd be a happy camper on the road. =D

Getting anything 12" and Wintel based w/ designated video chip starts out on the low end of $1800 (Sony). I can pick up a 12" base ibook (now w/ 1.2Ghz chip instead of 1Ghz) w/ Radeon 9200 32MB for $899 and a PB w/ Nvidia 5200 64MB for $1399 w/ student discount. You're right, not monsters in the GPU world, but relative to other 12" lapdogs these specs are pretty damn nice especially 4 the prices. =)
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post #5 of 7
10/22/04 at 11:03am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scoob
powerbooks aren't much of gaming notebooks, especially not with that puny FX5200. I suspect it's partially because of the power of the hardware and partially because of the resource requirements of the OS (You thought Windows XP was a hog? HA!)
For a 12" Laptop the powerbook is a good gaming notebook considering every other manufacturer only offers onboard graphics with their smaller laptops. The 15" and 17" powerbooks have Mobile Radeon 9700's so yeah they will perform well. As far as available software goes . . . . the games selection is much less but most of the really popular games (Unreal, Call of Duty, Halo etc ... ) make it over to the mac eventually.
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post #6 of 7
10/22/04 at 1:11pm
I've been able to play Halo quite well on my 17. The only times I really had problems with it were when I got to the flood, and it was only when there were a tonne of flood spores running at me. Lag was never too bad that I couldn't get through.

Sim City 4 sucks on this, but it could be because I only have 512 megs and because I have over 400 plugins. Need to get rid of the plugins one day and see how well it plays...though I never had a problem with the same plugins on the PC version of SC4, played on a 1.3 GHz Athlon with a GeForce 2 and 512 megs of ram.
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post #7 of 7
10/28/04 at 1:22am
Thread Starter 
thanks for the feedback guys! my friend just got a 14" ibook 1.33ghz w/ 32MB Radeon 9200. since the OS is fresh I'm going to see if i can get UT2k4 installed. full install is giving me probs so i might just go w/ the demo. in any case i'll let ya know what i find and try and run some benchmarks.

anyone else have gaming feedback for the 12" models?
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