September 10th, 2007
by Michael Swanberg
I got tired of lugging my 17″ HP behemoth across the country, and the perfromance was lacking. So I went on a mission to find the best 15″ laptop for gaming out there for a reasonable price. The answer may surprise you.
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The HP DV9260US 17″ “Entertainment” Notebook sports a powerful Core 2 Duo CPU, clocking in at 2.0 GHz. But its Nvidia GeForce Go 7600 graphics card was the bottleneck. Company of Heroes runs acceptably with all graphics options turned down (hey, those soldiers aren’t casting shadows!!! Ahhhhhh! Demon soldiers!!!). Shadowrun is more like ShadowWalk. And Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 was unplayable at any graphics option (800×600 should never be an option anymore, but even that didn’t help).
So, I decided to go looking around for a notebook computer with a decent CPU and a better graphics card, and preferably in a 15″ frame. Oh, and I didn’t want to spend ungodly amounts of cash either. But for gaming performance, I was willing to go to $2500.
I know, some of you are saying, “Falcon Northwest!” while others are screaming “Dell XPS!” Still others are wondering if I got an Alienware (which is Dell anyway). No, no, and no.
Dell and Alienware do not offer a 15″ notebook with a graphics card better than the 7600. Falcon Northwest does, but it’s in the $4G range. So in the end, I settled on an Apple.
That’s right, folks, an Apple! The Macbook Pro comes in basically three varieties, two of which are 15″. The specs on the 17″ are about the same as the more expensive 15″, so I don’t really see the point of the 17″, but who am I to quibble? In any case, let’s look at the specs for the machine I purchased.
* 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
* NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
Okay, that’s all that I really cared about because that’s what gaming goodness relies on most: fast processors and fast graphics cards. Anything else I would be doing on it, spreadsheets, emails, etc., don’t require much heft in those departments.
So by now most of you are saying, “but there’s no good games on the Mac!” Au contraire, my good people. Once you learn about a little thing called Boot Camp, the gaming world becomes your oyster!
For those of you that don’t keep up with such things, Apple moved their line of Mac computers to an Intel-based set of hardware a few years ago, which means that they are ripe for running Windows. The only trouble is that the BIOS isn’t the standard BIOS that we see on all Windows machines. It’s this thing called EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface). Essentially, it’s a BIOS that can be changed, um, extensibly. The trouble is, Windows doesn’t speak EFI.
But Apple, being the nicest I’ve seen such a company be, created Boot Camp, which allows MacIntel users to create a partition in which Windows can be installed. It then tells the EFI how to act like the legacy BIOS that Windows understands. And voila! A Mac that runs Windows!
“How do the games run?” I can hear many of you asking. Well, to quote Saturday Night Live alum Mike Myers: “Like butta!” Company of Heroes runs perfectly, and on the Macbook’s native 1440×900 resolution even! Shadowrun? Well, let’s just say that it runs perfectly! The framerate is way up to where I kill the bots instead of vice-versa (getting offed by bots is embarrassing, let’s face it). And GRAW2? Well, it’s still not fast enough to be a fast-action-paced FPS, but it was never intended to be anyway. But it does run acceptably now (the forums belie the idea that GRAW2 doesn’t play nice wth Nvidia at all).
Here’s an added bonus: Parallels. Parallels is a VM (Virtual Machine) platform for the Mac (they also have Windows software too), which allows a Mac user to set up a virtual computer, on which he or she can install other operating systems. It’s a very good program too. Some benchmarks have Parallels running some Windows features faster in emulation than in native Windows mode! I’m not sure how that works out that way, but I trust the testers. But the great thing about Parallels is that it recognizes a Boot Camp partition and allows you to access it without rebooting! That is just slick!
It’s not all peaches and cream, though. There are some minor issues with this setup.
For instance, Parallels claims DirectX support in emulation mode, but I haven’t been able to make it work. No problem, though, as I would reboot into Windows to play games anyway.
The drive is only 160GB, so external drives will be needed. I like OSX, so I have been using it as my primary OS (much safer when surfing from the hotel room). So, I divided my drive equally between OSX and Windows. Well, as you know, it is easy to fill up 80GB these days.
The driver support for the Macbook in Windows isn’t the best it could be. It’s close, but it misses the mark in a few places. For instance, in OSX, I have the trackpad set to deactivate when a mouse is plugged in. That saves me from accidentally clicking or moving the cursor with my wrist. But the Windows driver for the trackpad doesn’t have that option. As well, OSX is a left-click-only operating system. So how do you right-click in Windows? Basically, a USB mouse is necessary.
Another nit. All the Function keys (F1-F12) have dual purposes (volume up, mute, brightness, etc.). OSX allows me to default the F-keys to their F-function or to their alternate use, whichever I want. The Windows driver for the keyboard does not, so I have to use the Function Shift-type key to get F5 or whatever when I’m in Windows.
Macs apparently don’t use Page Up and Page Down very much, as these are Function-Shift variations of the up and down arrows. The “Delete” key is really a backspace key, so to get Delete, the Function-Shift key is needed. Home and End are also Function-Shift variations. Pretty much every notebook out there has at least some form of Home/Delete/End/Insert/PgUp/PgDn set of keys, but the Macbook Pro does not.
Finally, even though the Macbook Pro has both Firewire400 and Firewire800, there are only 2 USB ports. Once you plug in a mouse and an external drive (perhaps a keyboard to take care of the function key weirdness), they’re all taken up. So a USB hub becomes necessary. And since most good-sized external drives require a powered USB port, you have to get a powered hub, which makes the portability of the hub that much less so since you have to bring the cord too. And for some reason, most hotels only have one free outlet available at the desk, so now a power strip is needed too. One other nit about the USB, on the right side of the Macbook are the FireWire and one of the USB ports, all along the side. This means that if you have a mouse or something plugged in, the cord sticks out and makes you have to keep the mouse (most of us are right-handed mousers, right?) farther away from the notebook. But the left side USB port is toward the back of the machine, so it’s mostly out of the way.
Apple does get some things right, however. For instance, the power brick is very nice. It’s just like an iPod wall charger, except about 4x bigger. The plug prongs fold in and out to be out of the way when not in use. And it has fold-out prongs to wind the cord around. Finally, the plug prong assembly can be removed and replaced with a longer wall cord. This is just slick! So you can keep the longer cord in your luggage to be brought out only if an outlet isn’t conveniently placed close by. But you don’t have to lug it around in your carry-on.
Finally, the power cord is magnetic on the Macbook side, so if you trip over the cord, it just comes out instead of yanking the notebook off the desk. Very slick. However, since you pretty much have to plug in USB peripherals that also need to be plugged into an outlet, you can still trip over those cords and yank the machine around.
In the end, if any of you are PC gamers like I am and are looking for a good means of mobile gaming, I urge you to check out the Macbook Pro from Apple. It’s $2500, which is a lot for a notebook, but not much for a good gaming machine.
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