What MBP to take?

[Zizou]

For quite a while now I've been wanting to get myself a Mac, my little brother has a MacBook, and now, after having my computer for 4 years, it's time for a new one.. I want a laptop, and due my hackingtosh experience, I will not take an Dell, or anything that comes with Vista , just kiding, I just want that damned Mac.

 

Anyway, I have some money to spend, and I think the MBP is ok for me. The question though is, which one. I'm not taking the 17", it's just not a laptop anymore.. But I'm wondering between the other 2. I vaguely heard that DirectX 10 (yes I'll be dual booting Vista on it ) requires atleast 256mb Vram.. Can anyone verify that? I haven't been able to after some googling. But that is one of the bigger reasons why I'd take the 2.33 Ghz one instead of the 2.16 Ghz, since asfar as I'm aware, the graphics card is not upgradeable, right?

 

And besides that, I've been experiencing on my old pc that 126 mb Vram nowadays isn't enough to play *modern* games with a decent fps.. (atleast my bf2 is killing me )

 

And last but not least, is the difference between 2.16 Ghz and 2.33 Ghz BIG? How much influence do those few Mhz's have?

 

And does anyone know about batery life? I assume the higer end model is less mobile too.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

zizou

[Colonel]

I vaguely heard that DirectX 10 (yes I'll be dual booting Vista on it dry.gif) requires atleast 256mb Vram.. Can anyone verify that?

DirectX 10 requires something like an nVidia GeForce 8000 series if I'm not mistaken.

[Ampidire]

You will be able to run Direct X 10 games on the X1600 but it will be running without all the DX10 goodies because the X1600 is DX9 hardware.

 

DX10 is not just a memory requirement of cards, it's a whole new way to make a video card, the X1600 is NOT a DX10 piece, in fact ATI has no DX10 capable video cards on the market right now.

 

The only DX10 hardware available is the nVidia 8800 series which is not in laptops and probably won't be anytime soon because of it's huge power requirements.

 

The difference between the 2.16 and 2.33 models is not only .1677ghz, but also 1GB to 2GB of RAM which is a very nice upgrade, and a larger hard drive and 128MB more of dedicated graphics memory.

 

I also can't see why you would want to run Vista on this machine because it's drivers and gaming performance is {censored} right now compared to XP, so you'd be much better off running WinXP Pro SP2 in BootCamp and that way you'd have supported drivers and you'd be able to install your own (likely Omega ATI) drivers for the video card to get the extra performance and to overclock it if you really want to game that much.

 

Vista is NOT a gaming OS right now. XP is the OS to use for gamers because right now no games even require DX10 and no company even has good graphics drivers for using with Vista.

 

The "middle" MBP is probably the best of the 3 options you can get, because the 17" screen at 1680x1050 is way too many pixels for an X1600 card to push, even with 256MB of VRAM. 1440x900 is a perfect resolution for that card to handle and I think 128MB or VRAM would be fine also, but the other extras on the "middle" model I think make it a better deal than the "lower" model of MBP.

[Zizou]

I'm not wanting to run Vista on it, but on long term Vista will be the way to go, and XP will end up like we had windows 98/2000/me back then

But it's a minor thing, because 95% of the time it'll berunning os x anyway

 

 

And thanks for the Dx10 thing, made me understand it more

 

Last thing though, I know it's not just the few hz's that will make the difference, because of the other hardware is better too. But imagine having 2 MBPs excactly the same except the proc? (2.16 ghz and 2.33 ghz) How big is that difference?

 

<_______<

 

Just a small note, I don't even have Vista right now, but will get it as good as free from uni quite soon, which I why I wonderd.

 

Thanks allot though

Edited February 21, 2007 by Zizou

[drprimo]

If money is not an issue, why not go for the middle model (especially considering you want to do a lot of gaming)? Make sure you check the refurbs as well, as they would probably be cheaper then your student discount.

 

Does your uni offer programs free through MSDNAA? Mine has Business for free (just bring a DVD to burn it to), though some do offer Ultimate.

[Ampidire]

I'd go for the "middle" MBP. You can't replace the processor in one, so your scenario above is impossible to configure, nor can you change the graphics cards in them, as in most laptops.

 

The middle one would be the best choice because it's got 2GB of RAM and a larger HDD and double the VRAM, if you don't game and don't need the extra HDD space and will upgrade to 2GB of RAM anyway maybe you can save some money by not going with the middle MBP, but I still think it's the most logical of them all when looking at performace/cost.

[MyJelleo]

Last thing though, I know it's not just the few hz's that will make the difference, because of the other hardware is better too. But imagine having 2 MBPs exactly the same except the proc? (2.16 ghz and 2.33 ghz) How big is that difference?

 

I've noticed that no one has answered your question yet; the difference between a 2.16 ghz and a 2.33 ghz is not big at all. You won't even notice a difference. You may notice a difference from the other components, such as the 2 gigs of ram, but you can upgrade that with the first model.

Edited March 19, 2007 by MyJelleo