playing windows games

Check the requirements for the games and compare that to the specs for the different MacBook Pro offerings.

In general terms the answer is Yes but there could be particular games that might have a problem as is also the case for Windows computers. The current Mac machines have very capable hardware. Many users have good experiences with Windows-only games.

Neville

Yes you can game and very well! I have Boot Camp (what you use to load windows on your Macbook Pro) running Windows 7 Pro 64bit and am playing Everquest2, Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 2 and BioShock 2 at the moment. CoD and BioShock run at High settings very well even at native resolution. But EQ2 I had to tweak a bit. If you're familiar with EQ/EQ2, then you know how cities/guild housing, soloing and grouping or raiding can differ when it comes to your PC's performance. With my Core i7 MBP15, I can usually run High to Very High settings when I solo or small group, but have had to play with particles, clipping plane and other graphical eye candy settings if I want a smooth experience when I raid. Otherwise, it works much better than I expected. Overall, I've read you should be able to run most current games at decent settings with the core "i" systems, but have only tried the 3 I listed above.

Good luck and have fun!

I know that this is already answered but here's my experience :
I've played a lot of games (more than 50 titles, from high demanding games like crysis, metro 2033, SC2 to old games like max payne) on my mac since last january, and generally i had really good performance. Yes i had to overclock because when i play, i want 60 FPS. BUT now i'm mounting my own high end desktop, because a laptop would never be a game machine. You have to be realist, a 330m gt is a mid rage gpu card, and with 512 mo of varm you cant play full resolution at 60 fps. the computer will warm up, and u will over-use it prematurely. Yes you will have good cpu (i7 620- dual core) but don't forget that in game the cpu is used only near 15%, so not a big deal. I don't want you to NOT buy a macbook pro cause honestly till today mine is my best windows based machine, but i was badly advised by my friends when i was buying mine cause at 5000$ i would get a very super computer for gaming. All this to say that don't get a laptop for gaming not an apple brand. But if you want photo edit, video edit or music edit then consider a macbook pro cause that's the purpose why these babes made and designed for. I mix a lot of tune and i've never could do that as easily and professionally that on my macbook pro. A macbook pro, even if it's very game capable, is before all a professional machine and a luxury computer that all other BUSINESS laptop a jealous of. So think wisely.

I appear to have the same MBP 15 as hecklerzPBPro (i7 2.66) - how'd you get EQ going?

My experience under bootcamp/Win7U is massive CPU consumption - all cores start ramping up, the fans kick in, eventually leading to a black screen crash upon zoning after initial loading. I tried setting affinity to 1, /Low, etc - no change to behavior.

I then tried VM Fusion 3 + Win 7U and XP SP3 with similar results.

Changes in graphical quality, video modes, etc have no effect.

Any thoughts are welcome.

Yeah, EQ2 is a resource HOG! For me the fans spooled up, but no worse than when I play any other game under boot camp (Call of Duty:MW2, for example). I used the default settings that EQ2 suggested, which is basically high on every setting, I lowered the spell particle effect settings a bit and turned off the dynamic shadows (I think that's how they call it) and that's basically it. I will try to remember to grab a screen of the settings if you like. But it ran great and looked dang nice. Smooth framerates and zero crashes or stuttering. The only setting I can't remember (I'm at work atm or I'd check) is the screen resolution. It's at least 1280x1024, but since I have the high rez screen- 1680x1050- I'm not 100% sure it was running at native resolution. That might be a setting for you to play with as it can make a huge performance difference in eq.

I know this might be a reach, but it kinda sounds like the Nvidia GPU isn't kicking in for you- is there anything you're doing or have set that might keep it from switching?

Good luck and I'll post any other ideas if I find anything useful.

I haven't tried EQ2, just EQ.

I, too, have the high resolution matte screen, and I've tried setting it to all sorts of lower resolution/lower color settings - I don't think it's GPU related, as there is no change.

My CPU/cores all spike up incredibly - which should not be the case as I run EQ at playable framerates on a netbook - heck, some guys got EQ running on a Droid cell phone... the i7 MBP should run EQ without breaking a sweat.

Possibly there are some DX issues?

I'm at wits end, so if there are any other suggestions, I am certainly listening.

Thank you.