I have a 2010 MacBook Pro 13" 7,1 with the factory NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics card, running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 as well as a partition with Windows XP Home SP3 for gaming. Would this graphics card be considered as a 3D accelerated video card? Is the graphics performance affected at all if you use Boot Camp to partition and run Windows?
MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2010), Mac OS X (10.6.8), Also using Windows XP Home SP3
Yes the 320M is a graphics card and has 3D capability. Be advised that this is not a high end card so some games will run poorly or will need to have the details and resolution reduced. Since Boot Camp is live Windows on the Mac there should be no degradation of performance. The amount of RAM and the speed of your hard drive will affect game performance also.
Thanks. I don't know that the software I'm looking at is a high-end graphics hog, but it is a $200 simulator so I don't wanna drop the cash unless I'm confident it will run ok. Minimum System Requirements are listed as "Intel Pentium 300 or higher processor, Direct X 8.1 or higher compatible video and sound card, 3D accelerated video card with 8MB RAM, 64MB RAM". Nothing I've researched so far about the NVIDIA card on this MacBook has specifically used the term "3D accelerated", which got me nervous.
There is good reason to be wary. Your MBP is the bottom-of-the-line model in all respects, most particularly its graphics capabilities.
Your best bet may be to post in a forum devoted to the software you hope to run, and ask if other users are running it on a MBP like yours.
Oops. Those requirements were for a Basic edition. The full $200 edition lists Minimum System Requirements as "Intel Pentium 1GHz or higher, 512MB RAM, 3D Accelerated Video with 32MB Dedicated Video Memory, Full DirectX 9 Compliant". Again, I've seen in my research that the MacBook is fine for those requirements, except for the part about "3D Accelerated Video with 32MB Dedicated Video Memory"; thats the part I'm unsure of. Any thought on whether the MacBook Pro would be considered to fulfill that requirement?
That requirement is really very vague, with the exception of the word "dedicated". The 13" MBPs have no dedicated video memory — they use 256MB of the regular RAM. Whether that would suffice to run the particular software in question is anyone's guess, unless you can find someone who has done so. With that in mind, how about telling us what the software is, so that if anyone who happens to read this thread also happens to be using that software on a 13" MBP with the same integrated GPU as yours, they can speak up. And while you're waiting, check the software developer's web site for a user forum you can post in, or a tech support email address to which you can send the question.
Sure. The software is Great Planes RealFlight G6. It is a flight simulator for flying radio-control airplanes and helicopters. Here is a link: http://www.realflight.com/
The System Requirements link is at the bottom of the homepage.
I'm looking for some forums now; its a small, niche-market software package tho, so I'll see what I can find, or maybe I'll contact the software manufacturer to see what they say.
Thanks for the tips, I have read some things on other forums, and it looks like this software is in fact a high-end graphics hog. Prolly not a good fit to be running it on my stock MBP from the sound of it.
MacBook Pro/NVIDIA Graphics Card
