Do you think the new refreshed line of Airs can handle games of today's variety? (Games like Skyrim, Battlefield 3, Call of Duty, Counter-Strike: Source, Mass Effect 3) I'm not saying on Ultra Settings, but on medium, or even high settings do you think it's possible for the new Airs to handle any of these games with their newly updated specs? I'll give points for answers!
Here's a couple of things to consider:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html
Intel HD 4000 - Rank #193 (what's in the current MacBook Air)
Intel HD 3000 - Rank #264 (what's in the previous MacBook Air)
So from that perspective it's an update, 71 spots on a list that's about 450 deep is pretty significant. Just for comparison sake, here's how those cards stack up against the dedicated options in the MacBook Pro
AMD Radeon HD 6750M - Rank #105 (previous generation MBP entry option)
AMD Radeon HD 6770M - Rank #90 (previous generation MBP upgraded option)
That's a huge upgrade and well that's what you can expect when you move from shared to dedicated. The current MBP moves up the list even further.
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M - Rank #54
For Skyrim they "recommend" a GeForce GTX 260 or ATI Radeon 4890, both of those cards were a top 145 ranking on the same site and even then Bethseda said that's if you want to play the game on "High." I fired up Skyrim on last generations MacBook Air and I averaged about ~ 15 FPS with everything just about turned off. Hardly the way I'd want to play a game like that on a $1300 computer.
For Mass Effect 3 it was playable on the Intel HD 3000, again everything set to low and I averaged about ~20 FPS with it dipping to sub 12 FPS during heavy action sequences. I played it for a half hour and that was about it for me, not fun.
You'll be fine with CS: Source and I've not tried CoD of any flavor.
Jason,
Thanks a lot for the link to the list. I had no idea that even existed. Just out of curiosity, what do you game on currently? I'm looking to stick with Apple, because I have had a lot of trouble with malware and other virus' in the past on Windows based PCs. If you could give me your reccomendation on what to go with to play these games, that would be awesome.
-Wheatley
My pleasure, Wheatley.
I made the transition back to a PC (desktop) for gaming about a year ago. I primarily play Blizzard games (Starcraft II, Diablo 3, World of Warcraft) but i'll occasionally fire up some classics. With the removal of Rosetta in Lion I made the gaming transition to the PC due to the better legacy support. I still game on an Apple portable when I'm on the road or a LAN party, though. My mobile gaming machine is a 15" MBP Early 2011, nothing awesome but I got a good deal on it.
Both the current generation and previous MacBook Pros are fantastic, several of my guildmates are on them and they absolutely love 'em. Especially the new Retina MBPs, what's not to love. I know we're in the MacBook Air forum and you're asking about the MacBook Air but I just can't recommend that machine to any real serious gamer. Sure the Intel HD 4000 is a pretty decent shared GPU but at $1200 for the machine it seems silly to put all that money into a computer for "decent." I'd rather put a few hundred more dollars onto the table to move up to "good" or "great" for performance.
Now if gaming is a second priority for the purpose of the machine, that's something else. But I get the impression from you that while the computer will most likely be used for other things beside some gaming, it's still important in your decision making process and a few of the games you've listed are pretty resource demanding. As such, I think you'll be disappointed with any of the MacBook Air offerings.
I encourage you to shop the Apple refurbished store (it's where I buy most of my personal machines) -
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac/macbook_pro/15
For example, that machine is a great price. Sure it's a two year old model but it's cheaper than the MacBook Air and you could easily put 8GB of RAM and a nice SSD in there for not much more than a new MacBook Air giving you a quality machine with a far better gaming experience.
Gaming on the 2012 MacBook Air?
