rMBP or MBP?

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Level 1

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rMBP or MBP?

Hi Guys.

I am interested to know your opinions on the following, as im stuck at a crossroards and just cant quite decide what to go for.

I am a designer and looking at buying a Brand new, New Apple MacBook Pro with Retina Display, Intel Quad Core i7, 2.4GHz, 256GB, 8GB RAM, with 15.4 Inch Display or the Apple MacBook Pro, Intel Quad Core i7, 2.6GHz, 750GB, 8GB RAM with 15.4 Inch Display.

Now i do have a 2009 standard Macbook but would like to upgrade, i sometimes play games like Call of Duty 2/4 and Counterstrike Global Offensive but its pretty hard as the laptop is barely playable online with these games.

I was wondering if either of these 2 laptops im looking at purchasing would play any of these games comfortable with stable and high FPS as i do love the occasional multiplayer game.

Is retina really worth the extra money? will it improve visual graphically ingame?

I know both these laptops will be fantastic for my designing needs, but do they play well gaming online? which would perform better?

Any reply or input would be much appreiated.

Many thanks.

MacBook Pro

Posted on Mar 8, 2013 4:56 PM

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Answer 1

DLMiller

Level 2

395 points

Mar 8, 2013 5:05 PM in response to Pete77777

Welcome, Pete77777,

You will get different opinions on here about your questions but I would say that yes, both would be great for your desinging needs. The Retina display is a great machine and has great graphics and is super fast with the SSDs. The MBP is also a great machine and is upgradable with RAM and HD if needed. Neither of them are great for HARD gaming but the occasional game including Call of Duty is fine. You have to remember that Macs are not gaming machines and I would recommend a gaming machine if you're a hard gamer. I personally have the Retina display and would recommend it out of the two.

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Answer 2

Pete77777 Author

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Mar 8, 2013 5:08 PM in response to DLMiller

thanks very much for the reply, i sometimes like to play with friends, i just cant stand the lag and poor frames per second on multiplayer games, do you think either laptops has enough graphics card and processor speed to play games comfortably?

many thanks

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Answer 3

DLMiller

Level 2

395 points

Mar 8, 2013 5:12 PM in response to Pete77777

I think you will be fine running these games on the retina display with very little noise from the fans due to the new design of the fans. Playing at 2880 x 1880 will get a bit warm after about a half hour but it will not get hot like the MBP does. The MBR will definitely give you more noise during play.

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Answer 4

Pete77777 Author

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Mar 8, 2013 5:24 PM in response to DLMiller

Any idea what performance would be like?

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Answer 5

Mar 8, 2013 5:39 PM in response to Pete77777

If you look over the pricing for the macbooks that you described the real question would be is it worth the extra money not to get the rMBP. Assuming that you would at least upgrade to the high-res anti-glare($100 upgrade) cMBP it would be $2349 as compared to the $2199 rMBP you described above. So really you would be saving money by getting the retina screen and faster flash memory. So by getting the top of the line you save money, kinda strange.

As for gaming I have heard it is actually able to outperform many other laptops, the alienware mx14 is one that comes to mind. You can look on youtube for many gaming comparisons between the rMBP and other laptops.

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Answer 6

DLMiller

Level 2

395 points

Mar 8, 2013 5:43 PM in response to Pete77777

The performance is great from what I have experienced. I honestly have not had any complaints. The graphics are good through out and I have not noticed any lag when gaming. It's a very solid book to have even for the moderate gaming you're planning to do.

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Answer 7

Pete77777 Author

Level 1

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Mar 8, 2013 6:00 PM in response to DLMiller

Thank you both for replying, it seems the rMBP is the one to go for then, i was worried about the 2.4ghz intel quad core processor being too slow, am i wrong? does it have a boost? im sorry when it comes to PC specs i am such a novice, but im spending alot of money and i want to know what i am getting 🙂

oh also guys, i would need to bootcamp windows 7, does this improve gaming performance than running games off OS LION

many thanks guys

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Answer 8

DLMiller

Level 2

395 points

Mar 8, 2013 6:07 PM in response to Pete77777

If you can spring for the 2.6ghz now that they have been reduced then that's what I would recommend. 2.4ghz would be okay but the 2.6ghz is where it's at for the gaming you may be doing. I can say that it's now totally worth the money to go large here for the performance that you're looking for.

I would also recommend getting something like Parellels Desktop 8 to run your Windows partition on. Bootcamp is okay but I've heard some complain about intermittent issues when gaming and others love it. Parallels runs about $75 but it's totally worth it because will allow you to run Mac OS X and Windows at the same time without every having to reboot your system to go between platforms. Just something to think about.

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