MAC BOOK PRO 15"

[SabiZwerg]

Hi everybody,

The thing is my old Vaio is kind of going down... No chance of playing the Sims 3 longer than half an hour. The Reason: only 2 GB RAM, Savegame too big, Graphic card issues and a little overheating problem... But since its 3 to 4 years old and I'm going to study Design in October I decided to get a new laptop. I don't want a Desktop, because I'm a lot on the move and like to take my Sims home and to vacation and elsewhere.

I tested the Vaio-SA series, it's really great for playing Sims in High detail, if it weren't for the overloud fan-noise and the heating.

Next one was a Acer Travelmate Timeline X. It's nice, good hardware and stuff, but I kind of don't like it (the design) :-)

So now I'm considering buying a MAC BOOK PRO 15"
with following specs:
Intel Core i7
AMD Radeon HD 6770M with 1 GB
I'm planning on upgrading it from 4GB RAM to 8GB myself, as well as changing the 750 GB Serial-ATA-Hard-Drive to a SSD, because the prices they demand at the Apple online store are in no way justified...

My question:
Will I be able to play the Sims 3 with all Expansions and important mods like overwatch and story progression on a mac with the resolutions set on high without too much problems?
By the way I'm planning on installing windows on the mac..

thanks for your time :-)

[ellacharmed]

Changing the RAM and disk drives yourself would void the warranty, I hope you realize that.

If you're going to be using Windows on the Mac, why spend more on a Mac? Have you look at the offerings from Asus, Clevo and MSI (ie the brands mentioned in the sticky)?

I don't understand why everyone wants to run everything on High, when some of the High settings have no visible difference, other than cause more lags.

I have no idea what Mac models come with what components. What model is the i7? What clock speed in particular? Below 2.0GHz or higher than 2.4GHz? Not applicable after I did the comparisons below.
The HD 6770 for Desktop shows all Greens on the SysReq wiki page, but that's for Windows. It would probably perform similarly on the OSX side albeit slightly lower for a mobile version, apart from the unique Mac issues that is. But I cannot be certain if the Green Yeses would hold true forever as Apple lags behind in offering driver updates (compared to the GPU's OEM); which is tied into the OSX updates themselves, not a separate driver update.

Talking about Mac issues, have you visited the OSX Help section we have on here and on the Official Forums? To familiarize yourself with what sort of issues to expect, if you were to install on the OSX side?

[eta]
pcworld (http://www.modyourpanties.com/hosting/35240_120414110514pcworld 15inch i7.png)
newegg (http://www.modyourpanties.com/hosting/35241_120414111109newegg 15inch i7.png)

Did some searches. I plugged in the amount you're willing to spend on the MBP, the 15" screen and an i7, and these are the comparable systems each site gave me. If you look at the differences, see how much more hardware you can get on a non-Apple brand for the same amount of money (not on all, granted some have drawbacks more than advantages):
- more RAM
- faster HDD @7200RPM
- a true 720p or some 1080p display
- more USB 3.0 ports

And WHOA, Nelly! Lookie here a Professional grade GPU Quadro Pro on a Thinkpad (the w520 @newegg)! As a potential design student, I'm sure you can appreciate that. Nvidia classified that Quadro 1000M as a mid-range model, see more at http://www.nvidia.com/page/quadrofx_go.html
Cannot vouch for Sims 3 performance on one of these puppies, however.

[SabiZwerg]

Well, that looks nice :-D I'm going to take a look at it...

I know I can get something way better for the same price, but my future professors kinda told me to get a MAC and with the student discounts the price gets a little more bearable... and i really love apples (the fruit) :-)

Besides being able to play Sims on it, I need the laptop to be as light as possible (<2,6kg) and not too big (14" and not 16:9 but more like 4:3 would be nice, but who am I kidding?), which explains why I didn't buy a gamer-laptop. I'd love to have a touchscreen, but I know that's not an option with the graphics card and other specs I need. Neither am I a fan of those glossy displays. For the Sims and other stuff I need the optical drive (blu-ray isn't important), so that deletes those really nice ultrabooks... And if I'm to pay that lot of money I want at least a keyboard with backlight.
I don't need to run every setting on high, but I plan on making a movie with the Sims, so it should look good.
Comparing the benchmarks, Sims 3 isn't really that demanding with the graphics card, but if I want to play Anno 2070... that's another story...
Originally I didn't plan on spending more than 1.500€, but now everything under 2.200€ is just fine with me, well not fine but ok.
So that narrows my choice down to not much and after 3 months of checking laptops I'm getting tiered of it...

But I'll take a look at those...

[ellacharmed]

Ah! You didn't mention Student discounts! That presents a totally different scenario. :)
Does the school also offer Educational licenses for the software that students can install on their personal systems? Does it come only for Mac or offered for both platforms? Or any sort of bundles for the Applications?

Does the school have arrangements that offer Student Discounts with other major brands or retailers? You can look at those, too.

[SabiZwerg]

I guess so, at least it's in the "apple on campus" system. I will check it. Only problem is, I won't be an offical student until October and I can't wait that long! I want to play the Sims again!!!!!

I looked it up, the discounts are for both platforms.

[summersong86]

So now I'm considering buying a MAC BOOK PRO 15"
with following specs:
Intel Core i7
AMD Radeon HD 6770M with 1 GB
I'm planning on upgrading it from 4GB RAM to 8GB myself, as well as changing the 750 GB Serial-ATA-Hard-Drive to a SSD, because the prices they demand at the Apple online store are in no way justified...
I'm not sure if you're still following this thread but I'll throw my 2 cents in since I just bought the model you describe and did exactly what you say you'll be doing with the RAM. I've doubled the Ram using the Corsair brand ram for MacBook pro. I've kept the regular hard drive, though.

I can run the game all the way through to Showtime and I can play with no problems in Mac OS Lion. Version 10.7.2 (I decided NOT to upgrade to 10.7.3 for the time being after reading how that version has compatibility issues with other software across the board). The game looks gorgeous. Frame rates are acceptable. Lag is minimal so far and only happens occasionally on EA made worlds.

The problems come when attempting to use Create a Sim or doing too many alterations to a lot. Playing through Cider emulation seems to suck RAM down to nothing and cause crashing when I do those things.

I've not yet put this computer through Windows 7 64 bit edition via bootcamp, but I tried with the lower end 15" MBP 2.2 ghz model that I returned and exchanged to get this one. That ran fine but I really wanted beefier specs and I was not happy how often and how fast and easily it crashed in OSX Lion 10.7.3. That model had the AMD Radeon 6750 M video card with 512 mb video cache and the one I have now is the 6770M has a full 1GB of video cache. Despite being told I would not notice a difference, trust me, I did notice a difference. The textures load noticeably faster generally and the display looked better somehow and the colors were slightly better.

I am running the lower res model with the glossy screen. I did run the hi res Early 2011 model with the matte screen that my husband owns and to me, either one looks great. Your viewpoint may vary.

When I ran Sims3 via Windows 64 bit version of Windows 7 on my husband's 15 MBP, the game ran and looked great on Starlight Shores. I did not try any custom worlds at that time.

I do not use mods or hacks or custom content, currently. Supposedly you can do this under Windows same as you would any other Windows pc and get the same results.

With a laptop, heat buildup is always a concern. Macs have a built in failsafe to shut down before temps can get too hot to destroy the hardware. Still, I have had good results keeping my Mac cool with a Thermaltake brand laptop cooling fan that the MBP rests on top of. I don't know if my exact model is still on sale but do an internet search of Thermaltake laptop fans and you'll get results for the current models. Mine is powered by the USB connection to my MBP.

If you are interested I can come back and tell you how the game goes for me after I get Windows 7 installed on this model I currently have.

I do think you will love Mac OS once you use it a lot. I can't explain it...just try it and see. There is an elegant simplicity to most functions. But Sims3 does not do great in Mac OS currently, through Cider emulation. It is an even worse resource hog than normal and any memory leaks you are used to in Windows seem greatly magnified in Mac OS. It really got bad with Lion. I was doing okay on an 2009 15" MBP running Snow Leopard and then when Pets came out, things started getting laggy, crashy and buggy for me on that laptop. Still I pushed it through to Master Suite on small worlds and playing conservatively.

For the Mac OSX maintenance, while you do not have to worry about defragging your hard drive, sometimes your disk permissions get borked when running Sims and some other programs. I recommend Onyx http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/11582/onyx or go directly to the developer's site: http://www.titanium.free.fr/

The hardware is rugged. My last 2009 15" MBP got dropped hard twice and worked fine afterward. The wireless connectivity acted wonky for a bit after the second drop but then seemed to calm itself down and I never had a problem with it since. That was the same result someone else reported with one of their drops.

There may be better gaming laptops out there for the money, but if you have to have a MacBook Pro due to school requirements, I think you'll be happy. They are supposed to be doing a refresh soon (nobody knows exactly when) with the new Ivy Bridge processors. But the problem is the rumors are strong that Apple is going to drop the optical drive. If you register all your game disks to Origin, you should be able to download digital versions of all the games you own...but only via Windows. Origin does NOT run on Mac OS.