These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Macintosh

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Macbook Air / Macbook Pro Performance
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Dora Ricoh
Ricoh Industries
#1 - 2014-01-28 18:01:22 UTC
I am currently in the process of shopping around for a new laptop. It will be primarily for work but as I will be traveling quite a bit I would like also to be able to play some games on it for use in the hotel, etc.

What sort of performance could I expect from the latest refreshes of Air's and Pro's? I have read many reviews, benchmarks, etc. but there seems to be quite a lot of conflicting information.

I would not be planning on 2,000 man fleets, but I would want it to be able to handle small scale PvP well.

If anybody has any hands on experience with these models I'd much appreciated it if you could share.

Also, is the Mac client still bad?
Thermopylaee
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#2 - 2014-02-01 04:26:47 UTC
I just bought a 2013 MacBook Air in November, and upgraded both the RAM to 8 GB and the processor to the 1.7 GHz option. The client boots up quickly and runs well, though the integrated graphics really struggle still. The fans run quite loudly and EVE drains the battery something wicked when not plugged in. Also, when encountering scenes with a lot of clouds/gas, the frame rate drops heavily.

I turned down all of the graphics settings to low/nothing and chose to not load the station environment. That has helped some, but it's still not perfect. The game runs pretty well, though I've not gotten into any sort of PvP.

As for Mac EVE client, I think it runs nicely. I had no previous experience, but it seems pretty close to the PC experience.

My goal with the MBAir was to have a light travel laptop to do work and training things, as well as some skills updates and mild EVE usage. However, I am drooling for a MacBook Pro, which I think would be so much better with the dedicated GPU on-board. You'll have to choose the most pricey model, but it could very well be worth it for your purposes.

Good luck!