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Comment by adamors | Hacker News Reader

> high-end Macs play games just as well as high-end Windows boxes

Are you joking? Because even $2000 iMacs come with mobile GPUs. Not to mention CPUs that cannot be overclocked etc.

That's comparable to a high-end gaming laptop, not a PC.

> Are you joking? Because even $2000 iMacs come with mobile GPUs. Not to mention CPUs that cannot be overclocked etc. That's comparable to a high-end gaming laptop, not a PC.

And what's wrong with high-end gaming laptops? My $1000 MacBook Pro has played everything I've thrown at it acceptably well, and it's not even particularly high-end. It's no longer the mid-90s, when you needed a new $2000 rig every year to keep up with current releases. For the typical gamer, overclocking your CPU hasn't been worth the effort in years.

There's nothing wrong with gaming laptops, it's just that both their performance and the experience they provide pales in comparison to a PC. (A PC that costs less, mind you.)

I mean, you cannot realistically say that you can have an immersive experience on a 15 inch, 1600x900 monitor when it comes to graphically intensive games.

Also, with CPU bound games like Arma overclocking can result in a difference of 15-20 fps.

This is a rather shortsighted view. Integrated graphics are rapidly catching up to desktop cards. The built-in Iris is enough to play games like TF2 with high settings, while the 15" Macbook Pro's 750M is half as powerful as my desktop AMD 6850! Furthermore, desktop PCs are getting ousted by laptops, to the point where I barely know anyone with a desktop anymore. In my view, PC gaming will have to adapt to this new environment, or it will become an increasingly niche market. (The enthusiasts who suggest spending $500 every year just to catch up with all the poorly optimized ports aren't helping.)

And yes, I very much can have an immersive experience on my 15" display, as can many other people. According to the Valve hardware survey, only 32.61% are running at 1080p; most of the rest have to do with less. Giant monitors aren't as ubiquitous as you might think.

>This is a rather shortsighted view. Integrated graphics are rapidly catching up to desktop cards.

I don't see how it's short-sighted, mainly factual. Integrated graphics are cards are rapidly catching up to only the lowest end discrete cards available.

How many people sticking solely to laptops were ever doing much gaming on their desktop back when they had one? I don't think it's useful to conflate all the people replacing their crappy old Dell desktops with a new laptop to people replacing gaming desktops with gaming laptops.

>And yes, I very much can have an immersive experience on my 15" display, as can many other people.

I'm sure plenty of people would have an immersive movie watching experience crowded around a 15" laptop as well, but I'll stick to my large screen TV in the living room personally.

> The enthusiasts who suggest spending $500 every year just to catch up with all the poorly optimized ports aren't helping.

You are clearly out of the loop when it comes to PC gaming, I suggest we stop this discussion before you start saying even more embarrassing things.

Up to you.

Integrated graphics catching up with desktop cards? You mean the cards that need 300W by themselves in your PC tower? You must be joking. Its not because integated graphic cards are not as piss poor as they were that the gap is narrowing. The high end moves fast too.

The built-in Iris is enough to play games like TF2 with high settings,

TF2 is 5 years old, and the engine is even older..

I can't seem to load up the steam hw surveys for the various different video cards, but it would be interesting to see how many users are running at or below the latest MBP specs.

I can't get it either, but look here:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1748747

The top video card is Intel HD Graphics 3000 and Intel GPUs make up 12% of the list.

well one problem is that you have always had to buy the most expensive macbook / mac to get any sort of dedicated GPU. they've never had a GPU in anything but the absolute most expensive mac. besides that, apple has always had poor opengl software and driver support. they just released opengl 4 support with mavericks and touted it as a big deal, but it's opengl 4.1, which was released in 2010.

Have you been paying attention to Intel's graphics improvements? At the rate they're going, we'll have the power of (current gen) desktop graphics in just a few iterations. I think you could even make the claim that the current Iris graphics are as powerful as current-gen consoles, though you wouldn't know it from all the crappy ports and the lack of a low-level graphics API.

(Also, people still overclock their CPUs?)

> we'll have the power of (current gen) desktop graphics in just a few iterations

And where will desktop graphics be after those few iterations? Several iterations more advanced. Integrated graphics will never be competitive with discreet graphics, therefore systems that do not support discreet graphics will never be competitive with those that can (in gaming, of course).

Discrete graphics are expensive, noisy, hot, and suck up tons of power. Upgrading your graphics card used to make a huge impact, but each successive generation now yields less and less improvement. (Carmack himself said in the most recent keynote that there probably won't be any "wow!" moments from graphics upgrades ever again.) Furthermore, some of the best looking games of the past few years (Super Mario Galaxy) were designed to run on one of the weakest systems around. As fun as it is to flip every switch in Crysis or Metro, I don't think most gamers care that much about diffuse lighting and ambient occlusion. We're at the point where things really do look "good enough" for all but the nitpicky, and I say this as a PC gamer for 20 years.

You're definitely the only person I've ever heard describe Super Mario Galaxy as one of the best looking games of the past few years. I looked at some screenshots and I have no idea what you're talking about.

While there may not necessarily be more features like ambient occlusion on the horizon, increased raw processing power and memory are going to lead to higher fidelity scenes at higher resolution. You're going to have orders of magnitude more detailed props on screen, and there are going to be orders of magnitude more of them. You're going to have more animation and more flexibility. You're going to have tons more lighting and particle effects acting on those multitudes of more detailed props, and you're going to be doing all of this at 4K.

I don't know when the last time you upgraded your graphics was, but I just went from a pair of GTS250s to a GTX770, and I've had my fair share of holy shit moments looking at games like Crysis and Metro.

Saying that graphics isn't going anywhere is the same as saying 640k ought to be good enough for anybody. It's incredibly nearsighted to assume that progress is just going to stop because things are "good enough," especially in the technology field.

Perhaps they will outperform (current!) mid range GPUs at some point, but from what I understand only the most expensive processors come with beefy integrated graphics.

That means, that even if they manage to beef up their CPUs, buying a cheap i5 with a mid range GPU will cost less. Plus, you can upgrade the GPU separately etc.

Frankly, I don't see the point of APUs but it seems AMD is going in this direction as well. Rumors say they're actually discontinuing their enthusiast CPUs[1].

[1] http://www.techpowerup.com/195355/vishera-end-of-the-line-fo...

Dunno, but my MBA ran cs:go way better than my linux box with a dedicated (low end but new) ati card can run cs:source. I'm sure it's a driver issue, but point is that macs current can outperform many linux setups.

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