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I'm thinking about buying a MACBOOK PRO. Does the game play well on it?


Jasher.6580

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You'd pony up that much money for a device that's plagued with keyboard issues?And after that jump through hoops so you could game on it? And over time possibly encounter issues with playing the game?Can't you just buy something like a Razer Blade mercury edition? Or any other Windows laptop really if you plan to play games

EDIT: I checked out of curiosity, from what I can see anything with a GTX 16 series GPU onward will be at least twice as powerful compared to the best Macbook Pro in terms of graphics...

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I have played GW2 on a MacBook Pro (2013 version) and the experience was not great. It was hot, it was loud, and it was slow. The only reason I used it was to keep tabs on our guild while I was on vacation. That said this was with the Cider port, they have a new client out that might not suck.

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Only that a Mac and a Macbook are as much alike as a Windows PC and a Windows notebook.

The OP's question was whether the game would run properly on the Macbook, and I would say: no. You could probably select the lowest settings etc, and you'd still have the hardware overheating.

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i would not recommend playing any non-indie games on a laptop, they are built for portability with short bursts of heavy workloads, so they are inherently not suitable for long duration of high workloads

especially not good for the battery, to sustain long duration of game play you need to plug the laptop into the wall charger, so you are discharging and charge the battery at the same time; my macbook pro battery died in 1.5 year, whereas my friends who doesnt play games had their macbook pros running without a new battery 3yr+

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Switching to windows isn't really an option for a mac person.

Overheating using a graphics-intensive software will be an issue on nearly all laptops especially those not designed specifically for it. Cooling/Heat dissipation doesn't work well in such a compact device and heat from the CPU, GPU, battery can impact other hardware in the device. You can compensate for it somewhat by getting a cooling pad or a fan that plugs into the laptop's exhaust vents, which increases air flow and helps to dissipate heat.

However, you should be checking with Apple to see if gaming with its hours of graphics software-intensive usage is really acceptable with that laptop and if not, they may be able to recommend a different macbook.

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You know what would be awesome?If anyone without a proper link or direct experience running the 64 bit mac client would just... oh nm.

The game runs at a low (+/- 30) frame rate on a 3.5 year old macbook with most graphics settings either low or medium. I never had a heating issue even playing the game in 3-4 hour sessions.It wasn't the best way to experience this game but it was certainly playable. Smaller instances such as simple fractals and sPvP ran smoothly. Large zergs/OW meta events were where the frames would drop significantly.It was as stable as the windows client is for me, in that it did not crash. The old 32bit client would crash every hour or two.I suspect a more recent Macbook would get much better results.It does however pig your battery pretty hard. Expect to play with it always plugged in to power. You will get maybe an hour and a half from a full to empty battery.

TLDR from someone who's actually used it: Viable but not optimal.

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I've played GW2 on my 2013 Macbook Pro since I got the machine, so I can say from firsthand experience no. If you want gaming don't get a Mac, you will be disappointed. That said a Macbook Pro is capable of running the game, especially if you bootcamp Windows and run GW2 that way. The OSX version is plagued with performance issues due to the WINE wrapper (mostly being stuck in 32 bit mode) so you lose game quality and performance just for being in OSX vs a windows machine with the same hardware. Now a newer MBPro will run better than mine (mine is the I7 2.3 ghz, 16 gig RAM, Nvidia 750M 2G, 512 GB SSD) but unless you go into Windows via bootcamp a lot of your hardware benefits are lost anyways.Idk what other people define as "works well" but to me a baseline is running at 30+ FPS stable at 1080P with medium settings and my Mac doesn't always hit that even in Windows.

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I'm playing on the prior model of Macbook Pro, and enjoy it. I've set some settings lower, and get reasonable, though not spectacular frame rates. Totally playable for me. The latest Macbook Pro has a fairly substantial GPU upgrade, so should be pretty good. (Of course, if you primarily game and don't do real work on your computer, you could probably do better with a Windows machine.)

They just released a new Mac 64-bit client that works properly on Catalina. (Turns out the previous "64-bit" client was only mostly 64-bit.) If you've been using the prior 64-bit client and loaded a Catalina beta it'll crash, and you'll have to uninstall and reinstall with the new one. If you're not yet on Catalina, the older client will update to the newer.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'll be honest, I love Mac and GW2 and I have spent an enormous amount of money trying to get a good experience on Mac and it eludes me. I don't like to get into the whole conversation about spec for price. I understand you can get more at the same price from a windows build and I understand the whole counter argument that MacOS requires less because the hardware/software pairing so it's a moot conversation.

I have a mid 2017 MBP that is fully spec'd. 3.5ghz i7 and Iris Plus 650 (1.5gb shared vram), GW2 is pretty reliant on processor so I expected it would run ok on that. Since the MBP has integrated graphics, I knew there would be a hit but really it's just sad performance. I get around 30fps on mid settings. I can't play on high or it drops to a crawl, stutters, does all the really irritating things I definitely don't like a pc to do while gaming.

I thought, ok, I'm already in this hole, I'll keep digging and get an eGPU. I bought the Razer Core X and AMD Radeon 56 (8gb vram), it works flawlessly with other games, but to my surprise, I still get an unstable 30fps on medium settings that still drops to a crawl on high.

Maybe it's my hardware I thought, but no, running in bootcamp (which is super annoying to get the eGPU working in bootcamp btw) I get 60 - 70 fps on max settings. It's a Mac client thing. I don't know why but it's just awful.

Does it play? Yes, sort of. Would I recommend it? It depends. If you love to use MacOS and you just want GW2 to run, then sure, it works in a pinch. If gaming is all you do and you still want the MBP, get used to running bootcamp. The windows client is far more stable, you get higher fps and less graphical glitching. If you don't hate windows as I do, save yourself the trouble and just get a windows gaming laptop. I personally would get the MacBook every time, but I understand at that price point, you can get something that runs this game much, much better.

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