New MacBooks Get Better Graphics — Still Can’t Tackle Doom 3

9:01 am, November 1st, 2007, Pete Mortensen

As reported earlier this week, Apple has pulled out a final hardware revision for the holiday season, pushing out new MacBooks that gain a 200 Mhz speed bump and new integrated graphics hardware replacing the much-maligned GMA 950 with Intel’s GMA x3100. The line starts at $1,099 for a 2 Ghz Core2Duo with a Combo Drive and an 80 Gig Hard Drive, Ranging up to $1,499 for the BlacBook with 2.2 Ghz Core2, 160 Gig drive and super drive.

Quite wonderfully, the entire line standardizes with 1 Gig of Memory on-board, which should make Leopard perform well on these boxes regardless of configuration. Apple also now allows custom builds of MacBook Pros up to 2.6 Ghz Core2 for an extra $250 over its base configurations.

I’ve done some quick research into the performance of the GMA x3100, and this isn’t the consumer mobile gaming chipset we might hope for to make the MacBook a peer to the iMac as a gaming platform. Here’s a very positive review from Tech.co.uk of the GMA x3100 running Windows.

The GMA X3100 also continues the philosophy of Intel’s previous graphics solutions (going back as far as its discrete i740 line), and that is one of compatibility. While there’s rarely been the power available to run games at anything more than PowerPoint slideshow speeds, being able to render those images correctly means that you’ll often put up with poor frame rates as long as everything looks right.

In testing, the improvement this new engine offers over the older solutions isn’t massive – 3DMark06, the industry benchmark for ascertaining the capabilities of graphics engines in general, returned a score of 416. While this result is twice that from the previous generation of integrated graphics, it still proves that integrated graphics aren’t for next-generation titles. Top-end cards score around 8,000, with even cheaper cards managing scores around the 4,000 mark.

In real-world performance terms, the low throughput of this engine shows when trying to play Doom 3 back at the high-quality setting at 800 x 600 – less than 10fps isn’t playable. Half-Life 2 fared a little better at 18fps, but surprisingly this score is bettered by its last-generation graphics, which were 5fps smoother. Despite the presence of hardware T&L, the lack of fill rate is clearly a limiting factor.

Yeeeahh. MacBook Pro is still the only credible gaming portable from Apple. Actual video performance is surprisingly good, but 3D is seriously lagging. Any fence-sitters moved to make a purchase now with this announcement?

Mac Rumors: Apple Updates MacBooks to Santa Rosa, GMA X3100; 2.6GHz MacBook Pro

Tags: macbook, hardware, apple, product, announcement

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Pete Mortensen is a design strategist for consulting firm Jump Associates and the co-author of Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy, a book and blog that are significantly more interesting than you might initially think. Pete's particular Apple avocations are both around design--interface and industrial. Follow him on Twitter!

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6 comments

That really isn’t the whole story – its all about the drivers. A quick trawl through Google revealed that in the Linux world, they are well aware that Linux drivers produce much better performance on this chipset than on Windows – suggesting that current Windows drivers for this card do not perform to their best potential.

While I am confident that the MBP line will still run rings around these computers for gaming, let’s wait until we get some OS X benchmarks before we write it off.

David Cohen, on November 1st, 2007 at 9:20 am

Ugh. The Macbook continues to be a performance pariah in the laptop world. Does no one else notice that since its introduction a year and a half ago, the processor speed has been increased only 200mhz? Not to mention they are still using the combo drive.

A year and a half of macbooks has gone by and I still dont have a compelling reason to upgrade from my iBook G4. At least it has a 32mb AGP ati card. I mean really, my two year old ibook can pull a better 3dmark score than the NEWEST macbook released last night… Does no one find this wrong?

BIK, on November 1st, 2007 at 9:33 am

Just a quick correction: the CPU speed increased by 40 MHz (2.16 GHz to 2.2 GHz) while the FSB speed increased by 133 MHz (667 MHz to 800 MHz). Also, the keyboard reflects the new layout introduced in August.

ABH, on November 1st, 2007 at 1:34 pm

I’m don’t play games on my MacBook, but I was just wondering how it performs when using pro apps like Aperture and Final Cut…?

r0ldy, on November 2nd, 2007 at 8:54 am

I think all mac books need is better graphics card without shared memory. But this is essentially the Mac Book Pro. Doing so in the MacBook line it will hurt the Pro sales. Regarding the G4, I don ‘t think the intel is so much better than the latest G4s. It is better… Just not soooo much better. G4s with 1.2 ad 1.4 GHz still hang on pretty well.

George, on November 4th, 2007 at 8:03 am

I just switched from a PC laptop to the Macbook, I ordered a MacBook 2GB Ram because of this announcement. I’ve heard the chip socket may accept the next Intel chip the Penryn.

I was going to wait for the rumored newer MacBooks but my PC laptop is old and kept crashing.

sovereignjohn, on November 28th, 2007 at 12:02 pm