A month ago, near the 3-year anniversary of purchasing my A1226 model MacBook Pro, the display started giving me problems. The screen would sometimes go blank or simply show a black screen right from boot. In addition, I noticed the late-2007 MacBook Pro running quite hot.
As it’s now widely known, the Macbook Pro’s of this era, sold from approximately spring 2007 to summer 2008, were built with defective nVidia 8600m GT graphics chips. These GPU’s are fitted with connectors that fail under normal operating temperatures (which are often quite high), leading to display issues such as what I was experiencing. Continue Reading »
I’ve been playing Valve’s brilliant co-op based shooter, Left 4 Dead, since its launch back in November. Although its visuals aren’t quite as stunning, as say, Call of Duty 5 or Far Cry 2, the game features great style, atmosphere and game play that has made it a must-have game for PC gamers (or Mac gamers that use Bootcamp, like me).
Letting the game choose its graphic settings is not a terrible idea, but you will notice some choppiness when the action ramps up – which is often in this game! Thus, I would recommend turning off FSAA and lowing the resolution from the default 1440 x 900 to 1280 x 768. Furthermore, I would tweak the shader, model, and texture settings to meet your personal needs. As you can see from the video, I’ve found a combination of settings that I like, but if I was playing L4D on expert campaign mode, I’d probably lower the settings further.
Many MacBook Pro owners seem to choose a combination of medium to high settings when playing Left 4 Dead, and many of them choose to keep the native 1440 x 900 resolution. Whatever choices you settle on, just keep in mind that the newer unibody MacBook Pro’s comes with the faster 9600M GT CPU (the old models have the slower 8600M GT), and this should let you play most games at decent frame rates with graphics similar to what you’d find on a Xbox 360 or Playstation 3.
After a full month on Youtube my faux unibody MacBook Pro review has broke 7,000 views and has garnered over a hundred interesting comments. I didn’t know exactly what to expect when I posted the clip, just days after the notebook arrived in my hands, but I knew my review would stir the waters with its unorthodox mix of facts, fantasy and pure flame bait!
A few people seemed to have grasped that it’s impossible to take my review seriously if you actually consider what I’m saying and doing in the video (like ‘docking’ a load of Apple crap onto the display!), but apparently many others are completely oblivious that my piece is purposely ridiculous. Indeed, I didn’t want things to be too obvious. Where would the fun be in that?
What I was hoping for was to bait a variety of emotional responses, and judging by the vociferous nature of the comments posted thus far, I’ve certainly succeeded. From barely legible insults to congratulatory praise, I think I’ve heard it all. But the best comments are those that scold my incorrigible parlance to butcher the names of various Apple products and my inability to recognize that the English pronunciation of ‘aluminum’ is the exact same element used to make pop cans and car frames.
Right now I’m sort of torn between continuing with this series of misreviews or just keeping my content straight and honest (as it is with anything that I write for this blog). Having said that, it’s kind of hard to stop when I’m having this much fun and apparently entertaining a good portion of viewers as well!
A game that’s sure to get a lot of play on the PC this holiday season is Call of Duty: World at War (COD5). The multiplayer beta has been available for a few days, and already I’ve logged a good couple of hours in online matches.
COD5 is an excellent test for the late 2008 MacBook Pro’s discreet graphics chip. Overall, I found the nVidia 9600M GT to perform quite well, rendering the game with a high amount of detail at comfortable frame rates.
For the deathmatch purist, having beautiful graphics is a distant second to having silky smooth frame rates. For my tests, I kept this in mind, but I was also thinking about the single player aspect, where graphical detail is important for providing an engrossing experience.
Starting at the highest resolution, a native 1440 x 900, the game felt a bit choppy and textures looked flat and lifeless at their lower settings. Dropping down to 1280 x 720 and having the details maxed out to ‘extra’ produced a gorgeous palette of colors and textures, but the frame rate took a noticeable hit any time the scene had to render a lot of objects. Working down to 1152 x 864, I found this to be the lowest acceptable resolution for the MacBook Pro’s 15.4” screen; any lower and the graphics looked too blocky, muddy and aliased. At this resolution, I chose a combination of medium and extra detail settings. The result produced acceptable frame rates for online play with graphics still pleasing enough to showcase the 9600M GT’s abilities.
Further tweaking and running the final code of the game may produce even better results. I can’t wait for Call of Duty: World at War to be released now that I’ve tried the beta. It might just give COD4 a run for its money!
