Is the ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 any good?

[BroadbandGamer]

How's this card at pushing 3D?

 

[BladeVenom]

I would guess not very good since Apple underclocks it.

 

[AndrewL]

What is with people and macbook pro's the only good reason I could see to have a macbook is if you have a ton of mac software or you want a particularly slim laptop. PC notebooks are much better bang for buck.

 

[tvdang7]

Originally posted by: AndrewL
What is with people and macbook pro's the only good reason I could see to have a macbook is if you have a ton of mac software or you want a particularly slim laptop. PC notebooks are much better bang for buck.

im with you. why pay the super premium when i can have an E1705 for cheaper and a better card.

 

[Hyperlite]

Originally posted by: tvdang7

Originally posted by: AndrewL
What is with people and macbook pro's the only good reason I could see to have a macbook is if you have a ton of mac software or you want a particularly slim laptop. PC notebooks are much better bang for buck.

im with you. why pay the super premium when i can have an E1705 for cheaper and a better card.

yeah you are both correct. it boils down to how big of a machine you are willing to deal with. My travelmate 8200 has a X1600, but stock clocks were 450/500, and i have it OCed when i'm gaming to 480/525. I get almost 5000 in 3d05 IIRC. But frankly, an MBP that would perform on par with my TM8200 would be outrageously expensive, and the money would definitely be put to better use on an E1705.

 

[Running]

well the macbook does look nice. u can also load windows on it now. its a good choice for a notebook. and u can overclock the card anyways, so it doesn't matter if apple underclocks it

 

[Hyperlite]

Originally posted by: Running
well the macbook does look nice. u can also load windows on it now. its a good choice for a notebook. and u can overclock the card anyways, so it doesn't matter if apple underclocks it

that may be true, or the GPU's they use may bin more poorely and may not even be able to acheive real stock clocks. that, and MBP's already have heat issues.

that said, i think the MBP is a good gerneral purpose notebook, i just wouldn't buy it if you plan on putting windows on it and gaming on it. Windows mabye, gaming no.

 

[BladeVenom]

Also, it may not have the cooling capacity to deal well with being overclocked. Look how many people have had problems with over heating Macbooks without even overclocking them. Same with power. Maybe they don't supply the GPU or main board with enough power to reliably overclock.

Laptops are basically custom built for their specific hardware, and usually it's not advisable to overclock them.

 

[postmortemIA]

macs look nice? haha when I saw them in CompUSA they were one of most plain notebooks in there. You can buy two nice laptops for price of mac.

 

[Tegeril]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
macs look nice? haha when I saw them in CompUSA they were one of most plain notebooks in there.

Uh, exactly. You like plastic colors, obnoxious lights, and bad touchpads?

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: Tegeril

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
macs look nice? haha when I saw them in CompUSA they were one of most plain notebooks in there.

Uh, exactly. You like plastic colors, obnoxious lights, and bad touchpads?

yes, good description of mac, and i would add bad and useless touchpad.

 

[BladeVenom]

If you're going to complain about the touchpad, don't forget there's only one mouse button.

 

[Piuc2020]

Why the hate for the Mac? By the way the trackpad has horizontal and vertical scrolling as well as both right and left click functions...

Macs have the ability to run Windows XP and Mac OS X and for several reasons I need both OSes, so a MacBook can be a pretty darn good value if you can give use to both operating systems, the X1600 is not too shabby, it comes at 300/300 which is very slow but mine works perfectly stable at 540/540 and its enough to run modern games at native res without AA or AF (Far Cry though can be completely maxed out )

I think MacBooks are decent for the price, they are durable but the case gets banged up too easily (its cosmetical though, the internals are well protected) and they are fast not to mention OS X has a lot of apps I'm grown used to that I just can't abandon (mainly work related apps) yet I can always pop in Windows to play a game or two.

Seriously don't ditch macs just because you've never used them.

 

[Zap]

My wife's Acer notebook has one, and it can play WoW at native resolution (15.4" wide) with almost everything turned up.

 

[Tegeril]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA

Originally posted by: Tegeril

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
macs look nice? haha when I saw them in CompUSA they were one of most plain notebooks in there.

Uh, exactly. You like plastic colors, obnoxious lights, and bad touchpads?

yes, good description of mac, and i would add bad and useless touchpad.

Too bad we're talking about MacBook Pros in this thread, which are not plastic or in crazy colors (not that the MacBook is made in crazy colors either), the touchpads are far superior to laptops put out by Dell and HP presently, and while I feel for the lack of a right mouse click, it's far from useless with the added features, like two finger tapping for right click, scrolling by dragging two fingers, etc.