Anyone Tried PC Gaming on a Macbook?

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I've thought about trying PC gaming on my Macbook via Bootcamp or other, since you can mod games and hopefully have improved graphics. But I've also heard that they do not have very good graphics cards in Macbooks these days (mine is a 2010 model).

Anyone tried this with any success? Can you change the graphics card in a Macbook? For how much?
 
I wasn't sure which was the more appropriate section.



And I don't know anything at all about graphics cards or the lot, which is why I am asking. The stats don't mean a lot to me because I have nothing to compare them to. Can someone toss me some numbers that would equal good graphics for gaming?
 
It depends entirely on the games and the MacBook. I can only speak in generalizations since you haven't provided any specifics. Unless it's a MacBook Pro with one of the discrete GPUs with 512MB-1GB of VRAM, it likely won't run the latest releases at full resolution with a decent amount of eye candy enabled.
 
I'm guessing this is not good then? Can you upgrade the VRAM? Is it possible to do that yourself?




NVIDIA GeForce 320M:

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 320M
Type: GPU
Bus: PCI
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x08a0
Revision ID: 0x00a2
ROM Revision: 3533
Displays:
Color LCD:
Resolution: 1280 x 800
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Built-In: Yes
Display Connector:
Status: No Display Connected
 
Zilla
I'm guessing this is not good then? Can you upgrade the VRAM? Is it possible to do that yourself?

NVIDIA GeForce 320M:

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 320M
Type: GPU
Bus: PCI
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Click to expand...

I'm not aware of any current video card that lets you upgrade the VRAM. Regardless, the 320M isn't upgradable. The 320M actually shares the main system RAM, reserving 256MB for video memory, and that's the most it'll use, even though your system came with 4GB of total system RAM.

The 320M isn't too bad. It's a good general use GPU that is capable of gaming. Your display is 1280x800 too, so you're not asking it to push a ton of pixels. Still, if you take a look at most modern PC games, the minimum requirements are usually a 2GHz dual-core machine (you're fine there) and a recent video card with at least 256MB of VRAM. What this means is you should be able to play many games at 1024x768 - 1280x800 at smooth frame rates, but you'll be turning the graphics quality to medium or maybe low. It will depend on the game. Some games scale down better than others.
 
Unless you spend over $3000 you won't get a good gaming mac, but most mac gamers on forums aren't usually bragging about how high frame rates they can get because most modern games don't run at the highest settings like most custom gaming PC's do.
 

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