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MacBook Pro 2.16 GHz (15 Inch)
April 13, 2006 | Eddie Park | |
Arcade Boot Camp I feel I'd be remiss if I didn't benchmark a few PC games running under Boot Camp for those who are curious about performance. I decided on two titles: Doom 3, as a universal standard, and F.E.A.R., which ranks pretty high as an intensive system eater.Doom 3 (PC)
I also have a copy of Doom 3 for the PC, so I decided to benchmark it using the same setup and rules used for the Mac version for some comparison testing. The version used for this test was 1.3. Note that the widescreen settings aren't selectable in the menu config – I had to create my own .cfg file and do a little tweaking in order to enable widescreen resolutions. Doom 3 also did weird things when I ran it in widescreen modes other than the LCD's native resolution, either running in some strange pseudo-windowed mode or throwing up black bars rather than stretching the image to fit the screen. As we can see, the numbers for Doom 3 are quite nice, even when running under Boot Camp. Yes, they're higher than the Mac version, but this is to be expected, considering Doom 3 was made for Windows. Bare Feats has an excellent writeup (http://www.barefeats.com/doom3.html) detailing the finer points of this for those interested. As a footnote, while running the timedemos under WinXP, a fan in the MacBook would often rev up to high speeds. In comparison, this never happened while running the same timedemo tests on the Mac version. F.E.A.R.
F.E.A.R. is one of those PC-only titles that I'm sure more than a few Mac gamers have wanted to play. Not only is it an excellent shooter, but it can also make significant demands on hardware, making it an ideal test subject for Boot Camp and the MacBook. F.E.A.R. currently sits at version 1.03, and is the version I used for these benchmarks. Thankfully, it comes with a Test Settings option, making it easy to benchmark. I went with auto-detect settings over a few different resolutions. F.E.A.R. rated my computer capabilities as High (the 2nd highest option) and my graphics card as Custom. Breaking down each category, in the computer department, F.E.A.R. decided it was ok to max out physics, sound, and effects such as particle bouncing and shell casings. Most things under graphics were set to medium, with things being turned off including volumetric lights, FSAA, soft shadows, pixel doubling, and DX8 shaders. As with previous tests, these fps ratings are the averages for each run. 800x600 was the resolution recommended by Auto-detect, and as you can see, it hits a very playable 43 fps average. The Test Settings option also shows stats like what percentage of the fps distribution was run below 25 fps, and at 800x600, this was a satisfying 0%. Just for fun, I also ran tests at Minimum through Maximum settings for both computer and graphics card settings. So, to sum up, if you're hoping to run Windows games under Boot Camp, rest assured that it's more than up to the challenge.
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