[SassyPants]

Is the powerbook powerful enough to play some of the more high end games?

For example, i'm gonna want to play World of Warcraft on it.
Also, is Counter Strike also cross-platform? And is the PB powerful enough to play that too?

What about other games? Are there any games out there that teh PB isn't powerful enough for?

And for the powerbook specific, i'm referring to the new 15" PB superdrive.

[Scooterboy]

Maybe Doom 3 might be a bit much for a PowerBook.

I've had decent, though not stellar, performance on my G4 1.5 17" with Halo and Jedi Academy but some levels of Knights Of The Old Republic are nearly unplayable, particularly outdoor scenes.

Older games like Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast play quite well. I'd expect any Quake 3 bassed game should.

For Aspyr ports, use their Game Agent application. It will give you a good idea of which games will play well on your PowerBook.

[bleee]

No counter-strike is not cross platform, and from a gamers perspective I don't think it's good enough to play high end games. I play wow sometimes but only when I don't have access to my PC, you can bet you'll lose your WASD keys by playing FPS on your powerbook. When I play wow I hook up an external keyboard and mouse.

[Scooterboy]

Absolutely! External keyboard and mouse are essential.

[Scooterboy]

I've been thinking about getting a gaming PC lately. Apple's systems don't really seem cut out for games. Despite what they advertise, performance on even top spec PowerMac G5 pales compared to PC. It's too bad really, but Apple doesn't seem to care much and most Mac users seem to game on PC's or consoles. The only laptops that are good enough to play high end games are PCIe gaming laptops such as Alienware's Area 51! It's big, heavy, but with Centrino 2 laptops featuring 16x PCIe graphics there will be much lighter and thinner real gaming laptops coming soon. In fact some are already shipping.

I'll keep my PowerBook for music and creative and web stuff and OSX, but move to PC for games and DVD and HD video watching. That way I won't have so much need to upgrade my Mac and I can buy fewer Macs and Apple will get less of my money.

[tobyg]

I've got a 12" 1.33 with the Nvidia 5200 graphics card, and I'd say even at 1024x768 with all options off, WoW is not very playable. I can play but near the Auction House/Bank it's quite laggy. Definitely couldn't go on a raid or anything of the sort. The newer powerbooks with the 9700 mobility video cards would have to be better, and make WoW quite playable, albeit without all eye candy turned on.

[Randman]

doom plays fine on my PB.

[Lesterm10]

Counter-Strike was never created for the Mac only the PC. I play it everyday on my Dell however, and I wish they came out for the Mac. That said, the games for the Mac aren't abundant and if you have a 12 inch, the frame rates are not all that great and you'll have a hard time enjoying the game unless you have a 15 or 17 inch PB.

[xfesty]

WoW runs fine, just make sure you have 1GB+ of RAM.