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Neo.cmg · May 11, 2006, 08:58 PM

Hello,

I'm soliciting any experiences from people who may have a similar setup to my own. Thinking it a good idea at the time I purchased a 15" 1.67Ghz G4 PowerBook with a 100GB 7200rpm drive, ATI Radeon 9800 mobility card with 128MB VRAM, and 2GB of RAM last October when the PowerBooks were last refreshed. To this I added a 30" Apple Cinema Display. I use the PowerBook almost exclusively with a wireless keyboard and mouse and connected to the external Cinema Display with the PowerBook's built-in display turned off.

The first thing I noticed was that World of Warcraft was pretty much unplayable at the Cinema Display's native resolution and have since ended that subscription for that reason and partly due to the fact that the gameplay was starting to take it's toll. Other resolutions were certainly available, but really looked blurry since they were non-native. Performance didn't improve much either. The next thing I noticed is that I can not play HD trailers at all. What a waste of a perfectly good Cinema Display, right? This is also bothersome. Next, I'm really looking forward to playing the upcoming Mac port of Civ IV, and though the recommended hardware specs haven't been released, I'm beginning to see a pattern developing with my system setup.

So, I'm wondering if anyone happens to have experiences with the newer MacBook Pros in this specific setup (i.e. connected to a 30" cinema display). I would imagine the newer graphics card with 256MB of VRAM, faster bus, and dual core processors might solve my problems, but I'm not sure and would like to figure this out, or toss this idea completely and wait for a refresh to the Mac Towers.

Any experiences would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Neo.cmg · May 12, 2006, 07:18 PM

bump

bloodline · May 15, 2006, 07:00 AM

The 1.6Ghz doesn't really have enoguh power to drive a 30"... the MacBook Pro is much better suited to the task.

Cadaver · May 15, 2006, 01:28 PM

I just bought a 15" 2.16GHz MBP w/ the 7200 RPM drive (256MB VRAM). I'll connect it to my 30" in the next couple days and let you know. I'm hoping it'll be smooth (not games, just general apps), as I plan on replacing my G5 tower with the MBP.

fowler · May 15, 2006, 01:57 PM

I can run 1080p quickime movies just fine on my 24" display. I'm thinking it has more to do with resolution of the movie, than the resolution of the monitor. Which means, that uh, you should be able to play hd content just fine on that 30".

Neo.cmg · May 15, 2006, 05:12 PM

Originally Posted by fowler

I can run 1080p quickime movies just fine on my 24" display. I'm thinking it has more to do with resolution of the movie, than the resolution of the monitor. Which means, that uh, you should be able to play hd content just fine on that 30".

What computer are you using? I believe the decoding of HD content is a processor intensive task. I know that the latest rev. of the G4 PowerBook cannot decode even 720p HD content without skipping an incredible amount when connected to an external 30" Cinema Display. On the other hand I have no problems in playing the video on the built-in display. I haven't tried anything larger than 720p on the PowerBook's display just due to the fact that the content spans beyond the displays native resolution. But, even 480p content stutters when connected to an external 30" Cinema Display.

Cadaver, I'd appreciate any and all input that you discover. If you had perhaps even 1 or 2 games that you might be able to try out, then that would be great also. I found that I could get by with every-day tasks, but video playback and of course gaming was far below my desires. I have a feeling that the mobility chipsets are much less capable than their desktop counterparts than I had originally anticipated. It's kind of odd why these comparisons are rare.

veauger · 07:01 PM

I have a week 15 2.0GHz MBP and I love it. It has an almost inaudible high-pitched whine that doesn't bother me at all. I don't have any heat issues either. At idle its only a bit warmer than my G4 PB, and under load it is noticeably but not outrageously warmer than G4 was under load. When I am on the road I use CHUD to turn off one of the cores, which appeared to increase battery life (haven't tried it much), and definitely stops the high pitched whine. I also play WoW on my 20" dell ultrasharp at 1680x1050 with all the settings turned all the way up and it runs smooth. I think the MBP could do it on your 30" native, however, I personally think that expecting to play newer games at a resolution of 2560x1600 off of a non-gaming rig of any kind is a bit unrealistic.

I should also mention that when I set to one core, I usually set the power management to 'better battery life' as well.

fowler · May 17, 2006, 01:50 AM

I'm going to have to take back what I said.

I played a 1080p on my display and it was a hair choppy. I was a little dissapointed with that obviously. I figured that it'd be able to power it at native resolution. Oh well, I guess

btw, specs are in my sig

Cadaver · May 17, 2006, 10:07 AM

Originally Posted by veauger

I have a week 15 2.0GHz MBP and I love it. It has an almost inaudible high-pitched whine that doesn't bother me at all. I don't have any heat issues either. At idle its only a bit warmer than my G4 PB, and under load it is noticeably but not outrageously warmer than G4 was under load.

My 2.16GHz MBP (W612... serial number) only gets noticeably hot when being used while the battery is charging. After the battery is fully charged, or while running on battery power alone, its about the same temp as my old 1.33GHz PowerBook G4. While charging, it does get hot (particularly at the rear bottom and above the F-keys). The area over the hard drive also gets warn during heavy drive use, but I've got the 7200 RPM drive, so that is to be expected (especially when there's only 2 mm of aluminum between me and the hard drive). And running Windows via BootCamp seems to cause the machine to run hotter than when in MacOS X.

No high-pitched whine or excessive fan cycling. There is a slight, processor-variable hiss from the top right corner, but I can only hear it if ear is right next to the machine - My old 1GHz TiBook had the exact same noise, and the HP Pentium M/Centrino laptop I use periodically at work also has a similar hiss.

dndog · May 17, 2006, 06:16 PM

Originally Posted by veauger

When I am on the road I use CHUD to turn off one of the cores, which appeared to increase battery life

Just a friendly reminder that the intel core duo runs more efficiently with both cores on rather than a single core. I know its not intuitive, but they work in "sync" together splitting the processer load.

Its straight from the intel website if you do not believe me.

-dndog

Cadaver · May 17, 2006, 08:32 PM

Originally Posted by Neo.cmg

Cadaver, I'd appreciate any and all input that you discover. If you had perhaps even 1 or 2 games that you might be able to try out, then that would be great also. I found that I could get by with every-day tasks, but video playback and of course gaming was far below my desires. I have a feeling that the mobility chipsets are much less capable than their desktop counterparts than I had originally anticipated. It's kind of odd why these comparisons are rare.

Brief follow-up with more to come...

Runs just as you'd expect a desktop machine to run connected to the 30" display... that is to say, it runs great. I can "feel" very little difference between the 2.16GHz MBP and the 2.5GHz dual G5. And slight speed differences I sense presently I attribute to the fact that for the moment I only have 1GB of RAM in the MBP (whereas on the G5 I had 3GB). More RAM is on the way.

Plays the X-Men III 1080p trailer at full size on the 30" display without any skipped frames, even when moving the window around on the screen.

No problem with iChat going between the built-in iSight and the Firewire iSight mounted on my 30" display.

The major difference I can see is the way I'm going to have to access my data that's too big to keep on the MacBook Pro's hard drive. I've got about 300GB worth of data, plus a 320GB drive I use as a backup device. My G5's internal drive was a 320GB SATA drive, the backup device is a 320GB FireWire 800 drive, and I also have a "spare" 120GB FireWire 400 drive for extra crap I don't know what to do with. BUT, since my new desktop is a laptop, I still wanted to be able to access the stuff when I'm sitting on the couch, etc (useless to have a laptop on which you can't do anything). On top of that, I didn't want my 30GB of music using up valuable space on my laptop.

So... I've moved my data on to FireWire drives connected to a 1.4GHz PowerMac G4 as a file/print server and networked it over gigabit ethernet. So, when I'm at my docked at my desk, I still get decent speeds via filesharing (1Gb ethernet is fast!). And when I'm on the couch, I can still at least get my files/music/photos via AirPort.

I can try a few games, but I'm sure there are plenty of far-more scientifically analyzed frames-per-second reviews out there.