I just bought a brand new MacBook Pro 13" and I'm selling my 2010 model. I skipped a generation in 2011. Even though I skipped the 2011 models, I still looked in to them. What I had read, was that the intel 3000 integrated graphics was basically on par with the 320m, so it wasn't really an upgrade, graphics wise, it was more of an even switch. The intel 4000 was supposed to be a size-able boost in performance over the 3000.
I also stuck a 500mb/sec SSD in the new one, so the disk is super fast. Both Macs had a windows 7 partition with GTA Vice City and GTA San Andreas installed. And I gotta say, the 2010 320m MacBook was still better for gaming. Even with the SSD and the extra virtual cores. Granted these games are old, and so they probably don't take much advantage of the extra cores. And load times are improved with the SSD, but the rending is not. And the framerates with all the same settings are not better. In fact, I think they are a little slower with the 4000 over the 320m.
I was hoping I'd be able to at least run GTA San Andreas at 1080p, even with no anti-aliasing on. Which shouldn't be that hard for a 2005 game. But the 4000 can't do any better than the 320. And the 4000 seems to periodically freeze up the graphics for a random second or two. On both machines, I always upgraded to the latest graphics drivers after installing the bootcamp driver suite. Didn't seem to help.
I sure wish apple had been able to stick with nVidia integrated graphics. If this generation and the last were nvidia graphics, I imagine this thread would be me raving about how awesome the graphics are. This really makes me hesitate about replacing my 1st gen mac pro (with 5770 GPU) with a high end mac mini.
Ok I'm done complaining. Anyone else have any experiences with gaming on 320s, 3000 and 4000s?
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