New Macbook SL Performance?

I am thinking about buying a new Aluminum Macbook. I was wondering what frame rates people are getting in Second Life with a normal Aluminum Macbook. Not the Pro.

With my current laptop, I get from 15-38 FPS with graphic settings turned to low.

My current laptop has a Radeon X600 graphics card, would the new Macbook be equal or better than that for SL?

Thanks!

I can't say for sure but I would think u can play on med with about 30 fps maybe more I can't say for sure..

All I can say is i bought a new macbook a month before the announcement

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It should be a lot more playable than the Intel integrated graphics chips, but dedicated graphics cards are usually going to trump integrated ones so it's very hard to say. I think you're allowed to download and try things in the Apple Stores if you want so you could always download Second Life onto one of the store Macbooks and give it a go?

The problem with the performance is there are so many factors involved, for example; the places you visit could be especially complex in which case a machine that is perfectly fast for one person could be unbearably slow for you. It's a very difficult thing to call so you're best getting a hold of one (e.g in a store) and seeing for yourself how your favourite hang-outs perform.

I think the new macbooks like 5x or 6x the performance of the old intel one..

Of course that does not mean 15fpsx 5 but it does mean a lot better

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Thanks everyone for your comments.

I went to an Apple Store last week. I asked if I could try Second Life on a Macbook and the guy helping me must have been special or something, because his answer seemed that I couldn't try SL on it.

thats why if they leave the machine open (sometimes) you just try it yourself without asking. If you do need them to try it, its odd, since most stores will let you try it out as a test if your willing to buy. Just pitch it really good, how bad you want this machine, but if it doesnt run SL good enough you cant buy it, and that if you cant test it, then you also cant buy it... they'll let you try out almost anything if they think it will make a sell.

That's odd... when I bought my iMac, I was encouraged to download SL to try it out ...and I did on like every model! They have them set up to erase anything loaded onto them as soon as you restart the computer. As I didn't end up making my purchase right then, the sales guy told me to come back with any other programs that I wanted to try out but couldn't download as well. Maybe the guy you got was new or something....

Don't be that jerk who just waits til someone's not looking and then tries installing random applications on a store demo machine. Seriously. Aside from the massive jerkiness of the act, it won't give you an accurate idea of the performance you can expect. You don't know what kind of bandwidth the store location has, for starters, and from there you don't know anything about their network settings (it is possible to limit the connection speed of machines on the network). And beyond that, Apple has assorted custom applications running in the background (demos, concierge, etc) that would hinder performance.

That said... My girl's 2.4GHz aluminum MacBook regularly gets 20-25fps on a fairly busy sim. If she drops her draw distance to 128, she's even pushed 30fps in populated places. I'm sure if she started getting all geeky and tweaky with the settings she could probably get even better performance out of SL on her machine, but she's very happy with its performance as it is and likes to not have to worry about or deal with constantly changing settings.

guess you don't know the motto... if you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question. If you think its being a jerk to want to test something before you buy it, that's your problem, and I find it rather jerky for you to even say that.

I've worked retail in a couple of different stores with computers set up for demos, I know how things work, and if they are being handled right, its actually no real problem no matter what someone tries to do to them, that's what they are supposed to be there for...

You do realize that these demo machines can be reimaged at the touch of a button with barely any work at all from store employees, right?

They are there so you can PLAY with them. Apple is one of those companies that encourages that. They really don't mind, especially if it leads to people smiling and then spending lots of money on a new computer.

Relax and stop being all holier than thou!

When i went to the apple store to buy my imac (last nov), I installed SL on it without question and checked it out. One thing to make sure of is that the specs of the machine in the demo are the specs of the machine you will buy. the imac i tested on had 2 gig ram as did all the demo machines, whilst the advertised imac only came with 1 meg...

I recently purchased 2GB ram, 2.0 GHz, Nvida 9400.

With the help from Macintosh User group, my fps averages 25-30 fps and on busy sims 20 fps.

My connection speed is 18 Mb/s on cable. This is one important factor many tend to forget when stating one of the factors that influence their fps.

The aluminum macbook won't increase your fps by 5X but it runs smoother than the white macbook (my previous laptop, ave of 5-10fps). My SL viewer has not crashed nor suffered lag since using this new laptop. I leave my distance at 128m, particles at 4096, and I have my VBO enabled (huge performance enhancement). I have my shaders on and bump mapping on too. I also run my cache on a Ram Disk. And run my SL viewer full screen since I have no other application running when I am logged into SL.

But after logging onto SL for more than 30 minutes, I find the conductive aluminum shell very hot so a laptop cooler is a good investment.

That's my experience so far with the Aluminum Macbook. I love it!!