Are the Retina MacBook Pro 15" suitable for PC (Windows) gaming?
I want to buy a MacBook Pro Retina 15" and install Windows 7 or 8 (boot camp) to play games.
Obviously games aren't ready for this 2880x1800 resolution, so I hope I can set the games to run at 1440x900 and, since this is 1/4 of the native resolution, have a perfect view (perfect scaling) of the game. This is what I dream about... from this, come some questions:
- Is it possible, or am I buying a headache? Should I consider the non-retina display to avoid these resolution problems?
- Are there any other types of problems that I should consider? Something like "NVidia drivers for Windows in a MacBook generally has this xxx problem...".
There are a great many games that support 2880x1800 and most of them support 2560x1600 (Cinema, Dell, and HP 30" resolutions)
Windows 7 & 8 don't support the quad-pixel and dual-pixel modes of OSX, they do things a bit differently. You always have the 2880x1800 resolution, and simply select larger font size (150% in my case).
Most games will work out fine, but some will need some tweaking (mostly selecting the option Disable display scaling on high DPI output on the compatibility tab.
If you regularily use an external monitor i would reconsider the retina display. Having upgraded to it from a 17" i5 I found out the hard way that neither OSX nor Windows can display different DPI to 2 monitors, hence my 30" Dell is pretty much useless.
I have a 15" MacBook Pro with retina display and use windows 7 in boot camp for a couple games. I have windows set to use larger font and use the 1920 x 1200 resolution for games. I think the graphics look great with this setup. Now they aren't as awesome as civilization 5 on the Mac side running at 2880 x 1800 but they are still quite good.
I have windows 8 pro 64 bit on my 15" rMBP (8gb,256gb). I would say windows 8 is beautiful on the computer. I play crysis 3, D3, cod bo2, all on high Set at 1920 x 1080 plays perfect