Need Feedback/Buying Advice - iMac & MacBook Air or stick with the Retina MBP?

mattyb

Hey Guys - First time poster here. I absolutely love the Apple operating system. I love the hardware, the design, the feel. Much like most of you, I have owned a few MacBook pro's and Air's in the past. A mac mini or two, 3 iPads, and multiple iPhones. I'm a fanboy and swim in the ecosphere every chance I get.

I recently just sold my Razer Blade 14" "gaming laptop" to a buddy. I told myself I was going to get a MacBook Pro. I took the plunge and purchased a 15" rMBP with the m370 AMD graphics chipset. 

What I do on the computer:
Play Diablo 3, and will likely jump back into WoW. I may consider a first/3rd-person shooter of other types but do not currently play any.
Web browsing/email
iTunes

What I want to do:
Get my wife into photo editing (she currently does hobby photography on a Chromebook). 
Try my hand at some amateur video editing.

I know what I do does not require a ton of processing power, but I struggle hard going from 60fps (vSync) @ 1680x1050, all settings Max, shadows off ... to - ~16-50fps with similar settings. I'm sure the rMBP is running the game at a slightly higher res - but certainly not max. 

I absolutely LOVE the display on the rMBP. Most beautiful thing (aside from my wife and kids) I've ever laid eyes on. But I'd be willing to sacrifice for a possible alternative (below).

I'm considering returning the 15" rMBP and going with a 13" Air (8gb ram, 256gb hd) - lower resolution which I'm hoping the HD6000 can keep up with. And either building a small gaming PC or buying an iMac 5k. 

Struggling with the decision. Looking for some feedback or some ideas to consider. Thank you in advance. 

Marvin

If you are playing games under the Mac operating system, they tend to run slower, sometimes significantly. As you can see here, the M370x GPU should run Diablo 3 over 60fps at 1080p on Ultra quality:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-R9-M370X.142763.0.html

The optimal way to run games on Mac hardware unfortunately is by running Windows and you can do this using Bootcamp, which is in /Applications/Utilities. This also gives you a bigger library of games. That app partitions your internal drive and you would install a standard Windows OS, which you then boot into by holding the alt-key when you boot the computer. You need to reboot to switch between operating systems. You can just use the Windows system for gaming and do everything else on the Mac side. Modern games will need a partition size of 75GB or more, older ones can get away with 60GB, the Windows system itself uses about 15-20GB.

You can switch to dual machines if you prefer but I wouldn't recommend anything with a non-Retina display like the Air because it's not just the resolution, Retina displays are IPS panels too, which are far better quality. You'd be better off with a 13" Retina Macbook Pro, especially if you plan to be doing some gaming on it.

The laptops are due to be updated to Skylake chips very soon so hold off on any immediate purchases. The iMacs were also updated recently with last year's chips.

I would recommend using Bootcamp for gaming for now and it helps to prop up the laptop so that the vents near the display hinge can get proper airflow. When the Skylake updates arrive for the laptops and if you've decided two machines would be better then I'd say go for a 27" 5K iMac plus one of the Retina laptops - either a 12" Macbook or a 13" Retina Macbook Pro.

mattyb

Thank you for the response. I am thinking about returning the 15" MBP which I've grown to love and the 13" MBP and maybe picking up a 13" MBA temporarily until Apple refreshes the processors on the MBP's. Hopefully can find a used Air for relatively cheap. I was surprised I did not get better frame rates when I installed Windows 10 on the 15" MBP using Bootcamp, and then giving Diablo 3 a try. I think the game ran better on OS X. 

I enjoyed toting the 13" around. It definitely seemed more convenient. So torn.