Hi all,

considering buying the newest 11" MBA w 64gb or 128gb SSD. Mainly gonna be using it for my studies, but I'll also be playing some CS:GO.
I'm not a hardcore gamer, but when I play, I play competitively, so I want to run it with a stable FPS. However, do not need best graphics.

I'm fully aware that mac's aren't optimal for gaming, but for several reasons I'm getting one. Do you think CS:go will run better on the mac, than on my Acer Aspire 7736, w/ Intel Core Duo 2,3ghz T4500, 4gbram, Win7 & ATI Radeon HD4650?

sorry for the messy post, bit tired.

Thx!

Why not a non-mac laptop?

Not trying to be rude or ignorant, but as said, I'm getting the mac anyways.
What do you think, will it run better?

What GPU does the mac-air have?

http://www.apple.com/macbookair/specs.html

Pasting the specs since I'm not really that savvy.

Can you install/play CS GO on a mac?

Unless you're planning to VM or reload the air with a Windows OS, I don't think you can play CS GO.

how does one game competitively on an 11" screen?

With an Intel 4000, you probably won't get anything stable enough.

Low Key, I'm obviously not using the 11" screen. One simply does not play competitively on any laptop monitor.
Thanks for the input, solsek.

I doubt it, but I don't know a ton about computers. I'm sure the Air has integrated graphics, meaning you're definitely going to want as much RAM as you can put in it (which appears to be 8 gigs, for $100 extra).

I just don't understand why you don't get something at least with a dedicated graphics card if you want to do any gaming on it. Can I ask exactly what your "several reasons" are for wanting an Air? From what I can tell, all it has over other laptops are size and weight. Are those two factors really that big of a selling point? You say you're going to use it for studies, so maybe there's a cultural difference here and it's not exactly the norm to see people whipping out 17" gaming laptops in the middle of class or something? Some of this might also depend on you specific school, but at least where I went I don't think anyone would really take a second glance at whatever laptop someone was using.

FWIW, I do some mild gaming on my laptop (mostly just WoW), with integrated graphics, and I would never recommend anyone do the same. It might be "ok" for whatever game you're interested in now, but then a year later something else comes out, will you be able to play that? Who knows.

+1

Do macbook airs come with a prescription of adderall or something? Because I don't see why anyone would pay that price when you can get something better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9K2QYWV6VQ

Here's a video of someone playing CS GO on an intel hd 3000. He's averaging 65 fps on 1366 x 768 without fraps on. hd 4000 will definitely give better results than this.There's a couple of videos on youtube of people playing skyrim on ultra at 1920 x 1080 on an average of 25 fps after tweaking settings.

It will run slightly worse afaik. The processor is better in mac but the game is mostly limited by GPU at this class and Intel HD 4000 is slightly worse than Radeon HD 4650. If you use low resolutions/settings it will do the job though, but not much else. It uses Source Engine so you can test the performance with something like TF2.