Need some serious discussion on gaming and the mac

[AnthroAndStargate]

Hey everyone,

People often seem to talk around the issue here on the Mac forum or give vague answers on what can and cant be done in terms of gaming in OSX. I am curious for two reasons, one I want to buy TF2 (Orange Box) and CrossOver for my Mac Book Pro using friend and the other because I am considering a MBP for when I go to work overseas and I would like to maintain my gamer lifestyle on a sleek machine.

OK so first things first, does CrossOver run games well? Specifically TF2/CSS - but I'd be interested in hearing about others that work or dont work. Is there a better system then CrossOver like Parallels or VMWARE? Also can you game in full screen when you are emulating? Also is it laggy or are there bugs in games like TF2 (i.e. textures missing)?

As for gaming in general on the Mac - what do you guys and gals think? Is it laggy with CrossOver or other emulators? Do you boot into Windows via Bootcamp and does that work? Is it a pain/laggy? I sometimes read about people who have BCamp problems.

Is gaming feasible or should I give up gaming or my desire to get a Mac due to issues not listed here?

Thanks SO much for any input.

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/

Play the video at the bottom left. Looks like Steam games work with it.

 

[AnthroAndStargate]

Originally posted by: SoundTheSurrender
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/

Play the video at the bottom left. Looks like Steam games work with it.

I've seen that - but its on there site so I think its doubtful. You can't actually see the game play/fps stats in real time - also I've read complaints from a lot of people that CrossOver doesn't work well, lags, or doesnt show textures?

I would REALLY appreciate some extended input from someone who has gaming experience with a Mac. Sorry to be a bother!

 

[Kmax82]

If gaming is a really big deal to you, then you should definitely break down and make a separate Bootcamp partition. I can run UT3, Crysis, UT2k4, HL2, Oblivion, etc... at very decent settings. Most of those games run at native res and high settings. Crysis, however, needed to be set to medium and 1280x800.

Anyway, I wouldn't suggest any emulation in OS X if you're going to be playing games. Even the games that I've tried in OS X (that are coded for OS X) aren't as smooth as their Windows counterparts.

 

[erikistired]

i tried playing hl2 in parallels and it sucked. if you're gaming i'd go for bootcamp and a separate partition.

 

[AnthroAndStargate]

Wow. OK thanks for the help, It sounds like gaming on a Mac is pretty much impossible unless you dual boot :/

That stinks, I really wanted to get a Mac but i also enjoy a good game for a few hours a day... prolly not the best choice to "Think Different" i suppose, lol.

 

[TheStu]

My friend was able to play Half Life 2 in Crossover on his first gen MacBook Pro (x1600 and 2GHz Core Duo) quite reasonably.

 

[Kmax82]

You'll still be able to game just fine in Bootcamp. Is it really that big of a deal to reboot, if you're going to be playing for hours at a time? I could understand if you were wanting to play 15 minutes here or there, but a few hours, and you can't spare 2 mins? Oh well.. that's your prerogative.

 

[AnthroAndStargate]

Originally posted by: Kmax82
You'll still be able to game just fine in Bootcamp. Is it really that big of a deal to reboot, if you're going to be playing for hours at a time? I could understand if you were wanting to play 15 minutes here or there, but a few hours, and you can't spare 2 mins? Oh well.. that's your prerogative.

No you are right - I kinda oversimplified though. Like I'll randomly play 30 min of TF2 when I got no work to do or play CSS or BF2/2142 when the fancy strikes - so having to reboot may be a deterrent, unless rebooting is less than 2 min.

I know I could always play WoW on OSX atleast if I got back into that (does it run ok on osx?)

 

[Kmax82]

Yea, I think that WoW runs well in OS X.

I do understand what you mean though. I think it might be a deterrent depending on how long you're going to play. For instance, it takes about 2 minutes for me to get into a game on the Xbox360, so if I only have 10-15 minutes to play, I don't even bother. So that might happen with you. If you can't boot right into it then you might not play.

I'll see if I can't give TF2 on Crossover tonight, and write back tomorrow.

 

[AnthroAndStargate]

Originally posted by: Kmax82


I'll see if I can't give TF2 on Crossover tonight, and write back tomorrow.

Thanks SO much!

 

[imported_Shivetya]

Originally posted by: AnthroAndStargate
I know I could always play WoW on OSX atleast if I got back into that (does it run ok on osx?)

WOW runs better under OS/X than XP or Vista.

On my iMac, the 24" variety (C2D 2.16ghz 3gb ram, 7600GT 256mb) I can run three sessions at one time. (yeah I multibox)