Online gaming Mac V PC

[CyrusOz]

I used to play COD etc online with the bigpond game arena with my pc. Since I have purchased my Mac i have read plenty of talk on the net about how the Mac is not very good games let alone online games..... can anybody tell me whether it is better for me to install windows on my mac and run games in that OS or will Leopard run the games just as well...... I've been trying to avoid installing windows on my Mac as I'd like ti keep it clean and free of virus's but if I need to for the games purpose then I guess I have to install windows but I'll wait to hear your opinions.

Thanks heaps

 

[Zortrium]

A lot of the things you'll hear bashing Mac gaming are overblown. Yes, there are many games that are Windows only, but there are plenty of good Mac games, and most of the best PC ones get ported anyways. Yes, some games run better in the native Windows version than in the Mac port -- but I don't really think an extra 5 FPS is a crippling disability. I play 90% of my games in Mac OS X, and the 10% that either don't have Mac versions or are pre-OS X I play in Windows.

As to your particular situation, it's hard to make recommendations without some more information. What types of games are you looking to play? What's your hardware?

 

[Huntn]

I used to play COD etc online with the bigpond game arena with my pc. Since I have purchased my Mac i have read plenty of talk on the net about how the Mac is not very good games let alone online games..... can anybody tell me whether it is better for me to install windows on my mac and run games in that OS or will Leopard run the games just as well...... I've been trying to avoid installing windows on my Mac as I'd like ti keep it clean and free of virus's but if I need to for the games purpose then I guess I have to install windows but I'll wait to hear your opinions.

Thanks heaps

You need to try out some Mac native demos and decide for yourself. There are lots of demos to try. There may or may not be a performance hit that you may notice as compared to playing the same game in Windows. As far as installing Windows on your Mac and virus concerns, you Mac partition is completely separate from your Windows partition. If you surf on Windows (my advice: don't), Windows will be susceptible to attack, but that won't effect your MacOS or Mac native programs. Reserve your surfing to the Mac.

 

[Consultant]

Macs can run windows. It's the overall capabilities. Just ignore the uninformed fools.

I am usually top 3, gaming on my Mac on 24-32 user servers for TF2.

 

[definitive]

windows has directx. osx doesn't. most of today's game developers optimize games for directx, so they'll run and look better under windows than their counterparts on the mac.

 

[CyrusOz]

ok this is all very interesting, i was mainly thinking of playing COD on my Mac to strt with as I always used to enjoy that online with my pc. My new Mac is a million times better with graphics than my old PC so I was hoping that it would all equal out in the end... I will have to play some demos and see.

That's was good advice about installing windows but only surfing in Mac mode... that answers a number of my questions that had been bouncing around in my head.

Thanks

 

[p3squid]

windows has directx. osx doesn't. most of today's game developers optimize games for directx, so they'll run and look better under windows than their counterparts on the mac.

Unfortunately this is correct as far as PC games go. OpenGL, however can be used on all platforms including console games. The problem, IMO, is Apple will not fully embrace the gaming industry like MSFT does. The lack of graphics card options, or inability to upgrade (iMac), are pretty good examples of this. Big Steve just doesn't care about the gaming market, which is too bad. There is a lot of money to be made there.

More on topic, I am really enjoying Warhammer Online through their Mac beta client.

 

[StruckANerve]

I have just recently been trying out a few of the mac games. I just got into RTS games and they are much better on computers versus consoles. The Sims 3 works great as well as does Command & Conquer 3 and Age of Empires 3 on my Imac. That is about all I've played so far because I mostly play my xbox but consoles don't have strong support for strategy games. I am hoping to hear something soon about C&C 4 coming to mac next year, but I don't have high hopes.

 

[Huntn]

windows has directx. osx doesn't. most of today's game developers optimize games for directx, so they'll run and look better under windows than their counterparts on the mac.

Playing the game natively has it's advantage and appeal. Just because a native Mac games may have a performance hit of some kind, does not mean it's not playable on a Mac. And as far as it looking better on a PC, that is disputable imo. My point is that, yes performance is better on a PC, or at least it used to be, and that difference is important to some gamers, but that does not disqualify the Mac for playing native Mac games.

Here's an example: Unreal Tournament 4, (this was before intel Macs), played on my 3Ghz Pentium 3 at about 70 fps. While on my dual core 1.8Ghz G5, it played around 45 fps- it played just fine. Both computers had the same graphic card.

 

[Rampant.A.I.]

There's really no comparison to the sheer volume of games available for PC.

But now that you can run Windows on a Mac easily, it's a much smaller gap.

Either way, I don't really care, since I won't be playing games on a PC anytime soon. I enjoy using my mac.

 

[businessgo]

Yup, run windows on a mac. Mac is actually very powerful for gaming. Just try some FPS. I hear progamers do prefer PCs to Macs, but then again, most of them still prefer crt monitors!