opinions about Windows games on Macs

[suzerain]

Hi there, everyone.

In 1999, I launched a site called the Mac Game Database which was focused on Mac gaming. We have recently relaunched as gameDB, taking the "Mac" out of the name, since we're covering iPod and iPhone gaming as well.

Right now the site is primarily a directory, a compendium of available titles, but we are building out various features on top of our new foundation.

Between 1999 and now, a lot has changed in the Mac market, as Macs are essentially PCs that run OS X. This also means we can run Windows, and we have been tossing around ideas about how best to cover "Windows on Mac" gaming.

Since a lot of people here have experimented with virtualization or dual booting, I'm wondering if you could post here what you think are special points to consider when thinking about running Windows games on our Apple hardware. Or is there nothing special at all?

Let me know what you think.

 

[DarrenG]

And don't forget Crossover for Mac games

 

[kahine]

With recent video cards (namely 8800gt and Radeon 3870 ) not matching but at least catching up to reasonable levels on the PC side the Bootcamp ability has allowed me to finally ditch my last pure PC that was a gaming rig

While I would much rather play games inside OS X and not have to boot into Vista it's good to know that for a few games that I really want to play it's available now

Techinical points to note - ATI cards (3870,1900xt,2600 etc) can be used in Crossfire mode in Windows while Nvidia ones cannot so theres currently a distinct speed advantage to ATI side for that

Also with the power of Mac Pro's it would be nice if Fusion 2.0 expands Dx9 gaming even more (currently in beta ) thus allowing to run them in a VM session - I use Fusion all the time for server/vista work and dedicating two cores to it and 2GB ram makes it run faster than most native pc's , now if VMware can get more games to run well under the next version (some do now) it would be easier to just fire it up there and not even have to reboot

 

[jeremyrader]

Just like with a Windows machine, it's important that people know their hardware - the basics at least. They need to know whether they have a dedicated video card or onboard graphics, how much memory is on the card (or shared with main RAM), etc. Most gamers I think would already know to do this, but it's worth mentioning - not all Macs, even intel macs, have the most recent configurations, obiously.

The other key point is to know how they are running Windows and what is involved with that. Running natively with Boot Camp means just that - there's no lag and no shared resources. Using virtualization software there's going to be some tradeoffs; when my wife runs Windows under Fuzion on her iMac, it only uses half the RAM and one of the 2 processor cores by default. It's configurable, but it may not be something immediately obvious to the casual gamer.

I have never been much of a gamer of any sort, quite frankly. The Sims and Age of Empires are plenty fun for me, but I got the Mac versions when I switched from Windows rather than fiddle with my machine to "optimize" it for just a few games that rarely get played anyway. But I do have a 17 year old son... He's finally realized the usefulness of a dedicated gaming console of late, but he still has a good number of Windows games that he plays on his Sony laptop and/or HP desktop. He's looking to get a mac for college next year and we've already been through how easy (or hard) it will be to install Windows and run his games on the various options out there right now.

 

[smacky!]

my 2 cents...

...FWIW, please be sure to include a section on modding - the more adventurous of us macwin gamers (who play on both sides of the fence - bi-gamerz? hah!) need all the help we can get! there's not much out there, but it's growing day by day...

in my experience, the only special thing about bc gaming is the games not available to play in OS X AND MODDING- if i was TRULY adventurous, i'd be ciderin' and modding every game app! I leave that to the professionals, tho'!

altho' i have looked at crossover for games and every other supposed app that will allow you to play pc games in os x, none are truly 100% (for the games i play, anyway) and i'd rather play than tinker.