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Should I install boot camp so I can play windows games?
- Thread starter ugr
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That is what I do. I created a 250gb partition on my 1tb hard drive so I would have room for games. But I hate having to restart my computer all the time to switch OS, so I am interested in what other people have to say.
Short answer: Yes. If you're an avid gamer who has an appreciation for picture quality, responsiveness and lack of bugginess, I would recommend you use bootcamp.
I tried gaming in OSX, but found that the selection of games was poor, the ports were often buggy and, even for those games that are natively scripted for OSX (e.g. Blizzard) the opengl rendering made those games look awful oncreen.
If you're a casual gamer, it shouldn't make a difference, but I'm guessing that's not the case if you're here asking us our opinion, right?
I'm with you that it's annoying to have to switch OSes, but that's the price to pay for quality gaming on a mac. To be honest, I find that I no longer spend any time in OSX anymore, as a result. Also, it should be noted that Windows has made big strides in useability and stability. I would say it's mostly on par with OSX, but I'm not a "power-user"
I tried gaming in OSX, but found that the selection of games was poor, the ports were often buggy and, even for those games that are natively scripted for OSX (e.g. Blizzard) the opengl rendering made those games look awful oncreen.
If you're a casual gamer, it shouldn't make a difference, but I'm guessing that's not the case if you're here asking us our opinion, right?
I'm with you that it's annoying to have to switch OSes, but that's the price to pay for quality gaming on a mac. To be honest, I find that I no longer spend any time in OSX anymore, as a result. Also, it should be noted that Windows has made big strides in useability and stability. I would say it's mostly on par with OSX, but I'm not a "power-user"
Don't do it! Once you start gaming on Windows, you will realize how crappy the game performance actually is on OSX on most games(not to mention the horrible mouse tracking). I can hardly play any games on OSX any more, so whenever I want to play Starcraft II I use bootcamp, even though Starcraft II is fully supported by OSX. Ignorance is bliss I guess ^^.
If you just play a few casual games for fun though, there's really no need to install bootcamp IMO.
If you just play a few casual games for fun though, there's really no need to install bootcamp IMO.
If your not a hard-core gamer that decries "if your not running maxed out settings then you aren't really gaiming"
, you might consider Crossover. Its a wrapper system that takes up little space on its own, so it just comes down to the install size of the individual games on disk.I use Crossover to run games like COD MW2 & 3 with decent settings and framerates. I prefer it to VM's and multiple OS partitions. Otherwise, I lean towards OS X native games.
Oh, and the recurring cost of Crossover is way cheaper than licensing Windows
That's my experience, if you want to really play the Windoze games, you have to do it natively. I held out as long as I could, and when I crossed over to that dark place...like another poster said, I finally realized how crappy gaming was in OS X. That's ok, I use my Mac to get real work done, and not play games!
I have a 100GB partition on my MBP and 3 games (BF3, BF BC2 and CoD Black Ops) as well as some software (WinRar, Antivir, Daemon Tools and stuff like this) installed. No photos or such things. The 100GB are almost full.
On my Mac Pro I have one 128GB SSD with the system and BF3 and BF BC2, and the user on a 640GB HDD.
On my Mac Pro I have one 128GB SSD with the system and BF3 and BF BC2, and the user on a 640GB HDD.
You can choose how much HD space to allocate to Windows when you set up Bootcamp. I set it at 80GB which works fine for me - I only have an Nvidia 9400 so can't really run the latest (most space hungry) games anyway. I've got about a dozen games installed and 15GB space left.
It only takes a few minutes to restart surely. Would you rather wait a few moments or pay more and wait longer for poorly supported, buggy Mac ports?
Mind you, Windows 7 does take a lot of space and most modern games require 10 GB or more.
After you do it you will want to have a dedicated PC. Also you will always allocate less disk space than you need.
Try an emulator
I would suggest an emulator like VMWare Fusion. It's now in v5 for Mountain Lion and my experience with Tomb Raider Underworld in virtual win7 is that it's virtually (heheh) the same as playing in native. For me, much more preferable to rebooting all the time. (I know this game's been ported to OS X now but I'm talking about the windows version here.) Another thing is I don't know why everyone's slagging OS X for gaming, I've played Bioshock on Lion and it worked great. For me, Fusion's better for windows games than Crossover, which is a bit hit 'n' miss even in this day 'n' age.
I would suggest an emulator like VMWare Fusion. It's now in v5 for Mountain Lion and my experience with Tomb Raider Underworld in virtual win7 is that it's virtually (heheh) the same as playing in native. For me, much more preferable to rebooting all the time. (I know this game's been ported to OS X now but I'm talking about the windows version here.) Another thing is I don't know why everyone's slagging OS X for gaming, I've played Bioshock on Lion and it worked great. For me, Fusion's better for windows games than Crossover, which is a bit hit 'n' miss even in this day 'n' age.
I'm an avid Mac & Windows gamer. I just have a 100gig partition with Windows 7 which allows me to have several games at once and some space left over.
I'd recommend doing a 50gig partition on your MBP if you are worried about too much space. That would allow you 2-3 games at a time depending on their size.
I'd recommend doing a 50gig partition on your MBP if you are worried about too much space. That would allow you 2-3 games at a time depending on their size.
I bought Windows and did the Bootcamp partition and am happy. Now if I don't want to wait for a Mac OS version I can get the windows version right away. I made a 100 GB partition and wish I had made it bigger. I just put Guild Wars 2 on it and had to delete a few games to make it fit. But I have 1,000 GB to play with on my iMac and 350 GB left over on the Mac side with the partition I chose. I should have gone 200 GB on Windows partition. I don't want to do it all again, so I will just juggle some games that are Steam downloads.
A 50GB partition is going to be too small unless you are just going to play one top end game at a time and never want to go back to it once you start a new game. Go bigger or don't bootcamp.
A 50GB partition is going to be too small unless you are just going to play one top end game at a time and never want to go back to it once you start a new game. Go bigger or don't bootcamp.
I've run games off USB hard drives before. Or firewire..either/or. I haven't done this in awhile, but it used to be fine. I think sometimes a tad long loading times, but other than that, it was okay.
I play lots of Windows games on bootcamp and hardly any on MacOS, therefore I divided my MBP terabyte HD, 50/50 with the idea of using portable external drives to add more if needed like this terabyte Western Digital Passport, $99.
For the OP, if you want to play a lot of Windows games, even if they are released for Mac, at this point, especially if you have marginal machine, you'll get better performance on Windows. I'm not a Windows cheer leader at all. It's just an observation. This is not to imply that Mac released games are no good. If you have a recent iMac or MBP, most likely the Mac version of the game will have lower performance, but you'll be able to play it on your Mac. How much of a hit depends on the game and your tolerance for slower frames. I chose to play WoW on MacOS and was happy I did.