The state of Mac gaming

[whooleytoo]

I remember sat with my dad after opening up our brand new Mac Plus with 20MB HD talking about how crazy fast it was and how would we ever fill that HUGE 20MB (yes MB) hard disk.

My point is more power is always good useful you don't realise at the time but it kinda creeps up on you and before you know it you would benefit from some more power.

I'm getting nostalgic! I remember the floppy shuffle on the hard-disk-less Mac Pluses! Also remember paying about IR £250 (about $300-350) for a 2MB RAM upgrade, and feeling like I was a King!

Of course, all devices will be outdated in time; what I'm saying is gaming pushes the performance envelope more aggressively (for your average user) than most other applications/usage patterns.

Really? You're the first person I know who uses Xcode and has not complained about it running slowly. You must have the lucky horseshoe of Xcode performance

When developing complex applications (like games) I find it runs slowly and your machine grinds to a halt unless you have a bare minimum of 16GB of RAM for a 4 core machine if you have an 8 core you should have 32GB of RAM to be safe! Never found a programmer who did not want a faster CPU RAM combo to speed up compilation and debugging.

For the average user as you mention an iMac will last a few years before it gets slow, if they buy it with a decent mid to high range card the graphics will keep up for a at least few years before it needs replacing as it cannot run new games.

However if you can afford it the Pro line offers really good value for money over time. I have a 8 Core 2008 Pro at work and it is still as fast if not faster than the fastest iMac money can buy today and that is over 4 years later! With GPU upgrades it will likely last a few more years yet before it starts to have to drop settings when playing games. That is impressive!

Edwin

Just to clarify, I don't NEED a faster Mac for Xcode. As long as I'm not doing a "Clean" each time, builds aren't too slow. Of course, I'd LOVE a high spec Mac Pro, but it's far from the end of the world. My i7 MBP is fast enough for me to get by.

I even have a 9 year old G5 for email/web browsing/iTunes serving and - while slow - it's perfectly functional. Whereas I wouldn't dream of trying to game on a 9 year old Mac/PC; but for other functions it's fine. An Xcode build taking 20 seconds instead of 5/6 is a little annoying, but gaming framerate dropping from 30 to <10 is unacceptable.

 

[edddeduck]

I'm getting nostalgic! I remember the floppy shuffle on the hard-disk-less Mac Pluses! Also remember paying about IR £250 (about $300-350) for a 2MB RAM upgrade, and feeling like I was a King!

Of course, all devices will be outdated in time; what I'm saying is gaming pushes the performance envelope more aggressively (for your average user) than most other applications/usage patterns.

I don't disagree games always want cutting edge systems. As do Apple's OS upgrades

Just to clarify, I don't NEED a faster Mac for Xcode. As long as I'm not doing a "Clean" each time, builds aren't too slow. Of course, I'd LOVE a high spec Mac Pro, but it's far from the end of the world. My i7 MBP is fast enough for me to get by.

An Xcode build taking 20 seconds instead of 5/6 is a little annoying, but gaming framerate dropping from 30 to <10 is unacceptable.

I get you, its a matter of projects, an Xcode build taking 20 seconds is like a shiny dream for the things we compile... The compiler has gotten faster but I recall Rome taking over an hour per build with GCC!



Edwin

 

[whooleytoo]

I get you, its a matter of projects, an Xcode build taking 20 seconds is like a shiny dream for the things we compile... The compiler has gotten faster but I recall Rome taking over an hour per build with GCC!

Ah well. Rome wasn't built in a day...

(when you tee them up like that, I have to take a swing!)

p.s. on a more serious note, the longest build time I had was only about 2 minutes; so I can well see how you might be pushing harder for faster Macs for non-gaming reasons.!

 

[MacGamerHQ]

I've gone through your other article, and while I do like how you've tried to take a more holistic approach, I think that your piece would be greatly strengthened by looking at some of the issues I mentioned in my other reply. Looking at some of your graphs reminded me of the Humble Bundle sales data, and how, for pretty much every HIB, the average price for Mac platform sales was overall higher than it was for Windows sales. Perhaps it would be something worth looking at in a potential part 3.

The really huge problem here though is how you define a "top game". Surely you see the problems inherent with MetaCritic, and how they're actually harming the games industry? TotalBiscuit talks at length about this, but for clear proof of this you can look at what happened to Obsidian and their MetaCritic debacle with Bethesda over Fallout: New Vegas.

I had plenty of discussions on Reddit revolving exactly what you're saying here. There's so many, many things to talk about when talking about Mac gaming that I had to focus on mostly one side of the coin. I don't mean that the problem stops there, just that I couldn't talk about everything in that single post.....

Don't worry though, I will bring a part 3, sooner or later. Mac gaming is complex and deserves plenty more parts!
I also know that metacritic scores are not the best choice, but it can get so subjective that I prefer to take one metric and go from there. However, I'm very open to alternatives!

 

[rampancy]

I think Apple cares about gaming and this is why gaming capable GPUs are in iMacs and MacBooks. The options for iMac are clearly targeted to gamers for example. The App Store not only carries but often highlights games on its main page. This is not exactly indicative of the company not caring about gaming.

I don't necessarily think that Apple doesn't care about gaming; I think it's certainly aware of the gaming market – and by "gaming market" I mean the traditional AAA desktop-focused gaming market. But again, I don't think that Apple has gaming as its primary focus. We certainly do have Mac gamers to thank in part for Apple becoming more and more conscious of the graphics hardware on their Macs.

I don't see why it is perceived as some sort of problem that Macs don't have DirectX and need games to be ported to the platform. PS3 and Wii U don't have DirectX either but do just fine without it, don't they? Some titles are ported from XBox to PS3, etc. Some titles are ported from PS3 to XBox, many console titles are ported to PCs, some PC titles are ported to Macs.

Macintosh is just another platform to play games on and as this platform gains in popularity with consumers for all manner of reasons, the increased availability of games will follow. It's happening now.

I totally agree, and I think that the mentality you describe is because a lot of Mac gamers simply want (and have always wanted) Apple and OS X to be more like Microsoft and Windows, with respect to success in gaming; they don't understand that the gaming landscape has changed since the mid-90's. Apple has become so big in the gaming market with mobile devices that people in the past have now talked about Nintendo and Sony being Apple's chief competition, not Microsoft. It still leaves me puzzled then as to why people seem to think that Apple needs to produce ridiculous hardware like Alienware, Razer, or Dell's XPS line in order to be successful.

Gaming should be important to Apple, as it's a great way of driving upgrades.

...if gaming (especially AAA gaming) is shown to be one of the primary uses for Macs among Mac users. But from all accounts, that simply isn't the case.

I don't need a faster Mac for Xcode, Parallels, Mail, Safari; I don't need a faster iPad or iPhone for Maps, the web, mail, Facebook.

One could have easily said the same back when the G4/450 reigned supreme, or when the 2G iPod touch was the fastest iOS device you could buy; as technology changes and the web evolves, usage patterns will change such that you really will need faster hardware for the Web, Mail, and Facebook. Web video will get higher and higher in resolution, more apps will be using cryptographically strong security measures, more use of higher-end 3D acceleration, voice recognition...all of those are going to be likely reasons why, for better or for worse, we really will be believing that we'll be needing our iPad 6s with 8-core 2 Ghz processors...

 

[whooleytoo]

...if gaming (especially AAA gaming) is shown to be one of the primary uses for Macs among Mac users. But from all accounts, that simply isn't the case.

At the moment, yes that's true. What I'm saying is it's in Apple's interest to promote Mac gaming, as a gaming Mac user will probably upgrade their Mac more often than a non-gaming Mac user.

One could have easily said the same back when the G4/450 reigned supreme, or when the 2G iPod touch was the fastest iOS device you could buy; as technology changes and the web evolves, usage patterns will change such that you really will need faster hardware for the Web, Mail, and Facebook. Web video will get higher and higher in resolution, more apps will be using cryptographically strong security measures, more use of higher-end 3D acceleration, voice recognition...all of those are going to be likely reasons why, for better or for worse, we really will be believing that we'll be needing our iPad 6s with 8-core 2 Ghz processors...

No doubt! Still, my 3 year old i7 laptop doesn't rarely feels slow and I can't say I'm crying out for an upgrade. It's fine for my every-day work. Having used Macs with no hard-disk and the OS on one floppy and your data on another, my MBP now with Windows running nicely in a VM and OSX in the background is a godsend. OTOH, if I used it for gaming, it barely meets the minimum specs for many of today's games.

Which again is my point; in a saturated market the upgrade frequency is crucial; and gaming pushes users into upgrading more frequently. I know Apple has its reasons for not focusing on the gaming market, but I think it's in their benefit to give it more attention. Becoming a big player in the living room while being half-hearted about gaming is going to be a tough sell.

 

[El Awesome]

All Mac gaming needs is what has already been happening and hopefully will continue happening: Macs gaining marketshare. The more Macs that are out there over time, the more the lack of games problem sorts itself. Another recent development I see as a good sign following Steam and GOG releases for Mac is now Origin too and Feral titles on Origin. Things are looking pretty darned good for gaming on Macs in the future I think and while indies are great at times, I don't think we're dependent on them to "raise the profile of Mac gaming" nor are we particularly dependent on Kickstarter projects but all of that is good too and following the trend of growth in availability of quality games for Macintosh users. EA is just getting started with Mac titles on Origin. I'm looking forward to seeing what they roll out as time goes by.

I totally agree.

I think you would agree, I think most here would, that Apple's wild success with mobile products has opened a lot of eyes to Macintosh computers and will probably continue to fuel interest and increased sales. I read a good article the other day on Computerworld about the increased acceptance of Macs in business thanks to the widespread adoption of iPads and iPhones within many IT organizations.

Yes, but this doesen't have naything to do with gaming. Macs are being used for working, and not more. Gaming is just not an OS X area.

I think Apple cares about gaming and this is why gaming capable GPUs are in iMacs and MacBooks. The options for iMac are clearly targeted to gamers for example. The App Store not only carries but often highlights games on its main page. This is not exactly indicative of the company not caring about gaming.

The GPUs Apple is giving you in the current MBPs and iMacs are no way gaming GPUs. Those are just mid-range GPUs! A GT650M is not at all targeted at gamers. Compare them to for example Dell's business laptops, they're using the same GPUs. [/quote]

Gaming notebooks use at least GTX680M, or even two of them. A GTX650M might be good now, but in a year, you'll have to cut down settings to play recent games. That's just not a gaming GPU.
If Apple would care about gaming, they would offer you a good GPU. They do support Kepler (GTX6xx), so in theory it wouldn't be a problem.

I don't see why it is perceived as some sort of problem that Macs don't have DirectX and need games to be ported to the platform. PS3 and Wii U don't have DirectX either but do just fine without it, don't they? Some titles are ported from XBox to PS3, etc. Some titles are ported from PS3 to XBox, many console titles are ported to PCs, some PC titles are ported to Macs.

Windows run DirectX, Macs run OpenGL, and consoles run something else.
The thing is that a lot of people play on consoles and PCs, but only about 2-3% are gaming on OS X. So the OS X target market is simply not worth it to port a game, because this means a hell lot of effort and therefore costs. Simple as that. It's not worth it at the moment.
A lot of Mac users have BootCamp installed. PC games are cheaper and run faster than an OS X port. With a good PC, restarting is done in less than 30s. So why would you buy a buggy OS X port if you can simply play it on your BootCamp partition?

Macintosh is just another platform to play games on and as this platform gains in popularity with consumers for all manner of reasons, the increased availability of games will follow. It's happening now.

Yes, but it is happening very slowly.
Gaining popularity is not only positive. You read in the news quite a lot times that hackers begin to attack OS X because of its gaining popularity. In fact, Apple began to sort of "similarize" to the Windows OS to gain popularity, which in my eyes wasn't a clever move.

 

[Dirtyharry50]

/snip

You seem to look at things in absolutes. For example, it seems you need your games to run in ultra all of the time. That's fine. However, that does not mean the rest of the world shares your unique needs. The majority of gamers in fact, do not own hardware that runs everything in ultra settings at max resolutions, including PC users. For some data on this, you might find the Steam hardware survey results interesting.

The fact is, there are a lot of quality titles available to play on the Mac which work just fine, look good and are enjoyable to play. If that isn't enough for you, by all means use bootcamp to expand the offerings and if Mac hardware is not enough for you, then go hackintosh if you like or PC if that pleases you. Just don't expect the rest of the world to be you. They aren't.

You mentioned something about there being no money in bringing games to the Mac. I think Blizzard, Virtual Programming, Turbine Entertainment, ArenaNet, Zenimax, Electronic Arts, countless indie developers, Feral and Aspyr would all disagree with you considering that they offer games for Mac. DICE isn't seeking a software engineer to port Frostbite to OS X for nothing. My guess is EA plans to make some money there. Last I knew, they are not a charity organization. I suppose that is why they just released an Origin client for Mac recently. Likewise, Steam did not release a Mac client thinking there was no money to be made. More recently, now gog.com releases classic games for OS X as well. The range of offerings just keeps on growing.

There is a ton of great stuff to play right now on OS X and there is a lot more that runs fine on many Macs using bootcamp. Apple is not in the business of selling top end gaming rigs, that is true. However, it hardly means their computers are not capable of running games well. The fact is, most gamers do not own top end gaming rigs. The majority tend to run mid range machines and often lesser than that. That's the reality and it's been that way for a good long time. I don't see it changing anytime soon either.

 

[oiuh151]

Apple needs to get their **** together with their awful OpenGL support. Having only up to OpenGL 3.2 is unnacceptable seeing as how that version is going on 4 years old and they are selling Macs with GPU's capable of much more than that. Their drivers are a mess and if 10.9 doesn't get it right they can expect to miss a lot of modern engine support that is going to be approaching.

 

[gregorsamsa]

Apple needs to get their **** together with their awful OpenGL support. Having only up to OpenGL 3.2 is unnacceptable seeing as how that version is going on 4 years old and they are selling Macs with GPU's capable of much more than that. Their drivers are a mess and if 10.9 doesn't get it right they can expect to miss a lot of modern engine support that is going to be approaching.

Agreed & further to El Awesome's VG points, hence, despite the growing Mac user-base, there's still so few Mac games companies who find the OS X games market viable enough. The excellent Feral & Aspyr being the obvious ones & they're relatively small.

Sadly, Apple are highly unlikely to increase focus on the non-casual gaming side as some of us might wish. Their likely future focus, as now: increasing profit margins via further integration of OS X with iOS, improving mobile devices, etc. & the only gaming they'll pay serious mind to being casual, non graphically-intensive games.

As their iMac & Mini desktop ranges will almost certainly continue to get thinner over time, they seem more likely to move to more integrated video cards with future updates. Though Haswell will be about 3 times more powerful than Ivy Bridge, it'll still not compete with decent discrete cards.

Apple do many things well. But, realistically, they can't win by competing in a market long-dominated by Windows PCs. Not unless they also offer more powerful Macs GPU-wise at much cheaper prices. As much as I might wish otherwise, they're extremely unlikely to do that.

Hence buying a PC for gaming (or using Bootcamp for its better FPS) will always be an attractive option, even for a fair number of long-standing Mac users.

 

[edddeduck]

Agreed & further to El Awesome's VG points, hence, despite the growing Mac user-base, there's still so few Mac games companies who find the OS X games market viable enough. The excellent Feral & Aspyr being the obvious ones & they're relatively small.

Small but feisty

Sadly, Apple are highly unlikely to increase focus on the non-casual gaming side as some of us might wish. Their likely future focus, as now: increasing profit margins via further integration of OS X with iOS, improving mobile devices, etc. & the only gaming they'll pay serious mind to being casual, non graphically-intensive games.

As their iMac & Mini desktop ranges will almost certainly continue to get thinner over time, they seem more likely to move to more integrated video cards with future updates. Though Haswell will be about 3 times more powerful than Ivy Bridge, it'll still not compete with decent discrete cards.

Yep integrated cards like the HD4000 and retina screens (like the 13" MacBookPro) are not the best combination for high end gaming!

Apple do many things well. But, realistically, they can't win by competing in a market long-dominated by Windows PCs. Not unless they also offer more powerful Macs GPU-wise at much cheaper prices. As much as I might wish otherwise, they're extremely unlikely to do that.

Hence buying a PC for gaming (or using Bootcamp for its better FPS) will always be an attractive option, even for a fair number of long-standing Mac users.

Making Windows versions of some games is now becoming marginal as all the money is on console. The fact that piracy is much lower on console compared to PC also helps large publishers with their decision.

If you assume the Mac gaming market is roughly lets say 100 times smaller than the PC then you can see how gaming is not a big target for the large games publishers.

They are more than happy in most cases to license games and have someone else spend the time and money to release the game on the Mac (or PC) but they don't want to take the risk themselves as the profits are tiny compared to their console sales figures. Many games the console day one sales figures will beat the lifetime Mac/PC combined total over the entire lifetime of the product!

I do think the selection of games on the Mac will keep growing but as the PC is now a smaller player compared to consoles the Mac is unlikely to become a first tier platform for gaming. In fact many Windows versions are now ported to Windows by a third party after the main console game has been completed. Deus Ex for example as I recall was brought to the PC by Nixxes after Eidos Montreal had made the console versions.

I can see the Mac a good second tier platform just behind Windows (also second tier), in fact it is already much better than a decade ago but I can't see it being a primary platform alongside consoles any time soon.

Edwin

 

[gregorsamsa]

Small but feisty

Thanks for some VG points! RE the above: probably the better for it as Feral's output continues to be of a high quality & at a fairly good rate.

Making Windows versions of some games is now becoming marginal as all the money is on console. The fact that piracy is much lower on console compared to PC also helps large publishers with their decision.

If you assume the Mac gaming market is roughly lets say 100 times smaller than the PC then you can see how gaming is not a big target for the large games publishers.

They are more than happy in most cases to license games and have someone else spend the time and money to release the game on the Mac (or PC) but they don't want to take the risk themselves as the profits are tiny compared to their console sales figures. Many games the console day one sales figures will beat the lifetime Mac/PC combined total over the entire lifetime of the product!

I agree that's been the trend, but it hasn't stopped the quality PC developers from continuing to capitalize on what is still a massive, viable gaming market. For eg., Creative Assembly & their Total War games, or Sports Interactive & their Football Manager games, et al. Fact is, some games will always work so much better on PC/Mac than consoles!

Also trends can reverse. As console games-development is expensive & those costs continue rising, notably for gamers also, I can see a renaissance in PC gaming, not least from more of the smaller developers. I think that Valve & their Steam Box, esp if they can price it attractively at launch, can also play a significant role in this.

As you correctly point out, a lot of potential PC sales were lost over those years to piracy. However, those sales charts you linked only go as far as 2007. Since then, most recent PC games have increasingly sold via Steam & other digital downloads, which are far less prone to pilfering piracy.

I think those more extreme divergences in the PC v console sales chart you've linked may have come down since. IMO, it's probable we'll see them reduced even further in the years to come.

Image

I do think the selection of games on the Mac will keep growing but as the PC is now a smaller player compared to consoles the Mac is unlikely to become a first tier platform for gaming. In fact many Windows versions are now ported to Windows by a third party after the main console game has been completed. Deus Ex for example as I recall was brought to the PC by Nixxes after Eidos Montreal had made the console versions.

I can see the Mac a good second tier platform just behind Windows (also second tier), in fact it is already much better than a decade ago but I can't see it being a primary platform alongside consoles any time soon.

Indeed, but as I say, things are changing all the time. Consoles continue to see falling sales with each new generation, whilst PC gaming is far from dead.

Agree re the great potential for Mac gaming to consolidate its position within realistic boundaries. If only Apple could be a bit more developer friendly in future, who knows what more could be achieved?

By the by, what'd be just as interesting for me is to see a similar graph of Mac game sales over the last 10 years. Wouldn't surprise me at all if the more recent trend was a fairly positive one. - Regards.

 

[Huntn]

I can see the Mac a good second tier platform just behind Windows (also second tier), in fact it is already much better than a decade ago but I can't see it being a primary platform alongside consoles any time soon.

Edwin

Stunning graphic... I guess I knew that though.

 

[gregorsamsa]

Stunning graphic... I guess I knew that though.

At a tangent, but not entirely unrelated to this thread. I see that you do most of your gaming (if not all) in Bootcamp, whilst your serious work is in OS X. Do you ever get tired of the frequent rebooting?

BTW, question is from genuine interest & has no hidden agenda. - Cheers!

 

[El Awesome]

At a tangent, but not entirely unrelated to this thread. I see that you do most of your gaming (if not all) in Bootcamp, whilst your serious work is in OS X. Do you ever get tired of the frequent rebooting?

BTW, question is from genuine interest & has no hidden agenda. - Cheers!

Well, yes, sometimes it is a bit annoying if want to quickly play around without closing all apps. But from my experience, a 'quick round of gaming' is something that has never happened (it always got longer than 'quick' in the end), and given that with an SSD a reboot is done in less than 30s, it doesen't bug me anymore. And since you can choose to leave all windows open when you shut down, it really doesen't matter that much anymore.
You'll get used to it!

 

[Huntn]

At a tangent, but not entirely unrelated to this thread. I see that you do most of your gaming (if not all) in Bootcamp, whilst your serious work is in OS X. Do you ever get tired of the frequent rebooting?

BTW, question is from genuine interest & has no hidden agenda. - Cheers!

I don't get tired rebooting into Bootcamp, it's a routine. I'm not playing games all day off and on so I'm not going back and forth often. However, whenever I get the urge, I do a restart and launch into Windows in a couple of minutes. I'm familiar enough with Windows I don't mind jumping into it and mostly what I do is launch a game and am not thinking about Windows. I do have several Windows utilities set up, like Tuneup Utilities, which keeps it clean and has a turbo mode which turns off background processes, the MS Firewall and AV (MS Essentials) which are free. The payoff is that I'm getting to play games I like, that are not available natively in MacOSX. For the sake of performance, I have no interest in parallels or other emulation schemes. Macs at least my MBP (see sig) make pretty good Windows platforms. I'm currently playing a lot of World of Tanks and I'm getting about 70fps.

My rationalization is that if I were to own a non-gaming Mac, I'd also have a PC gaming machine. If I combine the two into one, I've got my laptop, and am not paying any more if I were to have both a Macbook and PC gamiing rig. Instead I'm investing the $ into one flexible multi-tasking computer. If traveling this is a huge advantage for Mac centric people... who like games or have Windows software they need to run.

Every version (starting from W95) of Windows up to 7, I've had serious maintenance issues with. So far 7 is behaving. My Son recently got a W8 machine and he hates W8... maybe there is some getting used to the live tiles (huge blocks which represent icons), however I've heard you can turn that off if you really hate it.

 

[gregorsamsa]

Well, yes, sometimes it is a bit annoying if want to quickly play around without closing all apps. But from my experience, a 'quick round of gaming' is something that has never happened (it always got longer than 'quick' in the end), and given that with an SSD a reboot is done in less than 30s, it doesen't bug me anymore. And since you can choose to leave all windows open when you shut down, it really doesen't matter that much anymore.
You'll get used to it!

Thanks! It'd be the same here, ie. longer gaming sessions rather than the casual types you can play for only a few minutes at a time.

Must say, even with a SSD, under 30 secs is fast. Though I don't have SSD in my Mac, I'm sure to get used to it anyway, no problem!

I don't get tired rebooting into Bootcamp, it's a routine. I'm not playing games all day off and on so I'm not going back and forth often. However, whenever I get the urge, I do a restart and launch into Windows in a couple of minutes. I'm familiar enough with Windows I don't mind jumping into it and mostly what I do is launch a game and am not thinking about Windows. I do have several Windows utilities set up, like Tuneup Utilities, which keeps it clean and has a turbo mode which turns off background processes, the MS Firewall and AV (MS Essentials) which are free. The payoff is that I'm getting to play games I like, that are not available natively in MacOSX. For the sake of performance, I have no interest in parallels or other emulation schemes. Macs at least my MBP (see sig) make pretty good Windows platforms. I'm currently playing a lot of World of Tanks and I'm getting about 70fps.

My rationalization is that if I were to own a non-gaming Mac, I'd also have a PC gaming machine. If I combine the two into one, I've got my laptop, and am not paying any more if I were to have both a Macbook and PC gamiing rig. Instead I'm investing the $ into one flexible multi-tasking computer. If traveling this is a huge advantage for Mac centric people... who like games or have Windows software they need to run.

Every version (starting from W95) of Windows up to 7, I've had serious maintenance issues with. So far 7 is behaving. My Son recently got a W8 machine and he hates W8... maybe there is some getting used to the live tiles (huge blocks which represent icons), however I've heard you can turn that off if you really hate it.

Thanks also! I appreciate your rationale here. You've got the best of both worlds on one portable computer, without any tangible compromises. That seems great!

I likewise already share a VG familiarity with Windows 7 (eg. I've PC laptop) & all that's necessary to run it optimally. I find free software like MS security essentials to be excellent for the purpose.

I asked my question only because I've read a few posts from people complaining about the drag of rebooting & that they'd happily pay far more for certain games, if only OS X-native versions were available. They made rebooting sound so much worse than it seems to be.

Re Windows 8: you're right. Solutions exist for reinstalling a Windows 7 type Classic Start Menu & avoiding W8's Live Tiles menu altogether. - Cheers!

 

[Huntn]

Re Windows 8: you're right. Solutions exist for reinstalling a Windows 7 type Classic Start Menu & avoiding W8's Live Tiles menu altogether. - Cheers!

YW! I much prefer to have a pleasing desktop image than a page full of giant blocks of ugly colors, yeech!

 

[MacGamerHQ]

Thanks! It'd be the same here, ie. longer gaming sessions rather than the casual types you can play for only a few minutes at a time.

Must say, even with a SSD, under 30 secs is fast. Though I don't have SSD in my Mac, I'm sure to get used to it anyway, no problem!



Thanks also! I appreciate your rationale here. You've got the best of both worlds on one portable computer, without any tangible compromises. That seems great!

I likewise already share a VG familiarity with Windows 7 (eg. I've PC laptop) & all that's necessary to run it optimally. I find free software like MS security essentials to be excellent for the purpose.

I asked my question only because I've read a few posts from people complaining about the drag of rebooting & that they'd happily pay far more for certain games, if only OS X-native versions were available. They made rebooting sound so much worse than it seems to be.

Re Windows 8: you're right. Solutions exist for reinstalling a Windows 7 type Classic Start Menu & avoiding W8's Live Tiles menu altogether. - Cheers!

It's clear that when you have an SSD, rebooting is a lot less of a pain! My iMac used to boot into windows in around 30 seconds too.
The problem I see with bootcamp is that sometimes I have a lot of stuff going on and rebooting to windows for a 30 min session seems unproductive to me. Also, I use my Mac to stream movies and TV shows to other macs and TVs. If I reboot to windows, it longer works...

Just 2 examples of why I really don't like to rely on gaming on bootcamp, but everyone has its preferences of course...

 

[tudyniuz]

Someone mentioned above that you don't have to run all games on ultra settings. Now I'm sorry, but after you pay like 3000$ for a MBPr you do expect it to run everything on high or ultra for at least 2 years. Right? I mean you want a machine to do everything for you. If you didn't, you wouldn't spend this much money on such a machine. This is my main problem with gaming on a Mac, there are plenty of games, and right now besides SWTOR I don't miss anything that the PC has.

 

[edddeduck]

Someone mentioned above that you don't have to run all games on ultra settings. Now I'm sorry, but after you pay like 3000$ for a MBPr you do expect it to run everything on high or ultra for at least 2 years. Right?

Well it depends on the machine and what it was designed for. The rMBP is designed to be super thin, light weight, great battery life and a super sharp screen. It was not designed to be an all out gaming machine.

If you spend $3000 dollars on a gaming machine then you would expect it to play games on Maximum settings for at least a few years.

The thing is the rMBP is not a gaming machine, it is designed for other things and also happens to play games very well.

It's a bit like buying a Porsche and then complaining about the lack of back seats and trunk space

Edwin

 

[tudyniuz]

Well it depends on the machine and what it was designed for. The rMBP is designed to be super thin, light weight, great battery life and a super sharp screen. It was not designed to be an all out gaming machine.

If you spend $3000 dollars on a gaming machine then you would expect it to play games on Maximum settings for at least a few years.

The thing is the rMBP is not a gaming machine, it is designed for other things and also happens to play games very well.

It's a bit like buying a Porsche and then complaining about the lack of back seats and trunk space

Edwin

I get your point, but I don't agree. It's made for something else, they don't focus on gaming, but you do expect it to do more. At least that's how I feel. I for one wanted to get one but changed my mind after some issues with some games. Is it really that bad to ask for a device to do everything for you? That's why Mac's don't do gaming that well. At least that's how I see it.

 

[edddeduck]

I get your point, but I don't agree. It's made for something else, they don't focus on gaming, but you do expect it to do more. At least that's how I feel.

I understand the feeling "I spent lots of money so it should do everything" but that's just an impossible goal. If something is super thin, super light, a retina screen and great battery life then something has to give.

Apple decided I assume that installing a 3GB GTX680 (a gaming card) would mean tripling the size of the laptop and likely 30% of the battery life. For a gaming laptop that's fine but for 99% of Mac users the compromise they chose with a laptop that games run very well on but sometimes not using Ultra settings is one most Mac users are happy with.

The GPU is the most powerful one Apple ever shipped in a laptop however when your resolution is higher than a 27" iMac even a very good card can struggle.

I for one wanted to get one but changed my mind after some issues with some games.

In terms of Apple hardware it is the most powerful machine for gaming. We have not had that many issues reported a few driver issues but they are being fixed in OS updates and patches.

Is it really that bad to ask for a device to do everything for you? That's why Mac's don't do gaming that well. At least that's how I see it.

It's not bad to ask for it, however you also have to understand it's an impossible request. You cannot have a laptop that is super light and thin, has a crazy high resolution, great battery life and a 800 Watt high end graphics card.

If gaming is your number one concern then buy a Windows based gaming laptop, if you want a stunning all round machine get a rMBP.

What I am trying to say is the rMBP is a brilliant all round machine but you seem to want a specialist gaming laptop. If you want specialist features like super high end graphics cards in a laptop then I would buy a specialist laptop with the features you want included. It will likely be a lot heavier, thicker and have a lower battery life but it will have really high end graphics. If you want a very good all round machine then the rMBP is a good choice.

 

[gregorsamsa]

It's clear that when you have an SSD, rebooting is a lot less of a pain! My iMac used to boot into windows in around 30 seconds too.
The problem I see with bootcamp is that sometimes I have a lot of stuff going on and rebooting to windows for a 30 min session seems unproductive to me. Also, I use my Mac to stream movies and TV shows to other macs and TVs. If I reboot to windows, it longer works...

Just 2 examples of why I really don't like to rely on gaming on bootcamp, but everyone has its preferences of course...

Thanks & I much agree re rebooting for shorter spells of gaming in Windows. Frankly, I can see it being a right hassle for me as usually I've far too much going on in OS X. However, as clarified to El Awesome, for strictly longer spells of gaming, esp for games unavailable on Mac, it seems viable.

Re my earlier questions: I ask mostly because I'm still mulling over my other viable option: a gaming PC, powerful enough to run future releases like "Rome 2: Total War" at ultra settings. I'm hesitating on a final decision either way only as I'm not sure how much use such a PC would get other than for gaming.

I already have a low-powered PC laptop as well as my Mac. The Mac will stay as my main work computer regardless. - Cheers!

 

[edddeduck]

"Rome 2: Total War" at ultra settings

Playing Total War games on release with Ultra settings usually takes a custom built gaming PC. I know Empire will drop frames on Ultra settings with our custom built gaming PC with a over-clocked NV690 graphics card (3GB VRAM)!

Bottom line Total War games on Ultra historically max out the next generation of machines never mind the current generation on release The good thing is they stay looking awesome for years after release.

If you want to run on Ultra settings high resolution etc then a gaming PC with a ~$1000 graphics card is the way to go

Edwin