Thinking of purchasing Borderlands for pc then install it on my Macbook.

[CSilver]

I had bootcamp using windows XP but I was just tired of having to reboot after playing the game...so I uninstalled it but now I see some amazing games coming out. For example, I purchased and installed Torchlight on my Macbook using Crossover.

What I am wondering is... does using Crossover downgrades the performances for gaming? I really want to play the borderlands but if the performance is going to be sluggish I would rather but buy it at all.
Has anyone installed somewhat graphic intense games through Crossover on their Unibody Macbook? How is it?

Thanks in Advance!

p.s. really considering of buying PS3 xD

 

[Cougarcat]

I use crossover for old games and Bootcamp for everything else. I wouldn't buy Borderlands with the intent of playing in crossover. If it does work, it would be sluggish, esp. on a 9400M.

 

[CSilver]

I use crossover for old games and Bootcamp for everything else. I wouldn't buy Borderlands with the intent of playing in crossover. If it does work, it would be sluggish, esp. on a 9400M.

Thanks for replying.
hmmm... how about on bootcamp? Maybe I will have to install windows once again. Anyone installed windows 7 on bootcamp? any feedback?

 

[TicTaek]

Thanks for replying.
hmmm... how about on bootcamp? Maybe I will have to install windows once again. Anyone installed windows 7 on bootcamp? any feedback?

I'm currently running Windows 7 on Bootcamp and it's being running fine. Though, I do have difficulties running Firefox properly sometimes. No big deal though.

Anyways, I pretty much have the same question as you. I'm hoping to get Borderlands and wondering how it will run via Windows 7 on my MacBook. I know the game just came out for PC so it might take some time to get an answer. Maybe I'll just have to hope for the best and get it.

 

[Rodus]

Forget Crossover, Borderlands uses a souped up version of the Unreal 3 Engine which even under Bootcamp is going to run slowly on your 9400m (even at low settings).

 

[G0D5P33D]

Borderlands on a Mac Pro

I am going to make a new thread with this post

I bought Borderlands on Steam on Tuesday night, but didn't get it actually running until Thursday afternoon.


My set-up: Mac Pro running the latest version of Snow Leopard, Twin 2.8 Intel Xeons, 6 gigs of RAM, ATI Radeon 2600, Libra, enjoy long walks on the beach.

Software I have available: Parallels 4.0, VMWare Fusion 3.0, Windows XP Professional, Borderlands (w00t!)

The game flatout won't run using Parallels 4.0 with Windows XP, it needs Model Shader 3.0, which my native graphics card can support up to Model Shader 10.0 (or so I've read). I believe the problem is that the graphics card is also virtual, so it doesn't really have any specs or drivers that it can be updated with. Trust me, I tried downloading the drivers multiple times while in Parallels and VMWare Fusion, nada, it has nothing to mount to/hardware not found.

I downloaded the free trial of VMWare Fusion 3.0 and I was really impressed with the software AND it ran Borderlands. To start I set all graphics on low. I was not too impressed with the results. I can play for about 20 minutes max, but at that point the screen tearing becomes unbearable and I'm getting chomped on by Skaggs (when you play, you'll know what I mean).

I AM NOT A COMPUTER SCIENCE MAJOR, so if you are, share the wisdom.
What seems to be the major drawback on some of these virtual machines is that they try to use a virtual graphics card instead of your native hardware. The CPU seemingly becomes overwhelmed within a short time of rendering a few textures. It can only handle so much, so when you first start playing everything seems fine, but walk around the planet Pandora a little bit and you're going to have screen tearing. If you quit out of your game and get to your homescreen you are able to seemingly reset the virtual memory within your virtual graphics card, then resume play and you will have a smooth-ish running game for a while.

I have not run BootCamp yet, so far this seems to be the obvious choice, but I have some back-ups I have to do before I attempt this feat (although simple). I highly encourage anyone who does have their Mac of any type running Bootcamp to attempt running Borderlands and report the results.

The look, feel, UI, sounds, ideas, everything about Borderlands is awesome and I loved every bit of the 6 levels I was able to get to, but in the name of Mac gaming, I've got to get a handle on this.

Next course of action: purchase an external hard drive or install a secondary hard-drive just for Windows so I can successfully install BootCamp with no issues.

 

[Rodus]

^^You are pretty much spot on there, Fusion/Parallels virtualize a graphics card rather then allow direct access to the GPU so there is a big performance hit, add to this that your mac is having to run two OS's simultaneously and it makes far more sense to boot into Windows. The OP is using a low end graphics card anyway making vitualization a very unpleasant prospect.

 

[CSilver]

Ummmm so don't do it? even under bootcamp?

I guess I will just have to build a gaming pc in the future or just get a console system

thanks all for replying by the way

 

[CylonGlitch]

Ummmm so don't do it? even under bootcamp?

I guess I will just have to build a gaming pc in the future or just get a console system

thanks all for replying by the way

He hasn't tried it under bootcamp yet, so hang on. I would expect it to perform poorly under emulation.

 

[Rodus]

It'll probably run under bootcamp on a 9400, just not well and at low settings. The Unreal 3 engine requires reasonably beefy hardware as it is and the engine has been fairly pimped up for Borderlands so it needs a decent GPU for good performance.

 

[ayeying]

^^You are pretty much spot on there, Fusion/Parallels virtualize a graphics card rather then allow direct access to the GPU so there is a big performance hit, add to this that your mac is having to run two OS's simultaneously and it makes far more sense to boot into Windows. The OP is using a low end graphics card anyway making vitualization a very unpleasant prospect.

The reason that virtual machines are slow is because:

The Virtual Graphics card have to translate Direct3D or OpenGL in the Virtual Machine into OpenGL for OSX to use. This creates a slowness. It's like trying to read french and you using a french translator. It's a lot slower then speaking native french.

VT-d is suppose to solve this problem and allow full access to the hardware.

 

[BlizzardBomb]

Borderlands is definitely playable through Bootcamp on a 9400M (I get a solid 30fps on my MBP), just don't expect to have everything turned on.

 

[bware189]

Borderlands is definitely playable through Bootcamp on a 9400M (I get a solid 30fps on my MBP), just don't expect to have everything turned on.

Can you take some screens? I'm interested to know exactly how this guy is looking on the 9400m. I'm not really a stickler for graphics, so toning down settings is not painful for me.

 

[Huntn]

Ummmm so don't do it? even under bootcamp?

I guess I will just have to build a gaming pc in the future or just get a console system

thanks all for replying by the way

Maybe MacBooks have gotten better in the last 18 months, (my wife games on one, primarily casual games) but if I intended to run a high demand game, after I got bootcamp installed I'd be looking for a Borderlands demo to test it prior to purchase.