Playing Windows Games on a Mac

Marky · 19 Aug 2011 at 22:12

Hey all,

Occasionally, I get the urge to play a game but it isn't available for the Mac.

Disastrous

For now, I've installed a Windows setup and had to Dual-Boot into Windows and play the game...

So I was wondering what method you guys use to play Windows games on a Mac?

Do you just use the Dual-Boot method like myself, or do you use other programs?

I've tried using Parallels - but I've found you have to throw the settings right down and you have to boot up Windows in Parallels as normal anyway, so you're not saving any time by using it

(as opposed to restarting into a Dual-Boot Windows setup

)

Marky

Skyboat · 19 Aug 2011 at 22:16

I love Steam and Blizzard as they don't present this problem

However, I find Parallels runs most older games pretty well once given enough resources, and is much much faster than Wine or CrossOver. I don't tend to play many demanding games on my MBP though.

8t10 · 19 Aug 2011 at 22:27

Wine and CrossOver will half the performance that running it on Windows will be.

NasherUK · 22 Aug 2011 at 09:22

You won't be able to run any games that NEED directx basically (which is probably 99% of them).

The only big developers which support osx are valve and blizzard since they have opengl versions of their games. But you're often missing graphic detail as the directx specific effects are removed if there is no opengl equivalent.

pingwing · 22 Aug 2011 at 11:10

Depends what games, steam has a decent list now of games that have been ported to osx, but there's a few that come under the title of shoddy conversions so playing them in windows is a better bet (civ 5 I'm looking at you).

Other than that dual booting is just a better option, less messing about and more working games