Gaming in/on OSX - question time...

[ALXAndy]

Hi guys. So I'm digging for information on gaming on a mac using OSX.

 

1 - I know there's Steam.. What sort of games are there? I'm talking mostly like really high end games with great graphics.

 

2 - Do games run better on a MAC? what sort of GPU grunt do you need for the high end stuff?

 

I'm just wondering is all

 

Cheers !

 

A

 

Also. What sort of system monitoring software is there for OSX Mavericks?

[MattP123]

Does this answer your question?

[ERSCreeper]

Does this answer your question?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzM-ISzpkPo

Well since he is doing a hackintosh it's a bid different hardware wise. (BRB rebooting into Mac)

[Liam-McShane]

There are only a few demanding games for OSX that i can think of. Tomb raider, The Witcher 2 and some Batman game. I doubt they will run very well since i can't imagine drivers being all that good although i could be wrong.

 

Moral of the story, if you want to game Windows is your best choice.

[Guest]

The only "good" games on Mac are Valve's games and some indies. And Minecraft for toddlers.

[ERSCreeper]

Here are few that I have in my steam list: 

• Metro: Last Light
• Hitman: Absolution
• Mac Payne 3
• Spec Ops: The Line
• Portal 2
• BioShock Infinite
• Borderlands 2

[ALXAndy]

Does this answer your question?

 

Somewhat. It shows that if you spend 5 grand on a Powermac you can play some AAA titles. However, I was more interested in whether OSX on X86/X64 shows any boost over using a Windows PC.

 

Back in the day Macs were terribly under specced and had shit graphics cards but you could basically kick things that struggled on quite a high end PC, thanks to the OS and the way it runs.

 

So I'm just wondering if that still holds true today. CPU? mine is better than any power mac as I have an extra two cores over them.

[Hans Christian | Teri]

There's plenty of good games on OS X, however not necessarily the ones YOU want. I don't really use my Mac for gaming (go figure, I have a nice desktop for that), but I have played WoW and GTA: San Andreas on it, which is enough to keep me entertained for all eternity.

[Axel Sypkens Smit]

I have also made a hackintosh but for gaming you should just use a separate drive with windows, the two games I sometimes play on osx are simcity borderlands witch run fine but there really isn't that much good out for mac.

[ALXAndy]

There's plenty of good games on OS X, however not necessarily the ones YOU want. I don't really use my Mac for gaming (go figure, I have a nice desktop for that), but I have played WoW and GTA: San Andreas on it, which is enough to keep me entertained for all eternity.

 

If Borderlands and San An run on a mac I'm sorted.

 

I don't need a gaming PC I've got tons of those, was just interested to see how well they run hardware wise compared to their Windows equivalent which obviously use Direct X. Does any one know how Mac games run?

 

Ed. I mean API wise.

[rashdanml]

There's PlayonMac for games that don't run natively, but quite a few do. It's surprising that most games get a Mac version long before a Linux version. 

Steam's list is up to about 3.7k titles for Mac, and about 670 on Linux/SteamOS. For PC, the number is up to 14k. All three including DLC, I'm assuming. 

 

e: I lied, Linux has 1879 including DLC. It's going up rapidly. 

[Builder]

If Borderlands and San An run on a mac I'm sorted.

 

I don't need a gaming PC I've got tons of those, was just interested to see how well they run hardware wise compared to their Windows equivalent which obviously use Direct X. Does any one know how Mac games run?

 

Ed. I mean API wise.

Mac games run just great. They use the OpenGL (that's OPENGL, for those of you who say Macs are more closed than PCs) API for 3D graphics, though there's speculation they may be developing their own Mantle-like API à la Metal API for Macs.