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Can you game on a Mac?

VAkena
By VAkena
in PC Gaming
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Posted

I think more of the issue isn't weather or not its capable as much as it is, wether or not people are creating mac versions of popular games. If your like me, and most of the games you play work on the mac anyway, then its no problem, but if you are a fan of games that only work on the PC your still kinda screwed for the most part. In those cases I can kinda understand why you would prefer windows, but on the other hand I personally prioritize the overall user experience over being able to play specific games. But that's just me...

Don't do drugs. Do hugs!

 

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Posted

Yep:

gaming-on-a-mac-meme.jpg

 

but on a Serious note though, Steam is available on OS X and it has a good collection of games, but if you want more you can load Windows on a Mac using Bootcamp, which essentially turns it into a Windows PC. The Mac Pro has FirePro cards, which aren't meant for gaming but they still can be used for gaming, the MBP has a AMD or Nvidia GPU, and the baseline models have Intel HD(or Iris pro) which are capable of games.

*Risky click of the day*

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yes, its possible, and using bootcamp expands game possibilities. I use windows 10 on my mbp retina but performance is what you would expect from the hardware - not particularly exceptional

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Linux support for games is severely lacking.

proper support for a lot of gaming software is severely lacking

 

Can you game on a mac?

A good portion of the time, yes!

But, a very large portion of the time, No, you cannot. Bootcamp is simply not a great option, layering software inside of software, inside of software is too instable to be considered fool-proof.

 

I'll stick to windows thank you, where I can play every game I can think of, and not have to deal with buying a $3000 egg-cooker of a laptop to play Deus-Ex at 1080p.

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1 minute ago, Atmos said:

But, a very large portion of the time, No, you cannot. Bootcamp is simply not a great option, layering software inside of software, inside of software is too instable to be considered fool-proof.

Bootcamp isn't a VM, it boots the OS natively.

*Risky click of the day*

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Of the games in my Steam library, about 50 of them are available on my Mac. My Mac can run all of them, technically, though at horrifying settings and low resolution and fps. You can game on Mac, but you shouldn't. Only the Mac Pros and highest end iMacs have enough gumption to game on well enough settings to make it worthwhile and at those price points there are far better options for gaming. 

 

Even Kotor can't be run on max settings 60fps on my Macbook pro. That's saying something. 

 

And of course I'm talking strictly gaming. I wouldn't trade my 13in Retina Mac for any other laptop on the market. 

My system: http://imgur.com/a/la41r

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I find it funny when reading these responses how many people value their games over everything else. I guess I'm crazy for putting a pleasant user experience at a higher priority than a piece of software I'll use for a month then get bored of. I suppose maybe if gaming is the absolute sole purpose for your owning a computer at all then maybe that would make sense, but is that really the case for most people? Who knows, maybe I'm really in the minority for using my computer for things other than games. >.>

Don't do drugs. Do hugs!

 

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3 minutes ago, Tmt97 said:

I find it funny when reading these responses how many people value their games over everything else. I guess I'm crazy for putting a pleasant user experience at a higher priority than a piece of software I'll use for a month then get bored of. I suppose maybe if gaming is the absolute sole purpose for your owning a computer at all then maybe that would make sense, but is that really the case for most people? Who knows, maybe I'm really in the minority for using my computer for things other than games. >.>

This is how I feel as a Linux user lol.

*Risky click of the day*

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4 minutes ago, QueenDemetria said:

This is how I feel as a Linux user lol.

I was gonna dual boot my system with Windows 10 (current OS) and Mac OS X El Capitan or some Linux based one.. but then decided to boot Android on my old system...

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11 minutes ago, QueenDemetria said:

This is how I feel as a Linux user lol.

I feel ya! (not in a pervy way) I've used both Ubuntu and OSX. I'm pretty happy with using both, and I've never really had an issue where I couldn't find a linux or OSX equivalent of windows software. Especially not one that is so important to my daily life that it's loss would justify changing my whole OS. Of course I've also been very lucky to have all my favorite games(of which I can count on one hand: spore, minecraft, Civ 5, STO, and DCUO) all be capable of being played on OSX with no issue(havn't tried them all on Ubuntu yet though)

Don't do drugs. Do hugs!

 

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14 minutes ago, VAkena said:

I was gonna dual boot my system with Windows 10 (current OS) and Mac OS X El Capitan or some Linux based one.. but then decided to boot Android on my old system...

I might not go with El Capitan if you go OSX... I've tried it a little and I find it very buggy, so I decided not to update from Yosemite.

Don't do drugs. Do hugs!

 

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1 minute ago, VAkena said:

I was gonna dual boot my system with Windows 10 (current OS) and Mac OS X El Capitan or some Linux based one.. but then decided to boot Android on my old system...

Lol, I'm not sure if this is still a thing on Mac's, but when I had one there was a third party boot loader that let you install more than 2 OS's and it had no restriction on what OS you could use(cause at the time the stock EFI didn't support Linux).

2 minutes ago, Tmt97 said:

I feel ya! (not in a pervy way) I've used both Ubuntu and OSX. I'm pretty happy with using both, and I've never really had an issue where I couldn't find a linux or OSX equivalent of windows software. Especially not one that is so important to my daily life that it's loss would justify changing my whole OS. Of course I've also been very lucky to have all my favorite games(of which I can count on one hand: spore, minecraft, Civ 5, STO, and DCUO) all be capable of being played on OSX with no issue(havn't tried them all on Ubuntu yet though)

I pretty much use Windows only for gaming now lol, but I use Ubuntu for everything else. There is some software I miss out on, but its not a deal breaker for me.

*Risky click of the day*

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12 minutes ago, QueenDemetria said:

Lol, I'm not sure if this is still a thing on Mac's, but when I had one there was a third party boot loader that let you install more than 2 OS's and it had no restriction on what OS you could use(cause at the time the stock EFI didn't support Linux).

I pretty much use Windows only for gaming now lol, but I use Ubuntu for everything else. There is some software I miss out on, but its not a deal breaker for me.

Have you tried Elementary OS at all? I really like the look of it, and I played around for a bit. I liked how it was very OSX inspired for a linux distro, and I couldn't find anything I didn't like about it. I think it's a nice compromise. I'm still hesitant to switch however because when I tried to install some stuff it didn't seem compatible with anything. I'm still a little new to linux so that could be it, but maybe someone else has some insight.

Don't do drugs. Do hugs!

 

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28 minutes ago, NickTheMajin said:

Of the games in my Steam library, about 50 of them are available on my Mac. My Mac can run all of them, technically, though at horrifying settings and low resolution and fps. You can game on Mac, but you shouldn't. Only the Mac Pros and highest end iMacs have enough gumption to game on well enough settings to make it worthwhile and at those price points there are far better options for gaming. 

 

Even Kotor can't be run on max settings 60fps on my Macbook pro. That's saying something. 

 

And of course I'm talking strictly gaming. I wouldn't trade my 13in Retina Mac for any other laptop on the market. 

Not even a Blade ;)

But fr, the MacBooks are amazing, coming from a user of both the Blade and a MacBook Air :P

4690K // 212 EVO // Z97-PRO // Vengeance 16GB // GTX 770 GTX 970 // MX100 128GB // Toshiba 1TB // Air 540 // HX650

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6 minutes ago, Swndlr said:

Not even a Blade ;)

But fr, the MacBooks are amazing, coming from a user of both the Blade and a MacBook Air :P

No. No need for a gaming laptop. 

My system: http://imgur.com/a/la41r

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15 minutes ago, Tmt97 said:

Have you tried Elementary OS at all? I really like the look of it, and I played around for a bit. I liked how it was very OSX inspired for a linux distro, and I couldn't find anything I didn't like about it. I think it's a nice compromise. I'm still hesitant to switch however because when I tried to install some stuff it didn't seem compatible with anything. I'm still a little new to linux so that could be it, but maybe someone else has some insight.

I haven't, although I want to set up a easy way for me to install and try a bunch of distros. Linux does have some odd compatibility issues and general quirky-ness, I will say that lol.

*Risky click of the day*

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2 hours ago, QueenDemetria said:

Bootcamp isn't a VM, it boots the OS natively.

 

Even if it was, I don't think I'd agree that "layering software inside of software, inside of software" was a particularly accurate description of what a VM is... particularly these days with all the hardware virtualization that Intel CPUs have.

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This is a good video on the subject if anyone is interested. Long story short; Macs suck for gaming because they were designed to suck at gaming so to appear more professional to fight IBM for market share.

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12 hours ago, NickTheMajin said:

No. No need for a gaming laptop. 

I dont even use it for gaming most of the time :P

4690K // 212 EVO // Z97-PRO // Vengeance 16GB // GTX 770 GTX 970 // MX100 128GB // Toshiba 1TB // Air 540 // HX650

Logitech G502 RGB // Corsair K65 RGB (MX Red)

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4 hours ago, Swndlr said:

I dont even use it for gaming most of the time :P

 

Battery life I think suffers because of the stuff it has inside. It's way more powerful than my Mac for gaming, photo and video editing, but it's battery is probably half. Read somewhere it's around 3.5 hours. Can't confirm because I've never used one but my Mac gets around 11. The Mac is also probably faster than the blade for what I use it for as well because the Macs use PCIE based SSDs instead of SATA. 

 

Different strokes for different folks. I wouldn't turn a blade down but I'd have no use for what its good at. I have a desktop that's my main machine (obviously 5930k+980ti and one of the best SSDS money can buy awesomeness) and my small 13in retina mac for note taking and surfing. 

My system: http://imgur.com/a/la41r

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On 2/6/2016 at 7:14 PM, NickTheMajin said:

Battery life I think suffers because of the stuff it has inside. It's way more powerful than my Mac for gaming, photo and video editing, but it's battery is probably half. Read somewhere it's around 3.5 hours. Can't confirm because I've never used one but my Mac gets around 11. The Mac is also probably faster than the blade for what I use it for as well because the Macs use PCIE based SSDs instead of SATA. 

 

Different strokes for different folks. I wouldn't turn a blade down but I'd have no use for what its good at. I have a desktop that's my main machine (obviously 5930k+980ti and one of the best SSDS money can buy awesomeness) and my small 13in retina mac for note taking and surfing. 

Yeh compared to my MBA, the Blade's battery is foolish. I can go a full 2-3 schooldays without a charge sometimes depending on how many classes I need it for per day, pretty nuts.

4690K // 212 EVO // Z97-PRO // Vengeance 16GB // GTX 770 GTX 970 // MX100 128GB // Toshiba 1TB // Air 540 // HX650

Logitech G502 RGB // Corsair K65 RGB (MX Red)

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On 2/5/2016 at 10:31 PM, VAkena said:

Techno Buffalo: http://www.technobuffalo.com/videos/can-you-game-on-a-mac/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

 

The guys at Techno Buffalo demonstrate that you can. Lets no longer deny Macs of 'gaming' capabilities.. 

 

Demo video in the link above.

Before I was enlightened and switched to the PCMR, I gamed (only really minecraft) on Macs because my dad worked for apple and I could get them as hand-me-downs. They are terrible for price/performance ratio, but fine when you get them for free :D

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 | Motherboard: Asus Z97-A/USB 3.1 | Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB | Storage: A-Data Premier Pro SP900 128GB | GPU: Sapphire Radeon R9 290 4GB Tri-X OC Video Card | Case: Corsair SPEC-01 RED | Power Supply: EVGA 600B | Networking Card: TP-Link TL-WDN4800 | Monitor: Asus VG248QE 144Hz 24.0" Monitor | Keyboard: Razer BlackWidow Tournament Edition (Cherry MX Blue) | Mouse: Logitech G100s | Quote me and say "Dope Flamingo" if you actually read this. 

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