Do you game in OS X or other OS?

I am new to OS X. Thinking of getting some games. Games with low-medium requirement. I wanna know which OS u guys use for gaming. And is gaming in OS X any better compared to XP or Vista? In terms of stability, quality and etc. Lastly, is it worth getting Vista/XP just for gaming? Thanks in advance for the feedbacks!

 

I may be completely off as I don't know too much about os x, but i'm pretty sure you can't really do any gaming with os x, which is why you have the ability to run windows on the macs.

so, yes...gaming in windows is better

 

When it comes to gaming, Windows is really the only way to go. Gaming support for OSX is pretty pathetic. Even the most strident Mac supporter can't disagree with this one.

 

O dear! Then I most certainly need to get Vista/XP soon. Apple should really utilise 8600M GT's capabilities on gaming. I mean lots of computer users game, rite? Thanks for ur fast feedbacks, guys.

 

Blizzard games, however, run fine in OS X. So if you play any kind of Warcraft or SC then you can install and run them fine on OS X.

 

Most gamers, PC and Mac users alike, game through Windows. Luckily, Mac users at least have the option to play good games now, through boot camp. Before the jump to intel, Mac users really didn't have any good options.

 

WoW is widely regarded as not up to par through OSX, but at least Blizzard tries.

 

Yes, it will be wonderful to play "quality" WoW on OS X. Cuts off the reboot time and the hassle switching OS every now and then.

 

hopefully when open gl 3.0 comes out...OSX gaming experience would be much more enjoyable.

 

yea gaming your pretty much stuck with microsoft . in the computer world you're pretty much stuck with them but even in the console world there really isnt much of an option either. IMO the wii is a great system but (for me atleast) it could never cut it as a primary system and the online with the ps3 has nothing on xblox live. apple please make a gaming console.

 

I game on my desktop PC. I wouldn't (and can't ) game on my MacBook.

 

When I want to Game I boot up in Windows XP on my 2.4 Ghz MBP. Net surfing I do pretty much he same thing. But for serious video and audio (music) editing it's OSX. Editing pictures I have old Microsoft Picture It software (XP) which is fine. Having the best of both worlds on one laptop is so cool.

 

amen. i lowered the settings on AA as far down as they would go and it still a bit laggy.

 

I'd say that's the major bonus of my current machine. Having discrete graphics on a twelve inch notebook is pretty nice. Now I have even less reason to use my desktop.

 

You don't use Parallels at all?

 

When Sam says it, it's sort of an unwritten Notebook Review Law. He's the only poster that generally gives true unbiased feedback when it comes the Mac.
I play games on my Mac too and Quake 4 is what I play but until recently the Multiplayer mode was horrible and I couldn't connect to play against any Windows users. Although there are some decent titles on the Mac it's still best to game through Windows or at least Crossover Mac if the game will play.

 

Seriously Buddy, you should make your web surfing exclusive through OS X. Too much Spyware, applets and toolbars that self-install through XP. Web surfing is not safe XP.

 

Agreed. Being able to freely surf the internet is one of the major bonuses of OSX. Given the choice, you'd have to be nuts to surf on XP over OSX.

 

I am quite shocked, how are you not able surf the web safely on windows...

the only valid point i see is that all the code is written for windows so it wouldn't work for OSX... but anyone with a little common sense would be able to avoid that. IE. no porn sites.

 

No one said it can't be done. I'm just agreeing that it's nice to not even have to think about things like virus scanning.

I'm surfing on a Windows machine right now. Am I worried about it? No, but I've got virus scanning, a firewall, and anti-spyware software running. When on a Mac, the only thing I use is a firewall.

 

You're right, most people will be safe surfing the web on Windows. But they'll be safer on Mac OS X.

In fact, lately there's been a new form of getting malicious code into your computer through your web browser: hackers create an image ad and put it up onto Google Adsense, Google brings up that ad onto a relevant, safe website. You go to that webpage, and the ad appears, and just by your browser rendering that ad on that webpage you are infected. First cases were in MySpace and Tom's Hardware, which are certified "Hack-free". This only infects PCs.

 

I don't play many games, but the ones I do, I play under OS X. Age of Empires 3 plays great on my MacBook. So does WoW. Then the usualy EA games, Sims 2, Sim City 4, all are fine. I own all of these games for Windows, but I hate getting my old laptop out. So I just bought them for OS X, and they work fine.

 

Best virus ever was Norton AV, when it released an update that crippled 50,000 users in Asia. As someone here so aptly put it - most virus-makers only dream of getting those kind of results.

Back on-topic...I always game on Windows - I have 1 real "game", and it's Windows-only, so kind of a no-brainer there.

I think it's worth getting Windows for gaming if PC gaming is important to you. I.e. I have only 1 game and almost 0 time to play it, but that very little bit of time of personal relaxation is still pretty important to me - enough that I installed Vista and got a laptop with a decent GPU.

If you're a heavy gamer though, you might simply consider consoles.

 

For those of you who play Wow or any other game like it. How does the performance compare when booting into Windows vs using Parallels?

 

LOL! I never knew I garnered such a reputation here...thanks for all the compliments, guys !

 

I've never used Parallels, but when I played it on my Windows laptop with a go6600, it was great. The MacBook plays it almost as good. The edges aren't smooth and it slows down some, but not enough to hinder gameplay.

 

I game in Windows, because there are no racing games for mac, and the ones that EA is doing for Mac use an emulator, so performance will be pretty horrible.

 

The best game I played for Mac was Lode Runner: The Legend Returns but that was OS9 or earlier. Just kidding, but it was fun.

OSX sucks for gaming. That's actually an understatement, but I don't want to use any profanity here; it just looks like **** anyways. WarCraft III & Frozen Throne are probably the best games for OSX; although they're arguably better in Windows, but that goes for virtually every game. Myst V: End of Ages played fine, I just thought it sucked as a game. I thought Call of Duty 2 was half-way decent, but after a while the bugs got to me and I never finished the game. Anyways I've given up on Mac gaming for now. Check back when Electronic Arts, iD, and whoever else release new games for OSX.

Now I use Windows XP Pro via Boot Camp for gaming on a 2.4GHz MBP. In a nutshell, it's just like any other similarly configured PC for gaming.

 

I was wondering with VMware, for things other than games, it works fine right?

Like though I'd probably want to game on XP, things like video-editing, photo shop, possibly even MS Office if necessary and all the other little bits and pieces I'd open up normally when web-browsing should run on VMware?

 

Yeaps, other than games (where there's a limited number that are officially supported), VMware Fusion runs Windows tasks fine.

 

The new version of Parallels brought, at least some, 3D gaming support, did it not?

 

Yeaps. Parallels 3.0 supports accelerated graphics. But I wouldn't game in Parallels anyway. Too much resources being used just to run Parallels.

 

Neither would I. But, I'm never one to turn my nose up at more features.

 

Just tried NFSC and it runs pretty good. No problems so far.

 

The big issue with gaming in OSX is OpenGL. 95% of the games out there are written in direct X. Microsoft has done well in making dX a very powerful 3d language. It's horrible to write in though. Coding in OpenGL is about as easy as breathing when compared to coding in DirectX.
That's not to say that OpenGL is a weak tool, because it's not. Doom 3, Quake 4, Unreal Tournaments, and others are written in OpenGL, and they run fantastically in Windows. Why is it that they don't run as well in OSX? Because OSX likes to filter through the OpenGL code and decide its pace, whereas Windows lets it do whatever it wants.

The folks at apple think that an image should be rendered completely the way it's meant to be before the next one should even be thought about. This does not bode well for games(hence the reputation for apple being good for graphics but bad for games). Hopefully something will be done about this with Leopard, but we haven't heard anything about that yet. This may also explain why apple went with the ATI card in the new iMac, as ATI has generally(as far as I've seen) been geared more towards OpenGL than nVidia.


To answer the OP's question:
I play Call of Duty 2 in OSX, and everything else in Windows XP. The reason I play CoD2 in OSX is for the sake of not having to reboot every time I want to just hop online and shoot people for 5 minutes. I really do need to get it installed on my XP partition, though, because it runs a LOT better there.

 

I just dont get why they would put in such an amazing GPU in the MBP if OSX sucks at gaming. MBP argueably has the best GPU DX10 card in the 15 inch market right now, and yet it cannot be utilized to its fullest...such irony. I wonder what mac fans use to do before the invention of bootcamp?

 

Well, what would happen if Apple didn't put such an amazing GPU in the MBP? Then it'd be another thing that Mac-hating people could use against Macs. "Hah, the top MBP that you're paying $2000 for only has a 8400! Once again how Apple sucks!"

 

They'd be fools to not put that GPU in there. If they didn't, the haters would have every right to rip the price.

I'd imagine it has, at least a small part, to do with Apple's recent success as well. It seems like a lot of gamers have started switching because they can finally get the Mac aesthetics, with good power under the hood, and use Windows.

 

Pretty much. I bet if Sony actually started putting decent hardware into their laptops (i.e. a strong GPU, decent HDDs, etc.), they'd probably have a ton more sales

 

dedicated gpu is good for HD video decoding.

woo.

 

I'm completely disinterested in any computer games.

when i game i use my PS2.