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    Will CounterStrike Source be playable through VMWare Fusion?

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by sweetfeetpete, Dec 28, 2007.

  1. sweetfeetpete

    sweetfeetpete Notebook Enthusiast

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    Thinking of buying the 'basic' Macbook Pro model (15.4", 2.2GHz, 2GB RAM etc.) and sticking VMWare on it (and then XP.)

    Peformance wise will CounterStrike Source & Team Fortress 2 be playable through VMWare or will i have to restart into XP through bootcamp so that the games get the full use of my hardware?

    I haven't had a look at VMWare atall yet as i dont have a mac yet but is it true that i can change how much of the system memory it can use?

    Thanks.
     
    sweetfeetpete, Dec 28, 2007
    #1
  2. frazell

    frazell Notebook Deity

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    Doubtful that VMWare's early 3D emulation will offer near native support...
     
    frazell, Dec 28, 2007
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  3. masterchef341

    masterchef341 The guy from The Notebook

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    you will have to use boot camp (or crossover mac, which attempts to add the tools to the mac side to run the game natively in osx)

    with vmware it won't run at all.

    with parallels it will run, but not anywhere near playable. Maybe 4 fps or something.

    with crossover you might pull off 1280x800 and 35 fps and dx8 level shaders.

    with bootcamp you will max out the game graphically, run in 1440x900 (native) res, and have twice the framerate.

    why?

    Windows games are designed to run as directly on the hardware as possible.

    Game Software --> Hardware (almost bypassing OS completely)

    OSX games are designed the same way, but have to go through the OS a little more...

    Game Software --> Hardware (mostly bypassing OS)

    if you run a windows app in vmware, game or not, the system goes

    Game Software --> Fusion --> Mac OSX --> Hardware

    or worse,

    Game Software --> Windows (through fusion) --> Fusion --> Mac OSX --> Hardware

    I hope that explains it.
     
    masterchef341, Dec 28, 2007
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  4. sweetfeetpete

    sweetfeetpete Notebook Enthusiast

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    Ok thanks alot, so all games will need to run through boot camp. Thanks very much for this. Pete
     
    sweetfeetpete, Dec 28, 2007
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  5. sulkorp

    sulkorp Notebook Deity

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    like masterchef said you can run it using crossover.

    It's playable, but the only thing is that it takes a while to install and load maps, but it saves you from restarting if you dont want to go into bootcamp
     
    sulkorp, Dec 28, 2007
    #5