I tried Windows gaming on a Mac(andrewethanzeng.com)
andrewethanzeng.com
I tried Windows gaming on a Mac
https://www.andrewethanzeng.com/i-tried-windows-gaming-on-a-macand-its-amazing/
101 comments
After reading this thread I gave it a try. I'm blown away at how well Hitman 3 runs, Granted I'm used to running this on a Vega 56 card thats just limping along at this point. I'm using a mid spec M2 MacBook Pro.
Wait till you try windows gaming on windows.
Wait till Linux gaming progresses to the point that we don't need to use that hellish OS for anything anymore. Spend that 100+ dollars on actual games.
Or Windows gaming on Linux.
It's actually easier to use Steam on Linux and just keep trucking along than to play roulette with Microsoft and Windows 11 artificial upgrade "support".
Meanwhile, some random nerds put them to shame by providing LTS by just having a mailing list.
Meanwhile, some random nerds put them to shame by providing LTS by just having a mailing list.
Through CrossOver I haven't been able to run Space Engineers (playably), Forever Skies, TerraTech Worlds, or even Plants vs Zombies (playably). It's certainly impressive but it's not by any means perfect.
They don't even support excluding the notch from fullscreen apps yet, so if you run a game in fullscreen or fullscreen borderless, the screen notch can obscure UI elements (as it does for me in Volcanoids - the timer until the volcano erupts is just a bit important, given that it dictates the entire gameplay loop).
However, I have been able to run R.E.P.O., Trailmakers, BeamNG.drive, and Cosmoteer, so it's not like nothing at all works, it's just hit or miss.
They don't even support excluding the notch from fullscreen apps yet, so if you run a game in fullscreen or fullscreen borderless, the screen notch can obscure UI elements (as it does for me in Volcanoids - the timer until the volcano erupts is just a bit important, given that it dictates the entire gameplay loop).
However, I have been able to run R.E.P.O., Trailmakers, BeamNG.drive, and Cosmoteer, so it's not like nothing at all works, it's just hit or miss.
> 95% of the Wine code base we develop for CrossOver gets released back
into the Wine project for the open source community
nice
nice
tl;dr: you can run windows games with crossover, requires extra manual configuration to make performance better, has input lag and you can get 1080p at medium.
None of that sounds amazing. If you want to play these games without a windows machine, a steam deck seems a much better option.
None of that sounds amazing. If you want to play these games without a windows machine, a steam deck seems a much better option.
I run most things on linux, no game is important enough for me to switch back to windows or give them another dime
And despite all these flaws, the game will somehow get a 5 star “Runs great” rating.
It's amazing that it works at all, but yeah the setup sounds like a total pain.
I've mostly just stuck with gaming on the Switch because it starts up fast, doesn't update excessively, and mostly just gets out of the way to let me play the game I want to play. This is only in the context of first party titles though, I can't speak as well to third party titles.
I've mostly just stuck with gaming on the Switch because it starts up fast, doesn't update excessively, and mostly just gets out of the way to let me play the game I want to play. This is only in the context of first party titles though, I can't speak as well to third party titles.
I do appreciate the article though - was thinking about repurposing a M1 MacBook for games for kids and this tells me it is a better idea to sell it and get a different computer instead, maybe a second hand workstation for cheap.
Realistically it's way easier to just build a mini PC or get a $600 gaming laptop if you want to play games and also use MacOS. This is good for tinkering but at the end of the day you want to have a good experience... rather than endless debugging, input lag, frame drops, and tearing.
Ironically, CrossOver itself is $500
To clarify for the people questioning the price: it’s $74 for the version with free upgrades for one year. The “Lifetime” version with updates forever is $494.
You can get a free open source alternative like Whisky
https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky
https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky
No longer maintained as of very recently: https://docs.getwhisky.app/maintenance-notice
FWIW it still works and I doubt it'll stop working any time soon. Maybe for games released a year from now it won't be feasible
Whisky is now unsupported.
Crossover is $USD74? Does the joke woosh me?
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huh? It says $74 all over their website.
Per year.
To be fair – when your license is set to expire you do get a limited window (2 weeks before and after it seems per my 2023 copy) to renew at 50% off.
I recently finished the latest iteration of a gaming PC and haven’t even bothered installing windows on it. Not Mac but it seems that Linux gaming is also basically Windows gaming at this point. It could probably play games on Ultra vs High if I used Windows but ads in the menu bar is a bridge too far for me.
Proton (custom WINE by valve) is so good now thanks to Vulkan, you generally only lose about 5% performance compared to Windows, with a 10% difference in rare cases.
It's very easy to be a hardcore gamer on Linux now, outside of a handful of online games that gave yet to flip the switch to let their anti-cheat run on Linux.
It's very easy to be a hardcore gamer on Linux now, outside of a handful of online games that gave yet to flip the switch to let their anti-cheat run on Linux.
My gaming box (which I stream PC and retro games from to a handheld and the TV) is a Ryzen 7 APU running Bazzite. I have zero plans for ever running Steam on Windows ever again.
Linux gaming is actually significantly better than Mac gaming at the moment, in large part due to Valve. The GPU support is way better / faster and there’s less emulation overhead involved.
Linux gaming is absolutely incredible right now. After an essay of several months, however, I recently switched my gaming rig back to Windows 10 for three reasons alone: the multiplayer game I mainly play with my buds is one of the very, very few that won’t work on Linux due to anti-cheat shenanigans, Steam Big Screen has a persistent bug with Nvidia cards even as of 560.x, and I could never quite get Sunshine + Moonlight streaming (essential for playing games with the kids around the house) working without micro-stutters. I fully expect 2 of those to be solved within the next few months (doubtless someone more proficient with Linux could solve them in an afternoon).
Very excited for SteamOS general availability for desktops. Owning a Steam Deck has made me really appreciate an immutable OS - especially for a gaming rig, which I don’t want to spend time maintaining.
Edit: As an aside, I’ll just add that for anyone interested in streaming, Steam Remote Play has quietly gone from being an also-ran, to genuinely excellent in the last couple of years. It requires - in my case at least - a lot less tinkering than S+M and produces an extremely low-latency, high quality feed.
Very excited for SteamOS general availability for desktops. Owning a Steam Deck has made me really appreciate an immutable OS - especially for a gaming rig, which I don’t want to spend time maintaining.
Edit: As an aside, I’ll just add that for anyone interested in streaming, Steam Remote Play has quietly gone from being an also-ran, to genuinely excellent in the last couple of years. It requires - in my case at least - a lot less tinkering than S+M and produces an extremely low-latency, high quality feed.
So I actually tend to prefer couch gaming and I stream to a MacBook pretty often with Steam. Got an Xbox controller and the latency is basically 0. If you really want max quality, or you’re playing competitive fps games it’s not going to work but for single player games it’s been great.
with good latency, services like airgpu and Nvidia GeForce NOW makes it trivial to game even on the iphone nowadays
i love my studio displays but they would be absolute dogwater for gaming
Thatseems fairly subjective . Specs similar to a MBP? Because mine has a retina, 120 Hz display with HDR with max brightness of 1200 nits.
That MBP display utterly crushes my other standalone monitors- a 4K@60 w/ HDR@300-nits. Or a 1080p @90 Hz (SDR).
but of course. can't wire my linux gaming pc up to my laptop's display without some surgery.
That MBP display utterly crushes my other standalone monitors- a 4K@60 w/ HDR@300-nits. Or a 1080p @90 Hz (SDR).
but of course. can't wire my linux gaming pc up to my laptop's display without some surgery.
Yeah, unfortunately Apple have backed themselves into a corner there with their ~220ppi Retina display standard. Nobody makes monitor-sized panels that dense which also support high refresh rates, they're all limited to 60hz. The Apple monitors still don't support VRR either, even though the software support has been in place on macOS for a while it only works with third party monitors.
I have a 27” 5K display with 218 ppi running at 75Hz. It’s a newly released monitor from Viewsonic.
75Hz would be acceptable however macOS has funky mouse acceleration that makes gaming feel weird.
75Hz would be acceptable however macOS has funky mouse acceleration that makes gaming feel weird.
This should be titled, "I Tried Windows Gaming on a Mac and With a Lot of Effort It's Passable!"
Yup.
I use a Mac to get work done. It would be nice to use it for a bunch of games, but I really couldn't be arsed. If I really wanted to game, I'd set up a PC gaming box.
I use a Mac to get work done. It would be nice to use it for a bunch of games, but I really couldn't be arsed. If I really wanted to game, I'd set up a PC gaming box.
The algorithm won't accept nuanced takes. Must fish for engagement.
Gotta love the irrational exuberance of Mac users.
To be fair, one couldn't have even said that much about Linux a decade ago even though Linux ran on the same hardware as Windows. Now we can say that we can do Windows gaming on Linux and it is amazing. It is possible to both play a huge swath of Steam games under Linux, with comparable performance to Windows, and to go the "a lot of effort" route with non-Steam games under Wine (again, with comparable performance to Windows). That's before considering native Linux games.
It's funny how what people consider "a lot of effort" varies through the years. As a kid I was cracking open my apple-clone 5.25" drive and trying to manually adjust the drive speed with a screwdriver, with absolutely no documentation, internet or other support to help out - just to get a game work!
You're right. Even though I was thinking along the line hardware and software compatibility, repairs certainly fit the bill. It's not like today, where a flaky drive is simply replaced. A floppy drive of that era costed as much as an entire computer today. And let's not forget the MS-DOS era, when people were pretty much expected to tweak their system's memory configuration to play games (and different games required different profiles).
Out of curiosity, does kid-you remember whether the drive came poorly tuned from the factory or if it drifted after the fact. (Or perhaps it was the disk at fault, having been written on a poorly tuned drive.)
Out of curiosity, does kid-you remember whether the drive came poorly tuned from the factory or if it drifted after the fact. (Or perhaps it was the disk at fault, having been written on a poorly tuned drive.)
If you don't wanna pay $74 for CrossOver, there's also Whisky which impressed me and I've had great success with. It's an open source Wine wrapper for macOS
https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky
EDIT: it seems that at some point in the past month the author stated whisky is no longer maintained!
https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky
EDIT: it seems that at some point in the past month the author stated whisky is no longer maintained!
I wonder how this compares to porting kit and wineskin. That's what I've been using for Windows gaming on Mac and it's been running well for me on my m3 air- this is the first time I've ever heard of crossover.
Note also that Whisky is no longer maintained, author suggests using CrossOver.
https://docs.getwhisky.app/maintenance-notice
https://docs.getwhisky.app/maintenance-notice
I see the repo has fairly recent updates, but the website says the project is no longer actively maintained.
https://docs.getwhisky.app/maintenance-notice
https://docs.getwhisky.app/maintenance-notice
Interesting! It wasn't the case when I first downloaded it last month!
Looks like it was just 3 weeks ago.
https://github.com/Whisky-App/whisky-book/commit/463bfc39a6f...
https://github.com/Whisky-App/whisky-book/commit/463bfc39a6f...
But can it run Doom? /s
has the meaning of 'amazing' changed recently?
Does Mac not do Steam gaming the same way? In Linux I just press install and it works with my AMD card. I haven't pressed any other buttons. Fedora 42
Linux works because it runs the most stable Linux ABI is available— Win32.
Mac users are generally running on aarch64 rather than x86, so you have the binary compatibility barrier. Plus no 32bit support.
Mac users are generally running on aarch64 rather than x86, so you have the binary compatibility barrier. Plus no 32bit support.
> Linux ABI is available— Win32
Yep!
> Mac users are generally running on aarch64 rather than x86, so you have the binary compatibility barrier. Plus no 32bit support.
That's not really the reason. Rosetta exists and quote good. Macos binaries don't work because Apple breaks its own compatibility (including 32 bit thing), and windows binaries don't work because Apple don't support vulkan nor opengl, and, maybe even more important, no one has incentive to fix it
Yep!
> Mac users are generally running on aarch64 rather than x86, so you have the binary compatibility barrier. Plus no 32bit support.
That's not really the reason. Rosetta exists and quote good. Macos binaries don't work because Apple breaks its own compatibility (including 32 bit thing), and windows binaries don't work because Apple don't support vulkan nor opengl, and, maybe even more important, no one has incentive to fix it
Steam works, but most games can't be bothered to provide macOS builds, and some that do are 32 bit and thus cannot be run (macOS only supports 64 bit executables nowadays).
Yes, but I am not running games for Linux. I play mostly games that are built for Windows, but they just launch in Linux because Valve made Proton.
I don't know much about it because I only use x86 on my workstations, but I believe it even can work across architecture because the Pi guys have done that too.
I don't know much about it because I only use x86 on my workstations, but I believe it even can work across architecture because the Pi guys have done that too.
Lots of older Mac Steam games support 64-bit but show the incompatibility warning in the store anyway. It’s annoying but with Steam’s return policy it’s not a real risk to test such games.
Lots of newer Mac Steam games do this as well. It's quite annoying as it also hides them from your library when you use the macOS filter.
I tried to follow many different tutorials on getting Diablo IV set up using CrossOver but never could get past Blizzards automatic patches that break it.
Did Blizzard ever give a reason for not supporting Macs? They used to be really good about supporting them (I played a lot of WoW on one for years with zero issue). Guessing the extra effort required to support ARM didn't make financial sense?
I'm sure there are plenty of up and coming development studios that are more than happy to create a product that can run on multiple different machines.
Blizzard got derailed by Activision and probably cannot be saved now after at least a decade of solid management into the ground.
Blizzard got derailed by Activision and probably cannot be saved now after at least a decade of solid management into the ground.
WoW still has decent Mac support, even on Apple Silicon.
Alternatives that I haven't seen mentioned yet:
- Just download the Game Porting Toolkit from Apple
- Use Porting Kit
- Dual-boot Asahi Linux and game from that partition
I've used all of these, and they all seem to perform about the same for me.
- Just download the Game Porting Toolkit from Apple
- Use Porting Kit
- Dual-boot Asahi Linux and game from that partition
I've used all of these, and they all seem to perform about the same for me.
Sadly Asahi doesn't support M3/ME silicon yet, so the Mac in the article couldn't take advantage of Asahi.
These days I game on a PC in the closet streamed to my Mac via Sunshine/Moonlight. Keeps the wires and fan noise out of the office, which is nice.
There’s a tiny bit of latency, but I’m not playing twitch reflex games on it.
There’s a tiny bit of latency, but I’m not playing twitch reflex games on it.
If gaming is important to you, build a good desktop gaming PC. If you enjoy games casually and don't want the money/hassle of a gaming desktop, get a Playstation, Switch, Steam Deck, or buy a lower-end gaming laptop.
If you enjoy tinkering, setting up Linux or a Mac for gaming can be a fun project, but it's not a good use of your time if your goal is to play games well. You'll jump through a lot of hoops and maybe get something 70% as good.
If you enjoy tinkering, setting up Linux or a Mac for gaming can be a fun project, but it's not a good use of your time if your goal is to play games well. You'll jump through a lot of hoops and maybe get something 70% as good.
Linux or Deck setup will actually work out of the box. We have multiple Steam PCs in the house that can all do Steam Link with our tablets and stuff in the house.
The amount of time we specifically use the spare Windows PC as the Steam Link source is pretty low. Most of the time we connect to our media server, which is the Linux machine.
The idea that it's "only 70%" to me is pretty mind boggling. I think there is a lot of the experience that works correctly because of properly supported hardware (AMD)
The amount of time we specifically use the spare Windows PC as the Steam Link source is pretty low. Most of the time we connect to our media server, which is the Linux machine.
The idea that it's "only 70%" to me is pretty mind boggling. I think there is a lot of the experience that works correctly because of properly supported hardware (AMD)
Can the Mac run non-FPS's? eg Heroes of Might and Magic, Slay the Spire, games that don't seem to stress the system much.
There’s a bunch that are available, Slay the Spire runs on Mac without any work, install straight from Steam.
I use CrossOver to play lighter-spec games on my Mac, like Animal Well, Loco Motive, Ori, UFO 50, and The Outer Wilds. I also have a gaming PC but I pretty much only use it for more demanding or super latency-sensitive games like Overwatch and Elden Ring. I’m not into most of the really high-spec AAA titles so I have not idea how well those would run.
I may be biased with my nice high end setup (Ryzen 9900X, 32 GB RAM, RX 6700 XT about to upgrade to 9070 XT) but 40 FPS at 1080p is NOT "great".
It's less than I'd like to play at, but wasn't the point that it is great for something running on laptop hardware with integrated graphics? The implication is it would have been similar on native windows on comparable hardware.
I have a similar setup on one of my rigs and it does great for most 1440p titles. 6800 XT
...and 6700XT is not even high end or new.
I do my work on a mac because I don't like the nuisance of trying to do it on windows. There is always some wonkiness that I don't even bother to remember the details of, because the solution is just to do it on mac.
I rather play games on windows because I don't like the nuisance of trying to do it on mac. There is always some wonkiness that I don't even bother to remember the details of, because the solution is just to do it on windows.
I rather play games on windows because I don't like the nuisance of trying to do it on mac. There is always some wonkiness that I don't even bother to remember the details of, because the solution is just to do it on windows.
counterpoint as a dev who works with k8s and wants a linux env:. I was told to get a mac when I joined and I wish I hadnt. WSL and vscode remote ssh make windows better for linux dev. the alternative is getting a parallels license. I mainly use vscode to remote to linux machines now and ignore my mac and wish it didn't exist. also as a longtime windows user i think the windows desktop is just better. window management, multimonitor, hell even launching apps is slow as shit on my mac m1 compared to my windows pc.
bottom line: I dont know what dev workflows are better on mac, but if its linux, windows is now more linuxy than mac. imo.
This is probably true though as a non-gamer and recent mac convert I have basically zero complaints. Windows these days is full of too much crap that sucks away attention and makes it hard to use.
Average windows experience:
Welcome to BING (tm) with your MSN chumbucket spam links! Here's a desktop notification for a "sweepstakes"; no, you didn't get adware, just MS Windows! Enjoy this full-screen pop-up telling you to "prepare for windows 11" that completely disrupts your workflow when you're in the zone! Your computer is running slowly? Oh yeah, that's windows defender sucking up half your CPU, because not scanning every file would be a Security Risk (TM)! Want to turn that off? No worries, but you can't do that on the home edition because we don't give you group policy editor! If you do it anyway, we will re-enable this "feature" with every update and change the precise incantation of powershell miscellany, regedits, and menus that haven't been updated since the nineties you need to turn it off again!
We hope you enjoy your Windows (TM) 11 (TM) experience!
It's like fisher price, a casino mogul, and a schizo got together to cook up the latest batch of whatever slop microsquash is trying to pass off as a legit OS. Which is a shame, because the technical fundamentals are actually pretty sound. Some of this doesn't apply if you're using a corporate-managed machine, because companies don't want to put up with that nonsense, but a chunk of these annoyances still does.
It's weird to say but I enjoy using a computer to get stuff done substantially more after no longer using windows. While I still like linux, a bunch of software I need doesn't really work, and I don't have time to dick around with wine when I'm trying to do a job, so I'm glad there's a reasonably non-garbage option.
Windows will probably be the default corporate os for the forseeable future, but if the only people who actually have reasons to use it are "gamers", that should be a wake-up call for the ms product guys.
Average windows experience:
Welcome to BING (tm) with your MSN chumbucket spam links! Here's a desktop notification for a "sweepstakes"; no, you didn't get adware, just MS Windows! Enjoy this full-screen pop-up telling you to "prepare for windows 11" that completely disrupts your workflow when you're in the zone! Your computer is running slowly? Oh yeah, that's windows defender sucking up half your CPU, because not scanning every file would be a Security Risk (TM)! Want to turn that off? No worries, but you can't do that on the home edition because we don't give you group policy editor! If you do it anyway, we will re-enable this "feature" with every update and change the precise incantation of powershell miscellany, regedits, and menus that haven't been updated since the nineties you need to turn it off again!
We hope you enjoy your Windows (TM) 11 (TM) experience!
It's like fisher price, a casino mogul, and a schizo got together to cook up the latest batch of whatever slop microsquash is trying to pass off as a legit OS. Which is a shame, because the technical fundamentals are actually pretty sound. Some of this doesn't apply if you're using a corporate-managed machine, because companies don't want to put up with that nonsense, but a chunk of these annoyances still does.
It's weird to say but I enjoy using a computer to get stuff done substantially more after no longer using windows. While I still like linux, a bunch of software I need doesn't really work, and I don't have time to dick around with wine when I'm trying to do a job, so I'm glad there's a reasonably non-garbage option.
Windows will probably be the default corporate os for the forseeable future, but if the only people who actually have reasons to use it are "gamers", that should be a wake-up call for the ms product guys.
I simply run this Powershell script once on a fresh install of Windows 11 and don't have to deal with any annoyances even after updates.
https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat
I daily drive MacOS, Windows 11 and Linux Mint on different devices and Windows doesn't particularly bother me post de-bloating, and it easily has the most reliable multi monitor/variable DPI when docking/undocking of the three in my experience.
https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat
I daily drive MacOS, Windows 11 and Linux Mint on different devices and Windows doesn't particularly bother me post de-bloating, and it easily has the most reliable multi monitor/variable DPI when docking/undocking of the three in my experience.
I used to lean heavily on stuff like this. Unfortunately, in recent years, something's changed with MS and they've started breaking stuff subtly in ways that shows up a few months later when you try to do something. This leads to either reimaging or a painful process tracking down some really obscure relationship. Not fun and not worth it, though I very much wish it worked like it used to.
Glad it's still working for some folks.
Glad it's still working for some folks.
Steam, on Linux and Steam on Windows are very similar experiences. Is it much worse on the Mac?
It's a similar experience, but the library of natively supported games is fairly small, and ports are often poor quality - especially older games that haven't been updated in a long time and are broken in various ways on newer Mac versions. The most common problem I run into is the lack of high-DPI support, which means that you can't run the game at full 4K even if your display supports it.
This is a reason many Linux gamers just use the proton version of the games in Steam. It's more consistent.
I love gaming, that's what got me into programming in the first place... my career right now. And I just learned after many painful attempts that unfortunately Windows, macOS and Linux all got their territory... I don't want to preach about any particular system, it's pointless, I gave up on trying to force my OS to do something is just not meant to be, that's how I ended up with one gaming laptop with Windows, one with pop OS and a macbook pro. I just switch them over and to be honest Im Happier now.
I must recognise that there is some overlap on the dev functionality now that WSL is a thing... years back it was crazy talk to try to do Rails on windows.
I must recognise that there is some overlap on the dev functionality now that WSL is a thing... years back it was crazy talk to try to do Rails on windows.
Not releasing Mac or Linux builds this day in age, should be an arrestable offense. At least if someone is using Unity, Unreal or Godot. I actually do it in reverse and do most development on mac or linux and just release a build on Windows at the very end.
Releasing a Linux build is a waste of time given how quickly the library situation changes in distros. Better to just release a Windows version tested on Proton.
honestly i've tried this before and man, getting games running on mac always feels like a little side quest. not bad when it works but i'd rather just game on my pc and not mess around so much
Yeah, nah. My M1 is basically dead to me for gaming. There are a _few_ games that run _okay_ but I now just carry a second computer for gaming. Salty because it's such a great computer nerfed by walled garden business practices.
Perhaps one of these days Valve will sink some energy into getting Proton working on a Mac. I’ve got a Steam Deck and it’s great.
Though really I’d probably just keep gaming on the Deck, that lives in the living room; the Mac is at the studio desk or a table in a cafe doing work, and it’s nice to not have a pile of games right there offering to distract me…
Though really I’d probably just keep gaming on the Deck, that lives in the living room; the Mac is at the studio desk or a table in a cafe doing work, and it’s nice to not have a pile of games right there offering to distract me…
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