Best Mac OS for gaming: 10.6.8 or 10.7.x?

[Idgit]

I've got an older MacBook Pro (2.4 Ghz, 4 GB RAM) and I'm still running 10.6.8 on it. At some point I'm going to have to upgrade to Lion, but before that happens I want to know what I'll lose or gain when it comes to gaming on a Mac.

I'd appreciate it if anyone could answer some or all of the following questions:

• Is it still possible, under Lion, to turn off mouse acceleration? I heard grumblings that it is no longer possible. Can someone confirm or deny that for me?
• Are the graphics drivers improved under Lion or will I see my frame-rates drop?
• Does Myth II still work under Lion?
• How are Steam games like L4D, L4D2, and TF2 under Lion?

 

[cluthz]

I've got an older MacBook Pro (2.4 Ghz, 4 GB RAM) and I'm still running 10.6.8 on it. At some point I'm going to have to upgrade to Lion, but before that happens I want to know what I'll lose or gain when it comes to gaming on a Mac.

I'd appreciate it if anyone could answer some or all of the following questions:

• Is it still possible, under Lion, to turn off mouse acceleration? I heard grumblings that it is no longer possible. Can someone confirm or deny that for me?
• Are the graphics drivers improved under Lion or will I see my frame-rates drop?
• Does Myth II still work under Lion?
• How are Steam games like L4D, L4D2, and TF2 under Lion?

Myth II is PowerPC, so no.
In the start many games did have issues with the updated graphic drivers, but I think most have been fixed.

I don't believe an older machine would benefit much, as the drivers for your card is very mature (you probably have a nvidia 8xxx or 9xxx series).
For newer graphics cards you'll probably get better performance, due to updated drivers.

I still have 10.6.8 on my main machine, and I'm not gonna upgrade until I have to, but I have 10.7 on my laptop.

 

[Cougarcat]

Myth II is PowerPC, so no.

There is a universal patch for Myth II. Works fine according to this.

There are new OpenGL drivers, but as cluthz says you probably won't notice a difference. Newer games coming out are starting to require Lion (Rage, Empire at War) so if your laptop can run those and you are interested in them that might be something to consider.

Also, keep in mind that any Rosetta (PowerPC) games will not run.

 

[50548]

I've got an older MacBook Pro (2.4 Ghz, 4 GB RAM) and I'm still running 10.6.8 on it. At some point I'm going to have to upgrade to Lion, but before that happens I want to know what I'll lose or gain when it comes to gaming on a Mac.

I'd appreciate it if anyone could answer some or all of the following questions:

• Is it still possible, under Lion, to turn off mouse acceleration? I heard grumblings that it is no longer possible. Can someone confirm or deny that for me?
• Are the graphics drivers improved under Lion or will I see my frame-rates drop?
• Does Myth II still work under Lion?
• How are Steam games like L4D, L4D2, and TF2 under Lion?

L4D2 and TF2 play absolutely fine here on my iMac with Lion - everything maxed out with 1920x1200 resolution...no issues to report.

 

[wafl iron]

L4D2 and TF2 play absolutely fine here on my iMac with Lion - everything maxed out with 1920x1200 resolution...no issues to report.

except for the part that the L4D2 FPS sucks ass after you wake from sleep if you have ATI.

Supposedly this was fixed for iMacs with ATIs in 10.7.3.

Still not fixed for Mac Pros with ATIs unfortunately.

 

[David085]

Diablo III would be a great game to add to your collection once is released

 

[nostylluan]

first of all, mac's aren't for gaming... so you are limited. although the two best companies for multiplayer games support OSX.. that is valve and blizzard.

you can play counter-strike, team fortress, portal, left 4 dead, day of defeat and you can play starcraft/warcraft and diablo. as for an mmo that isn't warcraft, your best bet is eve online

that's about it for mac gaming, unless you count casual gaming like peggle, bejeweled and such, steam has a lot of those, so does facebook. once you get older, you'll stop playing lots of games, and the ones supported on mac osx are the best ones anyways, so it doesn't really matter.

learn to play your limited games, they're the best any ways. so keep this in mind... valve, blizzard, casual or eve online... that's your choices. have fun

(as for lion vs snow leopard) its a question of old vs new. are your games supported/updated by the dev? for instance, starcraft 1 and diablo 1-2 aren't supported under lion, blizzard is too lazy to update them, so you're forced to play the newer games. warcraft 3 still works.

sorry, in order to please a certain audience who looks at steam numbers, there is another game people actually play... it's assassin's creed and civilization 5. so you can add those two games to the list.

 

[50548]

except for the part that the L4D2 FPS sucks ass after you wake from sleep if you have ATI.

Supposedly this was fixed for iMacs with ATIs in 10.7.3.

Still not fixed for Mac Pros with ATIs unfortunately.

Never had this problem with any version of SL or Lion...and my GPU is an ATI 6970M.

 

[Jethryn Freyman]

first of all, mac's aren't for gaming... so you are limited. although the two best companies for multiplayer games support OSX.. that is valve and blizzard.

you can play counter-strike, team fortress, portal, left 4 dead, day of defeat and you can play starcraft/warcraft and diablo. as for an mmo that isn't warcraft, your best bet is eve online

that's about it for mac gaming, unless you count casual gaming like peggle, bejeweled and such, steam has a lot of those, so does facebook. once you get older, you'll stop playing lots of games, and the ones supported on mac osx are the best ones anyways, so it doesn't really matter.

learn to play your limited games, they're the best any ways. so keep this in mind... valve, blizzard, casual or eve online... that's your choices. have fun

(as for lion vs snow leopard) its a question of old vs new. are your games supported/updated by the dev? for instance, starcraft 1 and diablo 1-2 aren't supported under lion, blizzard is too lazy to update them, so you're forced to play the newer games. warcraft 3 still works.

Oh come on, you have no idea what you're talking about. It's Apple's fault that Blizzard's old games don't work, they chucked out Rosetta for no reason, not blizzard's fault they aren't updating decade old games to keep up with Apple's forced obsolescence. You also clearly don't know how many other games are out there for OS X...

 

[nostylluan]

yes i do, sure if you want to blame apple or blizzard it doesn't matter, blizzard is still too lazy to make a patch.

http://store.steampowered.com/search/?os=mac&category1=998

211 games, most of them are casual. for games people actually play there is torchlight (diablo 2 rip off), civ 5, assasins creed.

do you have any other games that are not casual and that people actually play? jeth?

 

[Jethryn Freyman]

yes i do, sure if you want to blame apple or blizzard it doesn't matter, blizzard is still too lazy to make a patch.

http://store.steampowered.com/search/?os=mac&category1=998

211 games, most of them are casual. for games people actually play there is torchlight (diablo 2 rip off), civ 5, assasins creed.

do you have any other games that are not casual and that people actually play? jeth?

Unreal Tournament games, Quake etc, Doom etc, Bioshock, Call Of Duty

 

[the8thark]

Diablo III would be a great game to add to your collection once is released

Yes but expect to wait and wait and keep waiting for that one.

 

[bungiefan89]

first of all, mac's aren't for gaming... so you are limited. although the two best companies for multiplayer games support OSX.. that is valve and blizzard.

you can play counter-strike, team fortress, portal, left 4 dead, day of defeat and you can play starcraft/warcraft and diablo. as for an mmo that isn't warcraft, your best bet is eve online

that's about it for mac gaming, unless you count casual gaming like peggle, bejeweled and such, steam has a lot of those, so does facebook. once you get older, you'll stop playing lots of games, and the ones supported on mac osx are the best ones anyways, so it doesn't really matter.

learn to play your limited games, they're the best any ways. so keep this in mind... valve, blizzard, casual or eve online... that's your choices. have fun

(as for lion vs snow leopard) its a question of old vs new. are your games supported/updated by the dev? for instance, starcraft 1 and diablo 1-2 aren't supported under lion, blizzard is too lazy to update them, so you're forced to play the newer games. warcraft 3 still works.

sorry, in order to please a certain audience who looks at steam numbers, there is another game people actually play... it's assassin's creed and civilization 5. so you can add those two games to the list.

Bootcamp, and this.

 

[nostylluan]

do you sound smart for quoting bootcamp in a thread that goes "Best Mac OS for gaming"

?

 

[miles01110]

There is a universal patch for Myth II. Works fine according to this.

There are new OpenGL drivers, but as cluthz says you probably won't notice a difference. Newer games coming out are starting to require Lion (Rage, Empire at War) so if your laptop can run those and you are interested in them that might be something to consider.

Also, keep in mind that any Rosetta (PowerPC) games will not run.

Confirmed that the universal patch for Myth II works great on Lion. Too bad nobody plays online anymore.

 

[Huntn]

Myth II is PowerPC, so no.

There is a universal patch for Myth II. Works fine according to this.

When talking about old pre-OSX programs, I'd like to clarify for myself, there are two issues here, Intel/Intel Patch and Rosetta. If a program has an intel patch, does that automatically mean it no longer relies on Rosetta (MacOS9 emulator) and will run in MacOS10.7, Lion? My impression is an intel patch will not necessarily fix the Rosetta issue, but I don't know...

first of all, mac's aren't for gaming...

do you sound smart for quoting bootcamp in a thread that goes "Best Mac OS for gaming"

What's your problem? Are you here to contribute or stir the pot? Macs are fine for gaming and in some cases they are a better choice. Waiting for the explosion, lol...

 

[Cougarcat]

When talking about old pre-OSX programs, I'd like to clarify for myself, there are two issues here, Intel/Intel Patch and Rosetta. If a program has an intel patch, does that automatically mean it no longer relies on Rosetta (MacOS9 emulator) and will run in MacOS10.7, Lion? My impression is an intel patch will not necessarily fix the Rosetta issue, but I don't know...

If it has an intel patch, it doesn't rely on Rosetta. This doesn't necessarily mean it will run in 10.7.. Every major OS introduces inconpatibilities. CoD doesn't run in Lion yet, even though it's universal.

 

[Huntn]

If it has an intel patch, it doesn't rely on Rosetta. This doesn't necessarily mean it will run in 10.7.. Every major OS introduces inconpatibilities. CoD doesn't run in Lion yet, even though it's universal.

But for an older game written for OS9, it would use Rosetta on a PPC Mac? So you are saying if they have come out with an intel patch, the game has been updated to OX and if it once needed Rosetta it no longer does? Thanks for the help.

 

[nostylluan]

What's your problem? Are you here to contribute or stir the pot? Macs are fine for gaming and in some cases they are a better choice. Waiting for the explosion, lol...

no problem, usually if the individual is a gamer they would go with something like alienware, i'm simply being honest... and since this is a Mac OS thread... the availability of games diminishes. if you want to run bootcamp, why not just skip the mac and get a pc?

that's what i don't understand. if you are a true gamer, skip mac. you can buy a better PC with almost twice the hardware for the same price.

 

[Huntn]

no problem, usually if the individual is a gamer they would go with something like alienware, i'm simply being honest... and since this is a Mac OS thread... the availability of games diminishes. if you want to run bootcamp, why not just skip the mac and get a pc?

Why? Because I don't want to live in Windows land. I travel half of every month. I prefer the MacOS. I don't want to carry two laptops with me. With my MBP, I get to have my cake and eat it too. I'm very content with its performance running Windows for Windows only gaming. Satisfactory answer?

that's what i don't understand. if you are a true gamer, skip mac. you can buy a better PC with almost twice the hardware for the same price.

If you only care about gaming, sure buy a PC if you can stomach Windows full time. Now please put up an example of your assertion for laptops. Hardware to hardware, the MBP is competitively priced.

 

[doh123]

But for an older game written for OS9, it would use Rosetta on a PPC Mac? So you are saying if they have come out with an intel patch, the game has been updated to OX and if it once needed Rosetta it no longer does? Thanks for the help.

I think you are mistaken as to what Rosetta is.

Rosetta does NOT allow you to run OS9 apps. Rosetta is a PPC emulator, so it lets you run Mac OS X PPC apps on Mac OS X Intel machines... nothing more. And Intel patch would be changing a Mac OS X app from PPC to Intel... it has nothing to do with OS9.

Earlier emulation of OS9 that was available on PPC Macs was called classic, and was a bit different than Rosetta since it had to emulate OS9 compatibility and did nothing with processor emulation. No Intel Mac has ever supported Classic.

 

[Huntn]

I think you are mistaken as to what Rosetta is.

Rosetta does NOT allow you to run OS9 apps. Rosetta is a PPC emulator, so it lets you run Mac OS X PPC apps on Mac OS X Intel machines... nothing more. And Intel patch would be changing a Mac OS X app from PPC to Intel... it has nothing to do with OS9.

Earlier emulation of OS9 that was available on PPC Macs was called classic, and was a bit different than Rosetta since it had to emulate OS9 compatibility and did nothing with processor emulation. No Intel Mac has ever supported Classic.

You are right, I was confused. Thanks!

 

[edddeduck]

I've got an older MacBook Pro (2.4 Ghz, 4 GB RAM) and I'm still running 10.6.8 on it. At some point I'm going to have to upgrade to Lion, but before that happens I want to know what I'll lose or gain when it comes to gaming on a Mac.

I'd appreciate it if anyone could answer some or all of the following questions:

• Is it still possible, under Lion, to turn off mouse acceleration? I heard grumblings that it is no longer possible. Can someone confirm or deny that for me?

• 
  
  Depends on the game some games ignore the OS acceleration curves. There are ways of disabling the OS mouse accel but they are not supported by anyone. Google is your friend though
  
  

  [*]Are the graphics drivers improved under Lion or will I see my frame-rates drop?

  
  FPS will improve. In fact more games will be Lion only as we cannot get the same performance on SNow Leopard as the drivers are older which means they are slower and have more bugs in general.
  
  

  [*]Does Myth II still work under Lion?

  
  I don't think so.
  
  

  [*]How are Steam games like L4D, L4D2, and TF2 under Lion?

I don't know but I would assume the same if not faster.

Oh come on, you have no idea what you're talking about. It's Apple's fault that Blizzard's old games don't work, they chucked out Rosetta for no reason, not blizzard's fault they aren't updating decade old games to keep up with Apple's forced obsolescence.

There are quite a few reasons to no longer support Rosetta, it is not something that just keeps working it needs constant maintenance, also you need to make sure all your libraries have backward compatibility with thew rosetta technology which means more work for all the OS teams. Have some new feature that is both quicker and more efficient than before but it does not work with Rosetta then you have to either make it work by compromising the design or not use that method.

It is not always cut and dry but Rosetta was to support PPC. The last PPC hardware was in 2006 so it has been 6 years since Apple shipped any hardware that was PPC based. I understand the pain in removing this (we even have a few games that now don't work in Lion). However I understand the reasons, if you care that much just make a Snow Leopard partition on your HD for playing those specific games I used to have the same with an OS9 partition (for Deus Ex and UT99) back in the day.

I am not saying that I wanted Rosetta to go but equally I understand by dropping Rosetta they have the opportunity to spend all that time on newer technology that they did not have the time to work on or would not work when you have to keep supporting a 6 year old hardware platform though a translation system.

Edwin

 

[Huntn]

It is not always cut and dry but Rosetta was to support PPC. The last PPC hardware was in 2006 so it has been 6 years since Apple shipped any hardware that was PPC based. I understand the pain in removing this (we even have a few games that now don't work in Lion). However I understand the reasons, if you care that much just make a Snow Leopard partition on your HD for playing those specific games I used to have the same with an OS9 partition (for Deus Ex and UT99) back in the day.

I am not saying that I wanted Rosetta to go but equally I understand by dropping Rosetta they have the opportunity to spend all that time on newer technology that they did not have the time to work on or would not work when you have to keep supporting a 6 year old hardware platform though a translation system.

Edwin

It's too bad it's not as simple as a PPC emulator built so PPC programs could run on... of course if it was simple I imagine Rosetta would still be around.

 

[edddeduck]

It's too bad it's not as simple as a PPC emulator built so PPC programs could run on... of course if it was simple I imagine Rosetta would still be around.

Yeah it was pretty clever but pretty clever also usually means needs to be maintained

Hey ho onwards and upwards as they say.

Edwin