Playing windows games on Mac?

[miss.manson]

I've been trying find out for awhile now how to play windows games on my mid 2009 MacBook. I know about parallels and boot camp but don't have the money to buy windows os. I also do not want to run another OS other than Mac os x. I have tried wine bottler and It didn't work for me.

(if I put this in the wrong section, I apologize and Would appreciate it If it could be moved to the appropriate one.)

 

[r.j.s]

Those methods are pretty much the only way.

 

[maflynn]

There is WINE that lets some windows games and apps play on OSX but the compatibility list is rather short.

There's Parallels and bootcamp, those are your only options. For the best user experience running windows by way of bootcamp is your best bet.

 

[throAU]

wineskin works with some games, but if you want reliable compatibility bootcamp is the only way.

unfortunately, there is no free legal way to reliably play windows games on a mac.

 

[maflynn]

unfortunately, there is no free legal way to reliably play windows games on a mac.

What do you mean no free legal way? Bootcamp is free, and so is Oracle's virtual box. You still need a windows license, so is that what you mean - you need windows (outside of WINE)?

 

[Robert Davies]

Crossover and Crossover Games were pretty developed to enable Windows gameplay on the Mac without a Windows install - they *claim* good results, I have no experience so cannot comment, but will say that Crossover runs a fair few Windows apps quite reasonably.

-Rob

Linky: http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/

 

[malman89]

OP, if you want to save money, you can hunt down an OEM version of Windows off eBay or online. That would save you a bit of money.

 

[minifridge1138]

What do you mean no free legal way? Bootcamp is free, and so is Oracle's virtual box. You still need a windows license, so is that what you mean - you need windows (outside of WINE)?

I think he means without buying a copy of Windows from Microsoft.

 

[Yayap7]

If you have an extra or OEM version of Windows 7, Bootcamp is the way to go for best performance for sure. Even games that run on both Mac and Windows, pretty much all of them will work best with Windows.
Guild Wars 2 is absolutely terrible on my MacBook Pro "15 i7, 16GB RAM, GTX750M in Mac OS X but Bootcamp Windows and it is actually doable. That said, the Mac version of ESO is pretty darn nice.

If you have the hard drive space, Bootcamp Windows with a 100+GB partition is the best way to go. There's more compatibility, driver updates, fine tuning with Invidia Inspector or Control Panel or the Radeon equivalent. V-sync with triple buffering, no mouse acceleration(or at least the ability to turn that off within Windows), SMAA injector, mods..

It depends on what games you really want to play on your Mac but if you want the best performance, Bootcamp with Win 7 is the best way to go at the moment.
I just can't personally justify the possible performance loss with Wine or Parallels, especially with a MacBook.