CrossOver, the emulation approach

CrossOver, from the company CodeWeaver, uses a different approach. As we previously explained, it emulates components without using Windows. If your game needs Direct3D, only the DDL that the game needs will be emulated. CrossOver is comparable to Wine, well known to Linux aficionados. Realistically CrossOver only supports one game: Half Life 2. Apart, from Quake III, we couldn’t use other games. In practice, the company points out that games like Counter Strike, Day of Defeat (add-on to Half-Life) or World of Warcraft (even if there is no point given that the Mac version is given with the PC version) work. It’s a perfect solution for Gordan Freeman fans.

Cider: The Commercial Solution

Cider is a case apart. It is an application developed for the companies who wish to port a game to a Mac quickly. In theory, it is only usable by the developers. In practice it is possible to make an attempt to adapt it to other games. We tried with the games in our selection but it didn’t work.

Only Quake III and Quake 4 worked, and always losing the use of the mouse. We should note that games like Need for Speed Carbon or Command & Conquer 3 use Cider. This is however a more advanced version than that used for our tests. In the end, even if the fiddling can make certain games work it isn’t really a recommended solution. Too complicated to do for novices and the compatibility is not great.

In the end, the virtualisation or emulation solutions are not adapted to gaming. It is very handy when you need to use Windows on a Mac (and very effective) but that’s it. Boasting DirectX 9 support as a practical option seems a little on the outlandish side of things… Before making a conclusion, here is some information on the other Macs available and their possibilities.

The MacBook, the other models and the X3100

We tested the black MacBook in its old high range version. For the other models, the performances in games are identical: poor. Even if the processor is sometimes slower, the impact is negligible. For the GMA X3100 (the current one), the performances are higher, because the controller is faster: 667 MHz versus 250 MHz. The architecture and the bugs go uncorrected so in practice we go from slow to slower.

The Mac Mini

The current Mac mini is very close to the MacBook. The only real difference for games comes from the graphic card. The GMA 950 is faster. It goes from 250 MHz in our test machine to 400 MHz in the mini. The performances stay quite close. In practice, you can’t count on a Mac mini to play.