Gordon Freeman goes to Boot Camp on a Mac

Cool! Unfortunately, I finished that game on the PC i had to buy for gaming...

I'm eager for the Intel replacement for the PowerMac G5 under my desk now... That is going to be a beast. I'm sure haters will say I can have that now... But not one that runs OSX. Macs are shaping up to be the tweaker's delight - OSX, Windows, Linux, all under the same hood -

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/04/06/parallels_offers_mac_vt_beta/

All they need to do now is lower the price of the systems b/c I am SERIOUSLY considering buying a Intel Mac Mini for Media Center purposes but at $600 na $800...that's too much.

it's good for Mircosoft and game designers who don't have to waste time making stuff for OSX when you can run Windows on an Apple machine. Mircosoft makes money, Apple makes money and everyone wins.

HL2 runs quite nice on the Mac, loads about as quick as my AMD 3700+ but (i can't tell 100%) but the graphics don't look as good as it does with my 7800.

It runs well but he could have had a lot of stuff turned off. How does it handle HDR? What settings did the person have it on? was AA on?

I got BootCamp the first day it was out and the first thing I installed was HL2. Even with everything bumped up to the max it runs better than any windows box I've ever seen.
The only thing that is annoying is that sound comes out of the built-in speakers of my MBP even when I have external speakers hooked up. But other than that its great.
The MBP is even cooler in windows than when in OSX. I can actually keep it on my lap and not suffer. The only thing to watch out for is the sudden motion sensor does NOT work in windows, yet.

"Even with everything bumped up to the max it runs better than any windows box I've ever seen."

That's a debatable statement...I am willing to challenge that statement since the games runs silky smooth on my AMD Dual Core 3800+, 2GB RAM and SLI Geforce 7800 GT 256MB.

My only problem is justifying spending $200 for a full version of XP Home SP2 . :(

You can buy an OEM version online for $80 (Home) and $130 (Pro) if you buy some hardware (like say a mouse.) Try mwave.com or newegg.com (or just search on pricewatch.com)

Personally I am excited by this. I made the switch to macs mostly for my school. Studying an art major, most of the places prefer mac experience over windows, and as a gamer I just ended up playing mostly everything on a console.

The price however, is not that bad for me either because I'm able to get a discount from my school store that will bump the price of the machine back to a more normal computer price, and still allowing me to use the mac OS for my work related things.

However for a more average gamer/computer buyer, the price is always going to be high, so if they want windows, they should just stick to a normal pc. :-)

Thats bad ass

Now we only need Apple to lower the $$

Even with the student prices that Apple his it isn't that much ($579 & $779.)

Part of the reason for going with x86 hardware was that it was more widely available and *should* be cheaper then the PowerPC hardware.

Oh man, they are making it harder and harder for me not to sell my Powerbook g4, and go for an imac, hl2 is one of my favorite games of all time, and now that I can have my cake and eat it too i may just have to take the plunge.

Im sorry but i hope Apple keeps their line and everything the way it is. They dont need to make it cheaper or anything like that. They have a sound business plan and sales structure. Hell i dont have enough to buy one now. The good thing is with a mac you might pay alil more but you get what u pay for. I dont want the market flooded with all kinds of different classes of mac like there is with pcs.

Do rule out any doubts and doubters along with that.

I'm running Half-Life 2 on my 15'4" MacBook Pro and it runs better than it ever did on my Windows Desktop.

My Desktop:

Windows XP Pro SP2
AMD Athlon64 at 2.0 Ghz
1 GB DDR RAM at 400 Mhz
AGP ASUS ATI Radeon 9800Pro 256MB DDR RAM

My MacBook:

Windows XP Pro SP2
Intel Core Duo 2.0 Ghz
2 GB DDR RAM at 677 Mhz
PCIe (Apple?) ATI Radeon x1600 256MB DDR RAM

I run the game at the maximum resolution of 1440x900 (Aspect Ration 16:10), with all settings maxed, AA 4x and Anisotropic 4x, Wait for Vertical Sync is disabled and HDR is technically set at Full(if available).

The latter being a useless info since I've not yet downloaded Lost Coast, but I might just to see what the Mac has to say about it.

With my settings the game runs smooth as silk. The same "stutter" as in the video can be seen after you have entered a new area and the machine loads a visible piece of terrain for the first time.

Gameplay is not hampered at all by: (multiple) explosions, large scenes reflected in water, groups of enemies, loads of physics or high-speed boat/dune-buggy cruising.

At max resolution, max settings and after turning up AA to 6x and AF to 16x, the game STILL remains surprisingly playable. The only notable drop in frame-rate then occurs if you move closely towards complex (and possibly moving) geometry. I would actual still play with these settings if they wouldn't have the negative side-effect of displacing your HUD slightly off-screen (for whatever reason).

Apart from that I've tested CS:Source and Hidden Beta2 with all maxed and had the same picture-perfect performance.

World of Warcraft (even though it's also a Mac game) runs perfectly as well under Windows with all maxed.

The only game that I've tested so far that can cause stuttering is RF-Online. It runs perfectly with highest settings, but as soon as you turn on any kind of light-bloom (called "Glow" in-game) the performance takes a dive.

This could be early drivers or just a sub-optimal graphics engine though, because performance going from around 90 FPS to around 15 just because you set one option from "off" to "low" can hardly be a normal feat.

Well, I hope I was able to give some insight for gamers, switchers and the like. Personally as a gamer I'm more than satisfied with my MacBook and the price point (I paid 2500 Euros) isn't all that bad if compared to laptops with similar specs.

And BTW I got the extra gig of RAM for "free" from my retailer, one of the perks of buying from a "certified Apple retailer" compared to an "Official Mac Store", you can negogiate and they can be forth-coming.

Peace out,

Blue_Six

This is stupid, how can you compare it to a machine that is lower spec.
Blue_Six the 9800 Pro in your PC is significantly weaker than any X1600, of course it will perform better!
Also there is more RAM in your Mac, generally this will help with load times if you have textures up high.
Everyone knows games these days require masses of RAM.

HL2's recommended specs are:
• 2.4 GHz Processor
• 512MB RAM
• DirectX 9 graphics card

It being a fairly dated game now, of course latest Apple hardware will run it "shockingly well".

People shouldn't be so surprised that the Mac hardware is able to perform with Windows running on it, it's not like its still being emulated.

@Osiris

I know very well that my Desktop machine is dated and I'm looking to upgrade it with another Gig of a RAM and an NVidia GS GFX Card, my co-worker in IT has the exact same setup as I do, it's the 2004 World Cyber Games Tournament PC.

He got a GS and the performance quite literally trippled, 3dMark06 results jumped for him from ~900 to slightly beyond 2700. The GS is great if you don't have the spare change to jump from AGP to PCIe just yet.

I was merely comparing it for the sake of comparing the Mac to any random "common" Windows box.

And even if HL2 is "dated", it's a game that many people own and I was merely trying to give them a "benchmark".

"If my CURRENT PC does HL2 like this and 'random game' like that... then maybe a Mac would perform like this on 'random game'.

I might not have put up a video, but at least I'm giving more detailed info for people that want it.

So no need to attack my comment here :o

Peace,

Blue_Six

Does it not seem odd that people boast about their high spec, high priced game computers and then complain about the price of the Apples?

For all those complaining about the PRICE of an apple please do a little homework and spec out a dell system against an Apple. You will find that feature for feature the Apples are generally a tad bit cheaper when you upgrade all the Dell parts to be the same (where you can) take that in consideration with Dell being on the cheap side in the PC market when compared to IBM and HP. Dell likes to lure people in with an incredibly cheap price but once you customize the units to be decent machines you are really better off buying the Apple. And now that it runs windows there really is no other choice.

#16 you are forgetting free shipping and 25%-50% deals that dell has weekly.

true........ apple does have free shipping right now though,

However, people on these forums never complain about the price of Sony Vaios or Thinkpads. No one ever compares dell laptops to ibm laptops (lenovo) and say Well the IBMS are great but they need to drop their prices... Ive owned and used many thinkpads and powerbooks, and now work for a company that dishes out dell laptops for work computers....... there is no comparison Dell is a manufacture of plain vanilla computers that although they work they are not highly polished powerhouses

I spent last night playing HL2, City of Heroes, and Star Wars Empires at War on my Dual Core Intel Mac mini. I have 2GB installed, and I gave Windows 30GB hard drive space to work with. All games ran very well using about 75% of the video effects turned on. Since the mini has an Intel GMA 950 for video, I thought the results might be worth noting: This integrated video gave a great performance. All games looked great. I had to turn off FSAA and shadows, but otherwise things ran just as well as they would on a dedicated video card.

That's not to say the Intel couldn't render the FSAA or shadows, but that they caused some slowdown, so I opted to turn them off for the best performance.

I ran most games at 1280x1024, but HL2 was stingy and ran a bit better at 1024x768. Note also that Star Wars Empires At War calls for a card that has Hardware T&L, and the GMA 950 handled it swimingly, despite the T&L being handled by software & the system's CPU.

My only complaint about Windows on my Mac is that now I've got a volume mounted on my OS X destop that I'd rather not see when I'm in Mac land. It's taking up space!

One other minor caveat: Even when external speakers or headphones are connected, the Mac mini's internal speaker ALSO makes sounds when using Windows. Apparently, the drivers haven't mastered the ability to bypass the internal speaker yet. Still, considering that I'm on a Mac and running Windows better than I ever ran Windows on a PC box, I'm pleased. I won't be in Windows for any utilities or productivity or web browsing, but for the occassional game it's quite handy to have around.

As much as I love HL2, it was actually made to run on lower spec systems. Anyone try something like BF2, or some other super-compy requiring game?

Sorry but I'm using Windows and I'll continue to use Windows (on a PC) so I don't have to worry about compatibility issues. Plus since is giving any support for Boot Camp it isn't all that smart to make the jump over without having a backup drive handy.

I'll use a Mac Mini for Media Center but thats about it. Windows runs perfectly fine on my system and I've never had a problem with it.