Macbook for gaming?

[Tomlok]

Hi

I was just wondering if any of you game on a Mac Book and what you thought of the new 2013 model for war/strategy games?

I believe you can use "Bootcamp" and in some cases "Parallels" .

Also preferred windows os? (XP, 7, 8, 32bit or 64bit)

Spec:
Apple 15-inch Macbook Pro with Retina Display
quad-core 2.3GHz Intel Core i7 processor (Haswell)
16GB of RAM
512GB SSD.
2GB (DDR5) Nvidia GeForce GT 750M graphics
laptop's native resolution: 2,880x1800

Thanks for any replies

[W8taminute]

Back in 2011 I bought a MacBook Pro under the guise I was buying my wife a cool gift.  The real reason I bought the thing was to attempt to defect from Windows based PC's and game on Apple.  I've heard that it was possible to dual boot a Mac with Linux so I thought that everything would be great.  I could play all my Windows based games on a Mac.

It turns out though that starting with the new Lion OS they modified dual bootcamp to accept only Windows operating system as your alternative boot.  I searched all over the internet looking for a way to circumnavigate this restriction but could not find any.  As a result I wasted money that could have been used to buy a real gaming laptop.  There was just no way I was willing to pay 75 billion dollars to purchase a Windows disk from M$ just to run games on my Mac.  The whole point in buying the Mac for me was to escape from Bill Gates but it seems M$ and Apple have a pretty good deal with each other in an effort to stifle Linux.

On the other hand if you buy games that are meant to run on a Mac then I find this system to be just as good as any other laptop.  I play a lot of Dominions 4 and a little of CiV and Endless Space on my Mac.  It's great that Steam offers most games in both Windows and Apple format.  Gamersgate has quite a few titles as well that you purchase once but get both the Windows and Apple version of the game.

Would I buy another Mac for gaming purposes?  No.  I would buy another Mac as a replacement for my current one as just a web surfing email writing machine but that's it.

I would be really interested in hearing if you have any luck trying to get Linux to dualboot on your Mac. 

[Vicco1]

I game on a MacBook Air (MBA) 11 inch 2010 version using Parallels when I travel.  The unit is really meant for work but what do you do on those long flights?

It's pretty much a hit & miss installing & running games. Some games like FlashPoint Campaigns: RedStorm & LocknLoad run well.  But Conflict of Heroes didn't.  Given the 11-inch size of the screen, it can sometimes look cramped & the font size can be a bit small for this old man's eyes.

As mentioned by W8taminute, games that have been ported over to Mac run well.  Although for the MBA, you're going to have use the lower resolutions of the game.

Don't have the 2013 version so I can't say for sure how it would play.  My sons have 2010 MacBook Pros & are able to play their games on it (manly Diablo 3, DOTA2, etc.) quite well with the graphics on the lower resolutions.

To W8taminute, you could run Linux on Parallels but I'm not sure how the performance would be.

[mirth]

I have a 2010 MacBook Pro that I dual boot with Windows XP. It works pretty well for my collection of older games.

The machine you've specced out is far superior to my old 13" MacBook. You'll be able to play whatever you want.

If you're going to dual boot into Windows, I'd recommend Windows 7 64-bit. It's stable and very similar to XP in look and feel.

MS support of XP is ending in April and it's not a supported OS for many newer games.

[Tomlok]

Thanks for all the replies so far :)