Can I Run Games - Use this system requirements checking tool to see what Games you can run on your PC.
The Mac has plenty of games, but it'll always get the short end of the stick compared to Windows. If you want to play the latest games on your Mac, you have no choice but to install Windows ... or do you?
- Dec 27, 2007 That Macs can't run games as well as PC's is a myth, nowadays with the Intel processors. Some time ago, devs just didn't optimize their code for the Mac so well, or had problems doing so because of the game being originally developed for Windows. During porting, OS X missed a lot. However, games now run as fast on Macs as their PC counterparts.
- Don't worry Mac gamers - there are still ways to play your favourite PC games on your Mac. From the reliable Boot Camp method to cloud-based streaming services for Mac, here's how you can play PC.
There are a few ways you can play Windows games on your Mac without having to dedicate a partition to Boot Camp or giving away vast amounts of hard drive space to a virtual machine app like VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop. Here are a few other options for playing Windows games on your Mac without the hassle or expense of having to install Windows.
GeForce Now
PC gaming on Mac? Yes you can, thanks to Nvidia's GeForce Now. The service allows users to play PC games from Steam or Battle.net on macOS devices. Better still, the graphic power of these games resides on Nvidia's servers. The biggest drawback: the service remains in beta, and there's been no announcement when the first full release is coming or what a monthly subscription will cost.
For now, at least, the service is free to try and enjoy. All supported GeForce NOW titles work on Macs, and yes, there are plenty of them already available!
The Wine Project
The Mac isn't the only computer whose users have wanted to run software designed for Windows. More than 20 years ago, a project was started to enable Windows software to work on POSIX-compliant operating systems like Linux. It's called The Wine Project, and the effort continues to this day. OS X is POSIX-compliant, too (it's Unix underneath all of Apple's gleam, after all), so Wine will run on the Mac also.
Wine is a recursive acronym that stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator. It's been around the Unix world for a very long time, and because OS X is a Unix-based operating system, it works on the Mac too.
As the name suggests, Wine isn't an emulator. The easiest way to think about it is as a compatibility layer that translates Windows Application Programming Interface (API) calls into something that the Mac can understand. So when a game says 'draw a square on the screen,' the Mac does what it's told.
You can use straight-up Wine if you're technically minded. It isn't for the faint of heart, although there are instructions online, and some kind souls have set up tutorials, which you can find using Google. Wine doesn't work with all games, so your best bet is for you to start searching for which games you'd like to play and whether anyone has instructions to get it working on the Mac using Wine.
Note: At the time of this writing, The Wine Project does not support macOS 10.15 Catalina.
CrossOver Mac
CodeWeavers took some of the sting out of Wine by making a Wine-derived app called CrossOver Mac. CrossOver Mac is Wine with specialized Mac support. Like Wine, it's a Windows compatibility layer for the Mac that enables some games to run.
CodeWeavers has modified the source code to Wine, made some improvements to configuration to make it easier, and provided support for their product, so you shouldn't be out in the cold if you have trouble getting things to run.
My experience with CrossOver — like Wine — is somewhat hit or miss. Its list of actual supported games is pretty small. Many other unsupported games do, in fact work — the CrossOver community has many notes about what to do or how to get them to work, which are referenced by the installation program. Still, if you're more comfortable with an app that's supported by a company, CrossOver may be worth a try. What's more, a free trial is available for download, so you won't be on the hook to pay anything to give it a shot.
Boxer
If you're an old-school gamer and have a hankering to play DOS-based PC games on your Mac, you may have good luck with Boxer. Boxer is a straight-up emulator designed especially for the Mac, which makes it possible to run DOS games without having to do any configuring, installing extra software, or messing around in the Mac Terminal app.
With Boxer, you can drag and drop CD-ROMs (or disk images) from the DOS games you'd like to play. It also wraps them into self-contained 'game boxes' to make them easy to play in the future and gives you a clean interface to find the games you have installed.
Boxer is built using DOSBox, a DOS emulation project that gets a lot of use over at GOG.com, a commercial game download service that houses hundreds of older PC games that work with the Mac. So if you've ever downloaded a GOG.com game that works using DOSBox, you'll have a basic idea of what to expect.
Some final thoughts
In the end, programs like the ones listed above aren't the most reliable way to play Windows games on your Mac, but they do give you an option.
Of course, another option is to run Windows on your Mac, via BootCamp or a virtual machine, which takes a little know-how and a lot of memory space on your Mac's hard drive.
How do you play your Windows games on Mac?
Steam
Let us know in the comment below!
Updated October 2019: Updated with the best options.
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Can I Run It On My Pc
Borderlands 3 game details
Borderlands 3, well we don't know much yet. But we do know about an Easter Egg. Promethea was spotted and it is a planet in the Borderlands universe and could very well be the setting for Borderlands 3 - the Atlas corporation found alien technology on it, which was used to make more powerful weapons.Updated August 1, 2019:Borderlands 3 recently went Gold which should mean no further delays and a set release date of September 13, 2019 on the Epic Games Store. It will eventually find its way to Steam in April of 2020. If you want to pass the recommended requirements, you'll need at least a GeForce GTX 970 or a Radeon RX 570 for your video card!
Here are the Borderlands 3 System Requirements (Minimum)
- CPU: AMD FX-8350 or Intel i5-3570
- CPU SPEED: Info
- RAM: 6 GB
- OS: Windows 7 64-bit | Windows 8 64-bit | Windows 10 64-bit
- VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 / AMD Radeon HD 7970
- PIXEL SHADER: 5.0
- VERTEX SHADER: 5.0
- DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 2048 MB
Borderlands 3 Recommended Requirements
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600 or Intel i7-4770
- CPU SPEED: Info
- RAM: 16 GB
- OS: Windows 7 64-bit | Windows 8 64-bit | Windows 10 64-bit
- VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 / AMD Radeon RX 590
- PIXEL SHADER: 5.1
- VERTEX SHADER: 5.1
- DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 3072 MB
Can my PC run Borderlands 3?
By JT Hussey August 9, 2019
Return to the cartoonishly psychotic universe of Borderlands in a quest for loot, treasure, and salvation amongst the stars. With an entire new cast of heros, villeins, and expendable psychos, Borderlands 3 presents a The futuristic wasteland of Borderlands is no laughing matter, (well except that one bandit worshiping a teddy bear with a funny hat), with 4 entire planets to explore alongside hundreds of enemies and thousands of procedurally generated weapons, Borderlands 3 will challenge PC's with intensive graphical content. The heavy graphical weight of Borderlands can be better appreciated in meeting the minimum requirements of a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 or AMD Radeon HD 7970 GPU. However, in meeting the recommended requirements of a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 or a AMD Radeon RX 570 you can have the full experience of Borderlands 3. Meet these requirements to witness the the stunning environments, varied gameplay, and exploding psychos of Borderlands full spectrum wastelandThough the art style of Borderlands is cartoonish, there is nothing silly about the hardware required to run this game. Your computer must meet the minimum requirements of a Intel Core i3-2140 or AMD FX-6350. As mentioned, however, Borderlands is a galaxy wide experience that has vast amounts of information for your computer to process. For a comprehensive experience that renders every grain of dirt and every bullet in your assault rifle, your computer must meet the recommended requirements of a Intel Core i7-2600 or AMD Ryzen 7 1700 CPU. Treasure beckons and futuristic adventure awaits in Borderlands 3.