OSX + Rosetta or Bootcamp for Gaming?

[WintersFury]

Hey all,

I just got myself a MBP 13 today and I'm loving the thing. But I went to put a few dual platform games I have on the OSX side and was prompted to install that Rosetta thing. Now it strikes me as some kind of emulation or the like.

It strikes me as something that would kill framerates, so I'm wondering if this is the case or if it's a non issue? I know I'll have to reboot into Windows for most of my games as their not dual platform, but seeing how I'm digging OSX if I didn't have to reboot that would be great.

I did a bit of searching on the web but didn't manage to find anything useful on the subject.

Thanks much for any advice for a new Mac owner!

 

[bobtomay]

You have a game that was designed to run on the PPC processor. Rosetta is an app that allows for translation in order for it to be run on your Intel CPU.

 

[cwa107]

Rosetta is indeed an emulation layer that allows Intel-based Macs to run software designed to run on Macs with PowerPC processors. Yes, there will be a performance hit in running these games via Rosetta emulation.

Your best bet would be to stick to the Windows versions and run them via Bootcamp, since even those games ported to the Intel Mac platform often use a technology called 'Cider', which is a variant of WINE. Although WINE stands for "Wine Is Not an Emulator", in effect, it's a translation layer and will of course impact performance.

 

[WintersFury]

Thanks guys that's pretty much what I expected to hear.

Though I might just give it a try especially with the older games where it shouldn't make much of a difference at all.

 

[the8thark]

I agree with the above. yes rosetta is an application. But one you'll never see. It just works seamlessly in the background.

But I've played many PPC games on my intel imac through rosetta. And honestly apart from a very slight higher usage in CPU power by the PPC game I've noticed no ill effects or slowdowns caused by the rosetta emulation.

So for ease of use I'd try out the PPC versions via rosetta. You just might be surprised at how well the old game run. And if for some reason you're not happy, you still have the Windows versions you can use in bootcamp if you so wish.

 

[WintersFury]

Thanks for the thoughts the8thark but I decided to just put all my games on the windows partition. Most new games are single platform and I'm not about to buy the Mac versions due to the price premium and not being able to play them on my gaming rig since I'll never switch that from Windows due to how cheap I can make em.