[solardev]

For gaming, you want to use Crossover or the FOSS Whisky app. Parallels only runs Arm Windows which then emulates x86. This is much much slower than using Wine to translate system calls and Apple's Game Porting Toolkit to handle the Vulkan or DirectX graphics. Crossover and Whisky take care of the internals of those for you. Give those a shot, I think you'll find it much better than a full VM. In my experience some games do run better this way than the MacOS versions, though that's usually because the Mac client wasn't compiled for Apple Silicon and so Rosetta is emulating. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure WOW is already Apple Silicon native, so you probably won't get better performance this way.

Crossover is paid but has better compatibility: https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover/ (or see https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility for compatible games)

Whisky is free, and will work just as well for games it supports, but has compatibility with fewer games (no official list, so you just have to download it and try yourself): https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky

For the mouse stuff, try a USB mouse if you're not already using one, combined with https://github.com/ther0n/UnnaturalScrollWheels to disable acceleration and fix the scroll wheel.

That works really well for me to get a Windows-like mouse curve.

TLDR skip the emulation and go for translation layers via Crossover, Whisky, and GPT. It'll be much faster. The mouse thing is separate and has nothing to do with the graphics layer.

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Personally though, I'd just pay $20 a month for Geforce Now. It is much much faster than even the highest end Mac. I don't think WOW is on there, but for supported games, it's a phenomenal experience... sold my 3080 desktop and replaced it with GFN on my Macbook. It's fantastic.

Supported games: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/games/

[sydbarrett74]

Thank you for your detailed reply. :)

I will give USW a try. I hadn't heard of that project before.

Also, I'm happy to have read that MS will be making all ActiBlizz titles available once again on GeForce Now once its acquisition is complete.

[ngcc_hk]

What is the bandwidth requirement I wonder. Seems too cheap to be true … must have some other catch. Latency as well?

[solardev]

For GeForce Now? Not much:

From https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/system-reqs/:

- 15 Mbps for 720p @ 60FPS

- 25 Mbps for 1080p

- Up to 35 Mbps for 4k/120 FPS

Input latency is there, yes, but it's not too bad especially if you turn on Nvidia Reflex and use the hardware cursor. Totally unnoticeable in many games. For first-person shooters it's definitely noticeable, but IMO still playable as long as you're not doing it competitively. I play shooters on it from time to time... and put it this way, I would much rather do that (on max graphics) and deal with the minor input lag, than to try to get them running on my Mac, all to get super low graphics with low draw distance, etc.

It's never going to beat a 4090 on your desk, but for $20/mo...? It's an incredible value.

I don't know that there really is a "catch" beyond basic network principles/limitations. Game streaming has been developed for more than a decade now... when OnLive first came out, the technology (home internet and hardware encoding) wasn't quite there. Now 35Mbps is commonplace, Nvidia has hardware encoding in all their cards, AND they control the entire stack of their data center like no one else can. Stadia's failure was IMO a Google management problem more than any technical limitation. GeForce Now is a much much better service, both using your existing Steam library and supporting way more games.

The pricing does seem really good, especially compared to Shadow.tech (where you rent a whole gaming VM with a 3070 Ti for $50/mo, but can run anything you want) or AirGPU (similar service). But the games-as-a-service platforms like Amazon Luna, Xbox Cloud Streaming, and PS Plus are all comparably priced ($10-$20/mo). There are other third party services like Boosteroid too. Cloud gaming is a maturing technology that's largely already "there", in my experience (have tried nearly all of them over the last 10+ years).

I think Nvidia is uniquely positioned as the only company in this space who can provide the graphics cards first-party instead of needing to buy them from, well, Nvidia. It's possible that the current pricing is a loss leader, but they've already raised the prices from the Founders pricing they had a few years ago, and it's still not too bad. It's not like Nvidia is hurting for cash anyway. My main fear is not that there's a "catch", but that they'll gradually move out of the gaming segment and focus on AI.

In the meantime, while it lasts, GeForce Now really is wonderfully, uh, game-changing :)

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Edit: PS they have a free tier, and you can even use it in a browser tab, no client download needed. That's enough to give you a taste for free, no commitment. If you decide you like it, the Ultimate plan is very much worth it, and the desktop (or mobile) clients offer slightly better UX than the browser tab and higher resolutions.