[dimillian]

You'll be amazed on how it has changed. First, latest Macbook are kinda powerful on the GPU side, even with the integrated one, the Intel HD 5000 or Iris can run modern game at low/med settings. While it's shit for gamers who cares about graphics and performances, for any casual gamers it's sufficient. My Macbook is my work machine but also my gaming machine.

The other things is about Wine, they're working on accelerating the Direct3D driver, and OMG, it's soooo fast now. I'm running Skyrim on a custom Wine engine (1.7.1 with a patch from the D3D boost branch), on hight/ultra settings on my Macbook Retina, It's running at 80% of the Windows performance. And it's only the beginning, it's far from done. I also have it running on a friend Macbook Air, it run at medium setting at a solid 30 FPS.

My point is that you can actually plays with Macbook nowadays.

Edit: The PR from codeweavers is relevant (Especially the part about the Command Stream). http://www.codeweavers.com/about/general/press/20131112/

[salient]

Last I checked Mac OS also had very poor OpenGL support, from what I hear because it's Apple the one writing their own OpenGL driver and building it into the OS. Have they even caught up to OpenGL 4.0 yet? Even if they did, that's still what - 3-4 years behind the others? (4.4 is the latest)

[robin_reala]

In short, mostly. Full 4.1 support in Mavericks: http://rk.md/2013/opengl-osx-mountain-lion-vs-mavericks/

[drzaiusapelord]

You're not really playing BF4 on that Macbook. There are other non graphically challenging games you can play but not complex 3D games with decent graphic settings. I'm far from a graphics guy but things below a certain threshold just look bad and take away from the experience. I'd rather console game than deal with modern games on "low." Especially when you find yourself in situations where you get random frame drops and massive lag as the system tries to keep up. That's just annoying.

I'm always bewildered by Apple's choice of weak GPUs. These are premium products, why not spring for a decent GPU and call it a day? I imagine a lot has to do with maintaining a quiet experience and selling a thin computer, but at some point form hurts function.

[dimillian]

Yeah, BF4 on wine may be unplayable (I've not tested it). About the GPU, My MBPr was shipped with an NVIDIA GT 650M, which is not that bad. And the new one got a 750M.

With those GPU you can have med/hight settings on... on Windows. I'm really impatient for the release of the Wine version with the graphic boost, it should be able to run most game at 70-90% of their Windows counterparts.

The big problem is with the retina display, you have to run game at 14XX X 9XX to have decent performance, but it can be ugly, because of the display not being at its native resolution.

[derefr]

For the mobile products? Number one consideration is battery life. Discrete GPUs are horrible battery drains that Apple wants to eliminate any way they can, so they can get the MBP to the same kind of 12-hour-life numbers the Air has.

[drzaiusapelord]

Well, that can be worked around. In the windows world there are lots of laptop models that switch between low power integrated graphics and a high power GPU for gaming. Its not either or anymore. Its not 1998 anymore.

[derefr]

That's what Apple has been doing. It's still not enough.

[sandGorgon]

is this the case only with OSX-Wine or Linux-Wine as well ? I dont mind paying for professional quality wine on linux - a.k.a Crossover

[dimillian]

From what I understand Crossover already integrated the performance improvement from the in progress Wine branch into their closed source alternative.

It's still coming soon on the main branch for Wine, but they still have a lot of works to do. But yeah once it'll be merged, both OSX Wine and Linux Wine will benefit from it. And it's a big, big performance improvement.

And if you want to try Crossover, go for it (They have a trial), so you can compare the performance.