ARMA3 on Mac?

[jagheterjan 10]

I know of Apple's prices and I agree, it's outrageous asking for that amount of cash. That's why I've resorted to working with a hackintosh. And guess what? Works just as good as the PPCs I've used in the past.

[metalcraze 290]

In case you are thinking about buying a Mac:

1. Ignore Apple overpriced garbage

2. Buy much cheaper and much more effective high performance PC

3. ArmA3 will work now.

In case you have bought a Mac:

1. Format HDD

2. Buy normal hardware parts (start with throwing away the shitty $400 videocard that can barely scratch $150 videocard that gets put into normal PCs)

3. Install Windows

4. ArmA3 will work now.

[dmarkwick 261]

In case you are thinking about buying a Mac:

1. Ignore Apple overpriced garbage

2. Buy much cheaper and much more effective high performance PC

3. ArmA3 will work now.

In case you have bought a Mac:

1. Format HDD

2. Buy normal hardware parts (start with throwing away the shitty $400 videocard that can barely scratch $150 videocard that gets put into normal PCs)

3. Install Windows

4. ArmA3 will work now.

It may surprise you to learn that nobody buys a Mac in order to play ArmA on it, but that some may buy ArmA to play on a Mac :)

[PuFu 4600]

It may surprise you to learn that nobody buys a Mac in order to play ArmA on it, but that some may buy ArmA to play on a Mac :)

i envy your calm around ignorant ppl like metalcraze..who thinks the PC is just a more advanced gaming console and one would use it only for gaming.

metalcraze: have you actually used a mac in your entire life (for more than a couple of minutes that is)?

Edited November 3, 2011 by PuFu

[dmarkwick 261]

i envy your calm around ignorant ppl like metalcraze..who thinks the PC is just a more advanced gaming console and one would use it only for gaming.

Well, like any tight family, small differences get exaggerated :) but my outlook is always: we have more in common than we have in difference ;)

Edited November 3, 2011 by DMarkwick

[Leon86 13]

Arma 3 is only going to run good with bootcamp on mac pro's. All other macs have mobile graphics chipsets (even imac's) and are not going to meet system requirements. (if the projected ones are anything to go by).

[FallujahMedic -FM- 867]

As an actual Mac owner, I can speak from experience that a Mac works great for playing Arma or Arma 2. Yes, I initially paid more for it, but it has lasted longer than any PC I have ever owned before (and thats been quite a lot). To really burst a few bubbles, its a second gen Mac Book Pro (2008) with a core 2 duo @2.33 GHZ w/ 3gb RAM. Not a fancy gaming rig by any standards, but definitely a STABLE rig. It wouldn't surprise me to see someone running A3 on a newer MBP when it becomes available.

[batto 17]

IMO it would be great if BIS dropped DirectX (= made own platform agnostic API) which is probably the major obstacle in porting the game to other platforms. Screw Macs, I want to play ARMA3 on my Fedora :P (running on commodity hardware). I'm trying to boycott Microsoft but I'll need to buy Windows just for ARMA3 :(.

Edited November 4, 2011 by batto

[Haystack15 10]

As an actual Mac owner, I can speak from experience that a Mac works great for playing Arma or Arma 2. Yes, I initially paid more for it, but it has lasted longer than any PC I have ever owned before (and thats been quite a lot). To really burst a few bubbles, its a second gen Mac Book Pro (2008) with a core 2 duo @2.33 GHZ w/ 3gb RAM. Not a fancy gaming rig by any standards, but definitely a STABLE rig. It wouldn't surprise me to see someone running A3 on a newer MBP when it becomes available.

FPS? please? Sorry just want to know. :o

[spektre76 10]

As an actual Mac owner, I can speak from experience that a Mac works great for playing Arma or Arma 2. Yes, I initially paid more for it, but it has lasted longer than any PC I have ever owned before (and thats been quite a lot). To really burst a few bubbles, its a second gen Mac Book Pro (2008) with a core 2 duo @2.33 GHZ w/ 3gb RAM. Not a fancy gaming rig by any standards, but definitely a STABLE rig. It wouldn't surprise me to see someone running A3 on a newer MBP when it becomes available.

People also need to realize that Mac's don't need all the power a PC needs to run complex operations. Having a 512MB ATi M6770 is like having a desktop HD5800 series. I run an HD4890 1GB with an AMD Phenom II X4 2.8GHz on my rig and I can max out. The new MBP's come with i7 3.2GHz cores.

[5LEvEN 11]

People also need to realize that Mac's don't need all the power a PC needs to run complex operations. Having a 512MB ATi M6770 is like having a desktop HD5800 series. I run an HD4890 1GB with an AMD Phenom II X4 2.8GHz on my rig and I can max out. The new MBP's come with i7 3.2GHz cores.

Do you have any sources to back this up? I have used a Mac that is better then my PC in the hardware sector. What is funny is how my PC performs edits faster in photoshop then it....

[Hees 11th AMB 15]

I too was wondering if a 2011 iMac 27" with an I7, Windows 7 and a mediocre graphics card would run Arma3. To make a long story short, it does. And it does so with the default graphics in Arma3. The only thing that really need doing is - with the help of Macfan - to max the internal fans. Sure, it will make a lot of noise (not too uncommon in the PC-world. I know - I've been there) but last night I played over two hours (solo and MP) and the top bezel of the screen was lukewarm. The night before - without tinkering with the fans, the iMac powered down at about 100 degrees Celsius. But my guess is that a good choice made in the preferences will bring the temperature down even more and alleviate the noise by turning down the speed all three available fans (ODD, HDD en CPU).

So, in all, I'm a happy person.

[Leon86 13]

Yeah, might want to watch the heat when using bootcamp, all the powermanagement is pretty much turned off so they can run quite hot.

People also need to realize that Mac's don't need all the power a PC needs to run complex operations. Having a 512MB ATi M6770 is like having a desktop HD5800 series. I run an HD4890 1GB with an AMD Phenom II X4 2.8GHz on my rig and I can max out. The new MBP's come with i7 3.2GHz cores.

that's just bullcrap.

[funkotron 4]

lubbos fancontrol is the trick then if the mac is gettin to hot. i play on both pc and mac and it´s running very well. i bought a used macbook pro for my son- an early 2012 with i7 quad 2,3ghz 8GB ram and an ati 6770m 1GB vram and his settings in arma 3 are high on nativ resolution 1440x900. heat is a problem with these unibody macs but it stands on a cooling pad and with lubbos fancontrol you can control both fan´s and max them to 6000rpm (headphones recommended:)).

temp´s are nearly the same as on my alienware m17x r3. this thing was 700€ with a broken wlan card and with a little wlan stick the problem was fixed.

the macbook weight is 2kg and for a little mobile gaming with arma3 perfect.

i dont like the apple "waste your money" system but it´s fine to have both operating systems on one machine. (win7 32bit)

viewdistance is set to 2000 and postfx is off. fps varies between 20 - 45

most important: we can play arma 3 together!

Edited March 11, 2013 by funkotron

[kmossco 9]

I am currently playing ArmA3 in bootcamp in my mac. It has a i5 2500, 8GB ram and a ATI 6770 1GB. Plays well enough.

Using windows 7 64bits though.

[Alo Keen 7]

What are the complications for Arma3 running on Mac?

In essence, it'll cost more.

[predator2811 1]

I've decided to try Arma games again after about 10 year pause (last time I played the original game in app. 2002) and since I switched from Win to Mac meantime, I had to install bootcamp and windows specifically for it. It took me few hours to get everything working, but at the end, I was very pleasantly surprised - A3 Alpha runs very well at medium to high settings (custom settings - most high, some medium) and I really enjoy it :cool:

And what especially surprises me, is that it is able to run with almost no free disk space - I made wrong guess when creating the bootcamp partition and assigned only 40 GB to it, which after installing win8 64bit and the a3 alpha shrunk to app. 1.5 GB of free space on disk. And yet - the game runs just fine with no hang ups! :)

---------

MacBook Pro 15'

i7 2.3 GHz

8 GB DDR3

Retina 2880 x 1800

GeForce GT 650M 1 GB

SSD 250 GB

[Bowbox 1]

I've decided to try Arma games again after about 10 year pause (last time I played the original game in app. 2002) and since I switched from Win to Mac meantime, I had to install bootcamp and windows specifically for it. It took me few hours to get everything working, but at the end, I was very pleasantly surprised - A3 Alpha runs very well at medium to high settings (custom settings - most high, some medium) and I really enjoy it :cool:

Hey, Im also a RMBP user and I would like to know how you got your resolution to work. Only windowed mode (full screen windowed) is working for me. Whenever I attempt to go full screen and change the resolution it does not save when restarting the game. Every time I relaunch, the screen is completely off center and the resolution doesnt fit my screen. I would love to hear some of the tweaks you did to get the resolution proper and perhaps your high performance (im currently playing smoothly at ~35fps (Fraps) in standard detail). I havnt yet attempted to push the limits of my laptop but I would like to hear of your results.

SPECS:

Retina Macbook Pro

2.7GHz

8Gb Ram

512Gb SSD (256Gb Windows Partition)

[Gpruitt54 10]

Hey, Im also a RMBP user and I would like to know how you got your resolution to work. Only windowed mode (full screen windowed) is working for me. Whenever I attempt to go full screen and change the resolution it does not save when restarting the game. Every time I relaunch, the screen is completely off center and the resolution doesnt fit my screen. I would love to hear some of the tweaks you did to get the resolution proper and perhaps your high performance (im currently playing smoothly at ~35fps (Fraps) in standard detail). I havnt yet attempted to push the limits of my laptop but I would like to hear of your results.

SPECS:

Retina Macbook Pro

2.7GHz

8Gb Ram

512Gb SSD (256Gb Windows Partition)

So, would you say overall that you are happy with the performance of bootcamp and how arma3 under bootcamp? A friend of mind wants to try ARMA3, but has a Mac and wants some information about performance under boot camp.